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Updated: June 25, 2025
I make no concealment of my unqualified admiration for these pieces: with the sonatas, the "Dirge" from the "Indian" suite, and certain of the "Woodland Sketches," they record, I think, his high-water mark. He has carried them through with superb gusto, with unwearying imaginative fervour.
When scarcely twenty years old he had composed his octet, three quartets for the piano and strings, two sonatas, two symphonies, his first violin quartet, various operas, many songs, and the immortal overture of "A Midsummer-Night's Dream."
What is there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth? these dear Moralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall's Questions, and a ladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner, and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will inevitably tarnish.
The qualities of eternal youth and of juventine gaiety; of intimate tenderness; of swagger that winks while it swaggers; of love that is ever deep but sunlit to the depth; and of tragedy with a touch of fatalistic horror, all those qualities that are found scattered through his sonatas and symphonies and his various operas all the qualities that are combined in "Don Giovanni," are the qualities of Mozart's own nature, always excepting the ruthlessness and the fanatic libertinism of his Don Juan.
Oliphant, who, speaking of the musical parties in Eton, where she lived so long, for the education of tier boys, writes in words that suit me perfectly: "In one of these friends' houses a family quartet played what were rather new and terrible to me long sonatas and concerted pieces which filled my soul with dismay.
So saying, he rose and led the way into the next room, where Miss Mannering, at his request, took her seat at the harpsichord, Lucy Bertram, who sung her native melodies very sweetly, was accompanied by her friend upon the instrument, and Julia afterwards performed some of Scarlatti's sonatas with great brilliancy.
I must also first get my money from Le Gros and the Duc de Guines; and as the court goes to Munich the end of this month, I should like to be there at the same time to present my sonatas myself to the Electress, which perhaps might bring me a present.
The same equilibrium is maintained in his piano and violin sonatas and his other concerted chamber music, amid all their persuasive and eloquent discourse. His charming four-hand and double piano pieces, written for himself and his gifted sister Marianne, and his solo clavier sonatas would prove his wealth of musical invention had he not written another note.
His works comprise a concerto, three sonatas, many nocturnes, rondos, and études, about thirty fantasias, two operas, and an instruction series, which latter has been adopted by many of the best teachers, and has been the means of forming a number of able pupils. This fine artist died at his Neapolitan estate, April 27, 1871.
I questioned him in regard to it later when I saw him in New York, and he replied that it was a matter over which he had pondered considerably, and one which had influenced him in the composition of the last two sonatas, as the insertion of a scherzo in such a scheme did seem something like an interruption, or 'aside." It must be confessed that this qualification is a little difficult to grasp.
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