then go into trade later and forget all you ever learned
at school. I had rather go to college than be sent. Every
man should get rich, that he might know the worthless-
ness of riches; and every man should have a college
education, just to realize how little the thing is
worth 33 33
Yes, Mozart needed a good friend whose abilities could
have rounded out and made good his deficiencies. Most
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WOLFGANG MOZART
certainly I could not do the things that he did, but I
should have been his helper, and might, too, had not a
century, one wide ocean, and a foreign language sepa-
rated us.
311
WOLFGANG MOZART
T ATERLOO : Friendship is better than love for
a steady diet. Suspicion, jealousy, prejudice
and strife follow in the wake of love ; and dis-
grace, murder and suicide lurk just around
the corner from where love coos. Love is a matter of
propinquity; it makes demands, asks for proofs, requires
a token. But friendship seeks no ownership it only
hopes to serve, and it grows by giving. Do not say,
please, that this applies also to love. Love bestows only
that it may receive, and a one-sided passion turns to
hate in a night, and then demands vengeance as its
right and portion.
Friendship asks no rash promises, demands no foolish
vows, is strongest in absence, and most loyal when
needed. It lends ballast to life, and gives steadily to
every venture. Through our friends we are made
brothers to all who live.
I think I would rather have had Mozart for a friend
than to love and be loved by the greatest prima donna
who ever warbled in high C. Friendship is better than
love. Friendship means calm, sweet sleep, clear brain
and a strong hold on sanity. Love I am told is only
friendship, plus something else. But that something else
is a great disturber of the peace, not to say digestion.
It sometimes racks the brain until the world reels. Love
is such a tax on the emotions that this way madness lies.
Friendship never yet led to suicide.
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WOLFGANG MOZART
OLEDO: Yes, just at the age when Mozart
wrote and played his " Requiem," getting
ready to die, I was going to school and inci-
dentally falling in love. I was thirty-four and
shaved clean because there were gray hairs coming in
my beard. Love has its advantages, of course, and the
benefits of passionate love consist in scarifying one's
sensibilities until they are raw, thus making one able to
sympathize with those who suffer. Love sounds the
feelings with a leaden plummet that sinks to the very
depths of one's soul. This once done the emotions can
return with ease, and so this is why no singer can sing,
or painter paint, or sculptor model, or writer write, until
love or calamity, often the same thing, has sounded the
depths of his soul. Love makes us wise because it makes
room inside the soul for thoughts and feelings to germi-
nate; but passionate love as a lasting mood would be
hell. Henry Finck says that is why Nature has fixed a
two-year limit on romantic or passionate love. " War is
hell," said General Sherman. "All is fair in Love and
War," says the old proverb. Love and War are one, say
I. Love is mad, raging unrest and a vain, hot, reaching
out for nobody knows what. Of course the kind which
I am talking about is the Grand Passion, not the sort of
sentiment that one entertains towards his grandmother.
*I " But it is good to fall in love, just as it is well to have
the measles," to quote Schopenhauer. Still, there is this
difference: one only has the measles once, but the man
313
WOLFGANG MOZART
who has loved is never immune, and no amount of
pledges or resolves can ere avail.
Just here seems a good place to express a regret that the
English language is such a crude affair that we use the
same word to express a man's regard for roast-beef, his
dog, child, wife and Deity. There are those who speedily
cry, " Hold! " when one attempts to improve on the
language, but I now give notice that on the first rainy
day I am going to create some distinctions and differen-
tiate for posterity along the line just mentioned 3$
314
WOLFGANG MOZART
LYRIA: As intimated in a former chapter, I
was a successful farmer before I went to col-
lege. I was also a manufacturer, and made a
success in this business, too. I made a fortune
of a hundred thousand dollars before I was thirty, and
should have it yet had I sat down and watched it. If you
go into a railroad-car and sit down by the side of your
valise (or manuscript), in an hour your valuables will
probably be there all right.
But if you leave the valise (or the manuscript) in a seat
and go into another car, when you come back the goods
may be there and they may not. That is the only way to
keep money fasten your eye right on it. If you leave
it in the hands of others, and go away to delve in books,
the probabilities are that, when you get back, certain
obese attorneys have divided your substance among
them 33 3&
However, there is good in every exigency of life, and to
know that your fortune is gone is a great relief. When the
trial is ended and the prisoner has received his sentence,
he feels a great relief, for it is only the unknown that
fills our souls with apprehension.
