Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words
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Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel >> Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words
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8 This etext was produced by John Mamoun (mamounjo@umdnj.edu), Charles
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INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION
The following is the text of "Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as
Revealed in his own Words," compiled and annotated by Friedrich
Kerst and translated into english, and edited, with new
introduction and additional notes, by Henry Edward Krehbiel.
Each page was cut out of the original book with an X-acto
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Some adaptations from the original text were made while
formatting it for an e-text. Italics in the original book were
ignored in making this e-text, unless they referred to proper
nouns, in which case they are put in quotes in the e-text.
Italics are problematic because they are not easily rendered in
ASCII text.
This electronic text was prepared by John Mamoun with help from
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R. Tremblay, R. Zimmerman and several others for proof-reading.
MOZART: THE MAN AND THE ARTIST, AS REVEALED IN HIS OWN WORDS
BY
FRIEDRICH KERST
TRANSLATED BY HENRY EDWARD KREHBIEL
MOZART: THE MAN AND THE ARTIST, AS REVEALED IN HIS OWN WORDS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION
BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
MOZART: THE MAN AND THE ARTIST, AS REVEALED IN HIS OWN WORDS
EDITOR'S NOTE
THE SIGNIFICANCE OP MOZART
CHIPS FROM THE WORKSHOP
CONCERNING THE OPERA
MUSICAL PEDAGOGICS
TOUCHING MUSICAL PERFORMANCES
EXPRESSIONS CRITICAL
OPINIONS CONCERNING OTHERS
WOLFGANG, THE GERMAN
SELF-RESPECT AND HONOR
AT HOME AND ABROAD
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
WORLDLY WISDOM
IN SUFFERING
MORALS
RELIGION
BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
The German composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was not
only a musical genius, but was also one of the pre-eminent
geniuses of the Western world. He defined in his music a system
of musical thought and an entire state of mind that were unlike
any previously experienced. A true child prodigy, he began
composing at age 5 and rapidly developed his unmistakable style;
by 18 he was composing works capable of altering the mind-states
of entire civilizations. Indeed, he and his predecessor Bach
accomplished the Olympian feat of adding to the human concepts of
civility and civilization. So these two were not just musical
geniuses, but geniuses of the humanities.
Mozart's music IS civilization. It encompasses all that is humane
about an idealized civilization. And it probably was Mozart's
main purpose to create and propagate a concept of a great
civilization through his music. He wanted to show his fellow
Europeans, with their garbage-and-excrement-polluted city
streets, their violent mono-maniacal leaders and their stifling,
non-humane bureaucracies, new ideas on how to run their
civilizations properly. He wanted them to hear and feel a sense
of civilized movement, of the musical expressions of man moving
as he would if upholding the highest values of idealized
societies. One need only listen to the revolutionary opening bars
of his famous Eine Kleine Nachtmusik to see this.
He was an extremely sophisticated and complex man. His letters
reveal him as remarkably creative, fascinated by the arts,
principled, religious and devoted to his father. He had an
energetic personality that was almost completely devoid of any
cynicism, pessimism or discouragement from creating music. While
rumors suggest that he was a lascivious individual, there is no
evidence of this at all in his letters. Quite the contrary, the
evidence seems overwhelmingly to suggest the opposite, and that
Mozart may not have had any relations with women except with his
own wife.
He was not as shrewd as he was civilized, however. He was
peculiarly lax about profiting from his history-changing music.
His promoters constantly short-changed him.
He died nearly penniless and in debt, and at his death at age 35
an apathetic public took little notice of this man who had done
so much in service to civilization. He was buried in an unmarked
pauper's grave with few mourners. After his death, the bones of
this great paragon of self-sacrifice for the sake of improving
civilization were dug up and disposed of. His grave was then re-
used, and to this day no one knows where his bones lie. Perhaps
they are in a catacomb somewhere, in a huge bone-pile containing
thousands of anonymous cadavers.
But the sounds he heard in his head live on, stimulating millions
in elevators, doctors' offices, train terminals, concert halls
and myriad other places to be more civilized, assuming that they
pay attention to the music.
EDITOR'S NOTE
The purpose and scope of this little book will be obvious to the
reader from even a cursory glance at its contents. It is, in a
way, an autobiography of Mozart written without conscious
purpose, and for that reason peculiarly winning, illuminating and
convincing. The outward things in Mozart's life are all but
ignored in it, but there is a frank and full disclosure of the
great musician's artistic, intellectual and moral character, made
in his own words.