315
WOLFGANG MOZART
LEVELAND: In all the realm of artistic
history no record of such extremes can be
found in one life as those seen in the life of
Mozart. The nearest approach to it is found
in the career of Rembrandt, who won fame and fortune
at thirty, and then holding the pennant high for ten
years, his powers began to decline. It took twenty-six
years of steady down grade to ditch his destinies in a
pauper's grave.
But Rembrandt, during his lifetime, was scarcely known
out of Holland, whereas Mozart not only won the nod
of nobility, and the favor of the highest in his own land,
but he went into the enemy's country and captured
Italy. Mozart's art never languished: he held a firm grip
on sublime verities right to the day of his death. The
high-water mark in Mozart's career was reached in
those two years in Italy, when in his thirteenth and
fourteenth years. The arts all go hand in hand, for the
reason that strong men inspire strong men, and each
does what he can do best. In painting, sculpture and
music (not to mention Antonio Stradivari of Cremona)
Italy has led the world. A hundred years ago no musician
could hope for the world's acclaim until Italy had placed
its stamp of approval upon him.
Savants in Milan, Florence, Padua, Rome, Verona,
Venice and Naples, tested the powers of young Mozart
to their fullest ; and although he had to overcome doubt
and the prejudice arising from being " a barbaric
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WOLFGANG MOZART
German," yet the highest honors were at the last
ungrudgingly paid him. He was enrolled as an honorary
member of numerous musical societies, old musicians
-gave their blessings, proud ladies craved the privilege of
kissing his fair forehead, and the Pope conferred upon
the gifted boy the Order of the Golden Spur, which gave
him the right to have his mail come directed to " The
Signer Cavaliere Mozarti."
At Naples the result of his marvelous playing was
ascribed to enchantment, and this was thought to be
centered in a diamond ring that had been presented to
the lad by a fair lady in a mood of ecstasy. To convince
the Neapolitans of their error Mozart was obliged to
accept their challenge and remove the ring. He wrote
home to his mother that he had no time to practise, as
in every city where he went artists insisted on his sitting
for his portrait.
The acme of attention and applause was reached at
Milan, where he was commissioned to write an opera for
the Christmas festivities. The production of this opera
at La Scala was the most glorious item in the life of
Mozart. A boy of fourteen conducting an opera of his
own composition before enraptured multitudes is an
event that stands to the credit of Mozart, and Mozart
alone. " Ewiva the Little Master Ewiva the Little
Master! " cried the audience. " It is music for the stars,"
and against all precedent aria after aria had to be
repeated. The boy, always rather small for his age,
317
WOLFGANG MOZART
stood on a chair to wield his baton, and the flowers
that were rained upon him nearly covered the lad
from view.
318
WOLFGANG MOZART
SHTABULA: The place of a man's birth does
not honor him until after he is dead, and
every man of genius has been distrusted by
his intimate kinsmen. If he is granted recog-
nition by the outside world, those who have known
him from childhood wink slyly and repeat Phineas T.
Barnum's aphorism, a free paraphrase of which the
Germans have used since the days of the Vandals.
Leopold Mozart returned home with his wonderful boy
not much richer than when he went away. He had left
the management of finances to others, and was quite
content to travel in a special carriage, stop at the best
hotels, and have any " label " he might order, just for
the asking.
Reports had reached Germany of the wonderful success
of the youthful Mozart in Italy, but Vienna smiled and
Salzburg sneezed.
319
WOLFGANG MOZART
ORTH EAST: It is not so very long ago that
all the beautiful things of earth were sup-
posed to belong to the Superior Class. That
is to say, all the toilers, all the workers in
metals, all the bookmakers, authors, poets, painters,
sculptors and musicians, did their work to please this
noble or that. All bands of singers were singers to His
Lordship, and if a man wrote a book he dedicated it to
His Royal Highness. At first these thinkers and doers
were veritable slaves, and no court was complete that
did not have its wise man who wore the cap and bells,
and made puns, epigrams and quoted wise saws and
modern instances for his board and keep. This man
usually served as a clerk or overseer, during his odd
hours, and only appeared to give a taste of his quality
when he was sent for.