The Editor has not only taken the trouble to revise the work of
the German author and compiler, but, for reasons which seemed to
him imperative, has also made a new translation of all the
excerpts. Most of the translations of Mozart's letters which have
found their way into the books betray want of familiarity with
the idioms and colloquialisms employed by Mozart, as well as
understanding of his careless, contradictory and sprawling
epistolary style. Some of the intimacy of that style the new
translation seeks to preserve, but the purpose has chiefly been
to make the meaning plain.
H.E.K.
New York, June 7, 1905
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MOZART
Mozart! What a radiance streams from the name! Bright and pure as
the light of the sun, Mozart's music greets us. We pronounce his
name and behold! the youthful artist is before us,--the merry,
light-hearted smile upon his features, which belongs only to true
and naive genius. It is impossible to imagine an aged Mozart,--an
embittered and saddened Mozart,--glowering gloomily at a wicked
world which is doing its best to make his lot still more
burdensome;--a Mozart whose music should reflect such painful
moods.
Mozart was a Child of the Sun. Filled with a humor truly divine,
he strolled unconstrainedly through a multitude of cares like
Prince Tamino through his fantastic trials. Music was his
talisman, his magic flute with which he could exorcise all the
petty terrors that beset him. Has such a man and artist--one who
was completely resolved in his works, and therefore still stands
bodily before us with all his glorious qualities after the lapse
of a century--has Mozart still something to say to us who have
just stepped timidly into a new century separated by another from
that of the composer? Much; very much. Many prophets have arisen
since Mozart's death; two of them have moved us profoundly with
their evangel. One of them knew all the mysteries, and Nature
took away his hearing lest he proclaim too much. We followed him
into all the depths of the world of feeling. The other shook us
awake and placed us in the hurly-burly of national life and
striving; pointing to his own achievements, he said: "If you wish
it, you have now a German art!" The one was Beethoven,--the other
Wagner. Because their music demands of us that we share with it
its experiences and struggles, they are the guiding spirits of a
generation which has grown up in combat and is expecting an
unknown world of combat beyond the morning mist of the new
century.
But we are in the case of the man in the fairy tale who could not
forget the merry tune of the forest bird which he had heard as a
boy. We gladly permit ourselves to be led, occasionally, out of
the rude realities that surround us, into a beautiful world that
knows no care but lies forever bathed in the sunshine of
cloudless happiness,--a world in which every loveliness of which
fancy has dreamed has taken life and form. It is because of this
that we make pilgrimages to the masterpieces of the plastic arts,
that we give heed to the speech of Schiller, listen to the music
of Mozart. When wearied by the stress of life we gladly hie to
Mozart that he may tell us stories of that land of beauty, and
convince us that there are other and better occupations than the
worries and combats of the fleeting hour. This is what Mozart has
to tell us today. In spite of Wagner he has an individual mission
to fulfill which will keep him immortal. "That of which Lessing
convinces us only with expenditure of many words sounds clear and
irresistible in 'The Magic Flute':--the longing for light and
day. Therefore there is something like the glory of daybreak in
the tones of Mozart's opera; it is wafted towards us like the
morning breeze which dispels the shadows and invokes the sun."
Mozart remains ever young; one reason is because death laid hold
of him in the middle of his career. While all the world was still
gazing expectantly upon him, he vanished from the earth and left
no hope deceived. His was the enviable fate of a Raphael,
Schiller and Korner. As the German ('tis Schumann's utterance)
thinks of Beethoven when he speaks the word symphony, so the name
of Mozart in his mind is associated with the conception of things
youthful, bright and sunny. Schumann was fully conscious of a
purpose when he called out, "Do not put Beethoven in the hands of
young people too early; refresh and strengthen them with the
fresh and lusty Mozart." Another time he writes: "Does it not
seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener
we hear them?"
The more we realize that Wagner places a heavy and intoxicating
draught before us the more we shall appreciate the precious
mountain spring which laves us in Mozart's music, and the less
willing we shall be to permit any opportunity to pass unimproved
which offers us the crystal cup. In the mind of Goethe genius was
summed up in the name of Mozart. In a prophetic ecstasy he spoke
the significant words: "What else is genius than that productive
power through which deeds arise, worthy of standing in the
presence of God and Nature, and which, for this reason, bear
results and are lasting? All the creations of Mozart are of this
class; within them there is a generative force which is
transplanted from generation to generation, and is not likely
soon to be exhausted or devoured."
CHIPS FROM THE WORKSHOP
1. "If one has the talent it pushes for utterance and torments
one; it will out; and then one is out with it without
questioning. And, look you, there is nothing in this thing of
learning out of books. Here, here and here (pointing to his ear,
his head and his heart) is your school. If everything is right
there, then take your pen and down with it; afterward ask the
opinion of a man who knows his business."
(To a musically talented boy who asked Mozart how one might learn
to compose.)
2. "I can not write poetically; I am no poet. I can not divide
and subdivide my phrases so as to produce light and shade; I am
no painter. I can not even give expression to my sentiments and
thoughts by gestures and pantomime; I am no dancer. But I can do
it with tones; I am a musician....I wish you might live till
there is nothing more to be said in music."
(Mannheim, November 8, 1777, in a letter of congratulation to his
father who was born on November 14, 1719. Despite his assertion
Mozart was an admirable dancer and passionately devoted to the
sport. [So says Herr Kerst obviously misconceiving Mozart's
words. It is plain to me that the composer had the classic
definition of the dance in mind when he said that he was no
dancer. The dance of which he was thinking was that described by
Charles Kingsley. "A dance in which every motion was a word, and
rest as eloquent as motion; in which every attitude was a fresh
motive for a sculptor of the purest school, and the highest
physical activity was manifested, not as in coarse pantomime, in
fantastic bounds and unnatural distortions, but in perpetual
delicate modulations of a stately and self-sustained grace."
H.E.K.])
3. "The poets almost remind me of the trumpeters with their
tricks of handicraft. If we musicians were to stick as faithfully
to our rules (which were very good as long as we had no better)
we should make as worthless music as they make worthless books."
(Vienna, October 13, 1781, to his father. He is writing about the
libretto of "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail," by Stephanie. The
trumpeters at the time still made use of certain flourishes which
had been traditionally preserved in their guild.)
4. "I have spared neither care nor labor to produce something
excellent for Prague. Moreover it is a mistake to think that the
practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear
friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition
as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I
have not frequently and diligently studied."
(A remark to Conductor Kucharz in Prague, who led the rehearsals
for "Don Giovanni" in 1787.)
5. "They are, indeed, the fruit of long and painstaking labor;
but the hope which some of my friends aroused in me, that my work
would be rewarded at least in part, has given me courage and the
flattering belief that these, my offspring, will some day bring
me comfort."
(From the dedication of the Six Quartets to Haydn in 1785. The
quartets were sent back to the publisher, Artaria, from Italy,
because "they contained so many misprints. "The unfamiliar chords
and dissonances were looked upon as printers' errors.
Grassalkowitsch, a Hungarian prince, thought his musicians were
playing faultily in some of these passages, and when he learned
differently he tore the music in pieces."
6. "I can not deny, but must confess that I shall be glad when I
receive my release from this place. Giving lessons here is no
fun; you must work yourself pretty tired, and if you don't give a
good many lessons you will make but little money. You must not
think that it is laziness;--no!--but it goes counter to my
genius, counter to my mode of life. You know that, so to speak, I
am wrapped up in music,--that I practice it all day long,--that I
like to speculate, study, consider. All this is prevented by my
mode of life here. I shall, of course, have some free hours, but
they will be so few that they will be necessary more for
recuperation than work."
(Paris, July 31, 1778, to his father.)
7. "M. Le Gros bought the "Sinfonie concertante" of me. He thinks
that he is the only one who has it; but that isn't so. It is
still fresh in my head, and as soon as I get home I'll write it
down again."
(Paris, October 3, 1778, to his father. An evidence of the
retentiveness of Mozart's memory. In this instance, however, he
did not carry out his expressed intention. Le Gros was director
of the Concerts spirituels.)
8. "Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to
a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore
be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb:
Chi sa piu, meno sa--"Who knows most, knows least."
(To the English tenor Michael Kelly, about 1786, in answer to
Kelly's question whether or not he should take up the study of
counterpoint.)