It was the same with the musicians and singers they
were cooks, waiters and valets, and when there were
guests these performers were notified to be in readiness
to " do something " if called upon. It was the same with
painters every court had its own. Rubens, as we know,
was looked upon by the Duke of Mantua as his private
property, and the artist had to run away, when the time
was ripe, to save his soul alive. Van Dyck was court
painter to Charles the First, and married when he was
told to do so.
There is no such office as " Poet Laureate of England "
the Laureate is poet to the King, and used to dine
320
WOLFGANG MOZART
with the Master of the Hounds. Later he was allowed
to choose his domicile and live in his own house, like
Saint Paul, the prisoner at Rome. His yearly stipend is
yet that tierce of Canary.
321
WOLFGANG MOZART
ILVER CREEK: Leopold Mozart, and the
son who caused his name to endure, were in
the employ of the Archbishop of Salzburg.
The Archbishop was a veritable prince, with
short breath and a double chin, and no shade of doubt
ever came to him concerning the divinity of his suc-
cession. He ruled by divine right, and everybody and
everything were made to minister to the well-being of
his person and estate. The Mozarts were too poor to
escape from the employ of the Archbishop, and he took
pains to warn all interested persons not to harbor,
encourage or entice his servants away on penalty of
dire displeasure. Mozart ate with the servants, and we
have his letters written to his sister showing how his
seat was next below that of the coachman. When he
was to play before invited guests he was made to wait
in the entry until the footman called him, and there he
often stood for hours, first on one foot, then on t' other.
Q It is easy to ask why a man of such sublime talent
should endure such treatment, but the simple fact is
Mozart was gentle, yielding, kind immersed in his
music with no power to set his will against the tide of
tendency that 'compassed him round. The Archbishop
forbade his playing at concerts or entertainments, and
blocked the way to all advancement. The Archbishop
did n't have a diplomat like Rubens to cope with, or a
fighter like Wagner, or a plotter like Liszt, or a stiletto-
bearing man like Paganini, and so Mozart wrote his
322
WOLFGANG MOZART
music on a table in one corner of a beer-garden, and
waltzed with his wife, Constance, to keep warm when
there was no fire and the weather was cold, and all the
time danced attendance on the Archbishop of Salzburg.
All of his feeble, spasmodic efforts at freedom came to
naught, because there was no persistency behind
them 53 53
Gladly would he have sold his services for three
hundred gulden a year, but even this sum, equal to one
hundred fifty dollars a year, was denied him. He
was always composing, always making plans, always
seeing- the silver tint in the clouds, but all of his music
was taken by this one or that in whom he foolishly
trusted, and only debt and humiliation followed
him 53 53
When at long intervals a sum would come his way from
a generous admirer touched with pity, all the beggars in
the neighborhood seemed to know it at once. Then it
was that music filled the air at the beer-garden, carking
care and unkind fate were for the time forgot, and all
went merry as a wedding-bell.
Finally the position of Court Musician to the Empefor
of Austria fell vacant, and certain good friends of
Mozart secured him the place. But the Emperor was not
like Frederick the Great, for he could not distinguish
one tune from another, and did not consider it any
special virtue so to do. The result was that his musicians
were looked after by his valet, and Mozart found that
323
WOLFGANG MOZART
his position was really no better than it had been with
the Archbishop of Salzburg.
And still his mind proved infirm of purpose, and he had
not the courage to demand his right, for fear he might
lose even the little that he had.
324
WOLFGANG MOZART
UFFALO: Mozart was in his twentieth year
when he met Aloysia Weber. She was a
gifted singer, surely, and was needlessly
healthy. She was of that peculiar, heartless
type that finds digression in leading men a merry chase
and then flaunting and flouting them. Young Mozart,
the impressionable, Mozart the delicate and sensitive,
Mozart the ./Eolian harp, played upon by every passing
breeze, loved this bouncing bundle of pink-and-white
tyranny 33 53
She encouraged the passion, and it gradually grew until
it absorbed the boy and he grew oblivious to all else. He
lived in her smile, bathed in the sunshine of her presence,
fed on her words, and as for her singing in opera it was
not so much what her voice was now but what he was
sure it would be.