9. "One of the priests gave me a theme. I took it on a promenade
and in the middle (the fugue was in G minor) I began in the
major, with something jocose but in the same tempo; finally the
theme again, but backwards. Finally I wondered if I might not use
the playful melody as a theme for a fugue. I did not question
long, but made it at once, and it went as accurately as if Daser
had measured it for the purpose. The dean was beside himself."
(Augsburg, October 23, 1777, to his father. Daser was a tailor in
Salzburg.)
10. "Above us is a violinist, below us another, next door a
singing teacher who gives lessons, and in the last room opposite
ours, a hautboyist. Merry conditions for composing! You get so
many ideas!"
(Milan, August 23, 1771, to his "dearest sister.")
11. "If I but had the theme on paper,--worked out, of course. It
is too silly that we have got to hatch out our work in a room."
(A remark to his wife while driving through a beautiful bit of
nature and humming all manner of ideas that came into his head.)
12. "I'd be willing to work forever and forever if I were
permitted to write only such music as I want to write and can
write--which I myself think good. Three weeks ago I made a
symphony, and by tomorrow's post I shall write again to
Hofmeister and offer him three piano-forte quartets, if he has
the money."
(Written in 1789 to a baron who was his friend and who had
submitted a symphony for his judgment. F.A. Hofmeister was a
composer and publisher in Vienna.)
13. "You can do a thing like this for the pianoforte, but not for
the theatre. When I wrote this I was still too fond of hearing my
own music, and never could make an end."
(A remark to Rochlitz while revising and abbreviating the
principal air in "Die Entfuhrung.")
14. "You know that I had already finished the first Allegro on
the second day after my arrival here, and consequently had seen
Mademoiselle Cannabich only once. Then came young Danner and
asked me how I intended to write the Andante. 'I will make it fit
the character of Mademoiselle Rose.' When I played it, it pleased
immensely....I was right; she is just like the Andante."
(Mannheim, December 6, 1777, to his father. Rose Cannabich was a
pupil of Mozart's, aged thirteen and very talented. "She is very
sensible for her age, has a staid manner, is serious, speaks
little, but when she does speak it is with grace and amiability,"
writes Mozart in the same letter. It is also related of Beethoven
that he sometimes delineated persons musically. [Also Schumann.
H.E.K.])
15. "I have composed a Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon
and Pianoforte, which has been received with extraordinary favor.
(Kochel, No. 452.) I myself think it the best thing I ever wrote
in my life."
(Vienna, April 10, 1784, to his father.)
16. "As an exercise I have set the aria, 'Non so d'onde viene,'
which Bach composed so beautifully. I did it because I know Bach
so well, and the aria pleases me so much that I can't get it out
of my head. I wanted to see whether or not in spite of these
things I was able to make an aria that should not be a bit like
Bach's. It isn't a bit, not a bit like it."
(Mannheim, February 28, 1778, to his father. The lovely aria is
No. 294 in Kochel's catalogue. The Bach referred to was Johann
Christian, the "London" Bach.)
17. "I haven't a single quiet hour here. I can not write except
at night and consequently can not get up early. One is not always
in the mood for writing. Of course I could scribble all day long,
but these things go out into the world and I want not to be
ashamed of myself when I see my name on them. And then, as you
know, I become stupid as soon as I am obliged to write for an
instrument that I can not endure. Occasionally for the sake of a
change I have composed something else--pianoforte duets with the
violin, and a bit of the mass."
(Mannheim, February 14, 1778, to his father. Mozart was ill
disposed toward the pianoforte at the time. His love for Aloysia
Weber occupied the most of his attention and time.)
18. "Herewith I am sending you a Prelude and a three-voiced Fugue
(Kochel, No. 394)....It is awkwardly written; the prelude must
come first and the fugue follow. The reason for its appearance is
because I had made the fugue and wrote it out while I was
thinking out the prelude."
(Vienna, April 20, 1782, to his sister Marianne. Here Mozart
gives us evidence of his manner of composing; he worked out his
compositions completely in his mind and was then able, even after
considerable time had elapsed, to write them down, in which
proceeding nothing could disturb him. In the case before us while
engaged in the more or less mechanical labor of transcription he
thought out a new composition. Concerning the fugue and its
origin he continues to gossip in the same letter.)