His glowing imagination made good her every deficiency.
He thought he loved the girl. It was not the girl at all
he loved : he only loved the ideal that existed in his own
heart. His father opposed the mating and hastily
transferred the youth from Vienna to Paris; but who
ever heard of opposition and argument and forced
separation curing love ? So matters ran on and letters
and messages passed, and finally Mozart made his way
back to Vienna and with breathless haste sought out the
object of his whole heart's love.
She had recently met a man she liked better, and as she
could not hold them both, treated Mozart as a stranger,
325
WOLFGANG MOZART
and froze him to the marrow. <I He was crushed, undone,
and a fit of sickness followed. In his illness, Constance, a
younger sister of Afoysia, came to him in pity and nursed
him as a child. Very naturally, all the love he had felt
for Aloysia was easily and readily transferred to
Constance. The tendrils of the heart ruthlessly uprooted
cling to the first object that presents itself.
And so Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Constance
Weber were married. And they were happy ever after-
ward. It would have been much better if they had
quarreled, but Mozart's gentle, yielding character
readily adapted itself to the weaker nature of his wife.
In his music she took a sort of blind and deaf delight
and guessed its greatness because she loved the man.
But when two weak wills combine, the net result is
increased weakness never strength.
Constance was as beautiful a specimen of the slipshod
housekeeper as ever piled away breakfast dishes
unwashed, or swept dirt under a settee. If they had money
she bought things they did not need, and if there was no
money she borrowed provisions and forgot to return the
loan. Irregularity of living, deprivation and hope
deferred, made the woman ill and she became a chronic
sufferer. But she was ever tended with loving, patient
care by the overburdened and underfed husband.
A biographer tells how Mozart would often arise early
in the morning to set down some melody in music that
he had dreamed out during the night. On such occasions
326
WOLFGANG MOZART
he would leave a little love-letter for his wife on the
stand at the head of the bed, where she would find it on
first awakening. One such note, freely translated, runs
as follows: " Good-morning, Dear Little Wife. I hope
you rested well and had sweet dreams. You were sleep-
ing so peacefully that I dare not kiss your cheek for fear
of disturbing you. It is a beautiful morning and a bird
outside is singing a song that is in my heart. I am going
out to catch the strain and write it down as my own
and yours. I shall be back in an hour."
327
WOLFGANG MOZART
AST AURORA: Aloysia married the man of
her choice an actor by the name of Lange.
They quarreled right shortly, and soon he
used to beat her. This was endured for a year
or more, then she left him. For a while she lived with
Wolfgang and Constance, and Mozart, true to his
nature, gave her from his own scanty store and deprived
himself for her benefit. He stood godfather to one of her
children and was a true friend to her to the last.
After Aloysia lived to be an old woman, and long after
Mozart had passed out, and the world had begun to
utter his praises, she said: " I never for a moment
thought he was a genius I always considered him just
a nice little man."
Mozart's soul was filled with melody, and all of his
music is faultless and complete. He possessed the
artistic conscience to a degree that is unique. Careless
and heedless in all else, if his mood was not right and
the product was halting, he straightway destroyed the
score. He was always at work, always hearing sweet
sounds, always weighing and balancing them in the
delicate scales of his judgment.
So absorbed was he in his art that he fell an easy victim
to the designing, and never stopped his work long enough
to strike off the shackles that bound him to a vain,
selfish and unappreciative court.
Worn by constant work, worried by his wife's continued
illness, dogged by creditors, and unable to get justice
328
WOLFGANG MOZART
from those who owed it to him, his nerves at the early
age of thirty-five gave way.
His vitality rapidly declined and at last went out as a
candle does when blown upon by a sudden gust from an
open door.
It was a blustering winter day in December, Seventeen
Hundred Ninety-one, when his burial occurred. A little
company of friends assembled, but no funeral-dirge was
played for him, save the blast blown through the naked
branches of the trees, as they hurried the plain pine
coffin to its final resting-place. At the gate of the ceme-
tery the few friends turned back and left the lifeless clay
to the old gravedigger, who never guessed the honor
thus done him.
It was a pauper's grave that closed over the body of
Mozart coffin piled on coffin, and no one marked the
spot. All we know is, that somewhere in Saint Mark's
Cemetery, Vienna, was buried in a trench the most
accomplished composer and performer the world has
ever known. It was a hundred years afterward before
the city made tardy amends by erecting a fitting
monument to his memory.
His best monument is his work. The melody that once
filled his soul is yours and mine; for by his art he made
us heirs to all that wealth of love that was never
requited, and the dreams, that for him never came true,
are our precious and priceless legacy.
329
JOHANNES BRAHMS
What is music? This question occupied my mind for
hours last night before I fell asleep. The very existence
of music is wonderful, I might even say miraculous. Its
domain is between thought and phenomena. Like a
twilight mediator, it hovers between spirit and matter,
related to both, yet differing from each. It is spirit, but
spirit subject to the measurement of time: it is matter,
but matter that can dispense with space.
Heine
BRAHMS
JOHANNES BRAHMS
MERSON has said that, next to the
man who first voices a great truth,
is the one who quotes it.
Truth is in the air; it belongs to all
who can appreciate it; and the dif-
ference between the man who gives
a truth expression and the listener
who at once comprehends and
repeats it, is very slight. If you understand what I say,
it is because you have thought the same thoughts your-
self I merely express for you that which you already
know. And so you approve and applaud, not stopping to
think that you are applauding your own thought; and
your heart beats fast and you say, " Yes, yes, why
did n't I say that myself! "
All conversation is a sort of communion an echoing
back and forth of thoughts, feelings and emotions. We
clarify our thoughts by expressing them no idea is
quite your own until you tell it to another.
Music is simply one form of expression. Its province is to
impart a sublime emotion. To give himself is the con-
trolling impulse in the heart of every artist to impart
to others the joy he feels this is the dominant motive
in his life.
Hence the poet writes, the artist paints, the sculptor
models, the singer sings, the musician plays all is
333
JOHANNES BRAHMS
expression a giving voice to the Silence. But it is all
done for others. In ministering to others the artist
ministers to himself. In helping others we help ourselves.
We grow strong through exercise, and only the faculties
that are exercised that is to say, expressed become
strong. Those not in use atrophy and fall victims to
arrested development.
Man is the instrument of Deity through man does
Deity create. And the artist is one who expresses for
others their best thoughts and feelings. He may arouse
in men emotions that were dormant, and so were un-
guessed; but under the spell of the artist-spirit, these
dormant faculties are awakened from lethargy they
are exercised, and once the thrill of life is felt through
them, they will probably be exercised again and again 33
All art is collaboration between the performer and the
partaker music is especially a collaboration. It is a
oneness of feeling : action and reaction, an intermittent
current of emotion that plays backward and forward
between the player and his audience. The player is the
positive pole, or masculine principle; and the audience
the negative pole, or feminine principle.
In great oratory the same transposition takes place.
Almost every one can recall occasions when there was
an absolute fusion of thought, feeling and emotion
between the speaker and the audience when one mind
dominated all, and every heart beat in unison with his.
The great musician is the one who feels intensely, and is
334
JOHANNES BRAHMS
able to express vividly, and thus impart his emotion to
others 33 53
Robert Schumann was such a man. In his youth, when
he played at parlor gatherings he could fuse the listen-
ers into an absolute oneness of spirit. You can not make
others feel unless you yourself feel; you can not make
others see unless you yourself see. Robert Schumann
saw. He beheld the moving pictures, and as they passed
before him he expressed what he saw in harmonious
sounds. His many admirers say he gave " portraits " on
the piano, and by sounds would describe certain persons,
so others who knew these persons would recognize them
and call their names.
Sterndale Bennett has told of Schumann's playing
Weber's "Invitation to the Dance," and accompanying
it with little verbal explanations of what he saw, thus:
' There," said the player as he struck the opening
chords, " there, he bows, and so does she he speaks
she speaks, and oh! what a voice how liquid! listen
hear the rustle of her gown he speaks, a little deeper,
you notice you can not hear the words, only their
voices blending in with the music now they speak
together they are lovers, surely see, they understand
oh! the waltz see them take those first steps they