19. "The cause of this fugue seeing the light of this world is my
dear Constanza. Baron von Swieten, to whom I go every Sunday, let
me carry home all the works of Handel and Sebastian Bach after I
had played them through for him. Constanza fell in love with the
fugues as soon as she had heard them; she doesn't want to hear
anything but fugues, especially those of Handel and Bach. Having
often heard me improvise fugues she asked me if I had never
written any down, and when I said no, she gave me a good
scolding, for not being willing to write the most beautiful
things in music, and did not cease her begging until I had
composed one for her, and so it came about. I purposely wrote the
indication "Andante maestoso", so that it should not be played
too rapidly;--for unless a fugue is played slowly the entrance of
the subject will not be distinctly and clearly heard and the
piece will be ineffective. As soon as I find time and opportunity
I shall write five more."
(Vienna, April 20, 1782, to his sister Marianne. Cf. No. 93.
[Mozart's remark that he carried home "all the works" of Handel
and Bach, must, of course, be read as meaning all that were in
print at the time. H.E.K.])
20. "I have no small amount of work ahead of me. By Sunday week I
must have my opera arranged for military band or somebody will be
ahead of me and carry away the profits; and I must also write a
new symphony. How will that be possible? You have no idea how
difficult it is to make such an arrangement so that it shall be
adapted to wind instruments and yet lose nothing of its effect.
Well, well;--I shall have to do the work at night."
(Vienna, July 20, 1782, to his father who had asked for a
symphony for the Hafner family in Salzburg. The opera referred to
is "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail.")
21. "I was firmly resolved to write the Adagio for the clock-
maker at once so that I might drop a few ducats into the hands of
my dear little wife; and I began it, but was unlucky enough--
because I hate such work--not to be able to finish it. I write at
it every day, but have to drop it because it bores me. If the
reason for its existence were not such a momentous one, rest
assured I should let the thing drop. I hope, however, to force it
through in time. Ah, yes! if it were a large clock-work with a
sound like an organ I'd be glad to do it; but as it is the thing
is made up of tiny pipes only, which sound too shrill and
childish for me."
(Frankfort-on-the-Main, October 3, 1790, to his wife. "A Piece
for an Organ in a Clock." [Kochel's catalogue, No. 594.] It was
probably ordered by Count Deym for his Wax-works Museum on the
occasion of the death of the famous Field Marshal Laudon. The
dominant mood of sorrow prevails in the first movement; the
Allegro is in Handel's style.)
CONCERNING THE OPERA
When he was twenty-two years old Mozart wrote to his father, "I
am strongly filled with the desire to write an opera." Often does
he speak of this ambition. It was, in fact, his true and
individual field as the symphony was that of Beethoven. He took
counsel with his father by letter touching many details in his
earlier operas, wherefore we are advised about their origin, and,
what is more to the purpose, about Mozart's fine aesthetic
judgment. His four operatic masterpieces are imperishable, and a
few words about them are in place, particularly since Mozart has
left numerous and interesting comments on "Die Entfuhrung aus dem
Serail." This first German opera he composed with the confessed
purpose of substituting a work designed for the "national lyric
stage" for the conventional and customary Italian opera. Despite
its Hispano-Turkish color, the work is so ingenuous, so German in
feeling, and above all so full of German humor that the success
was unexampled, and Mozart could write to his father: "The people
are daft over my opera." Here, at the very outset, Mozart's
humor, the golden one of all the gifts with which Mother Nature
had endowed him, was called into play. With this work German
comic opera took its beginning. As has been remarked "although it
has been imitated, it has never been surpassed in its musically
comic effects." The delightfully Falstaffian figure of "Osmin",
most ingeniously characterized in the music, will create
merriment for all time, and the opera acquires a new, personal
and peculiarly amiable charm from the fact that we are privileged
to see in the love-joy of "Belmont" and "Constanze" an image of
that of the young composer and his "Stanzerl."
After "Die Entfuhrung" (1782) came "Le Nozze de Figaro" (1786),
"Don Giovanni" (1787), and "Die Zauberflote" (1791). It would be
a vain task to attempt to establish any internal relationship
between these works. Mozart was not like Wagner, a strong
personality capable of devoting a full sum of vital force to the
carrying out of a chosen and approved principle. As is generally
the case with geniuses, he was a child; a child led by momentary
conditions; moreover, a child of the rococo period. There is,
therefore, no cause of wonderment in the fact that Italian texts
are again used in "Le Nozze de Figaro" and "Don Giovanni," and
that another, but this time a complete German opera, does not
appear until we reach "Die Zauberflote."
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