Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/20

10 MOZART hausting his genius, seemed only to stimulate it to still more indefatigable exertions. But the pecuniary return was so inconsiderable that in 1777 Leopold Mozart asked the archbishop for leave of absence for the purpose of making a professional tour. This was refused on the ground of the prelate s dislike to " that system of begging." Wolfgang then requested permission to resign his appoint ment, which was only an honorary one, for the purpose of making the tour with his mother. The archbishop was furious ; but the plan was carried out at last, and on the 23d September the mother and son started for Munich. The results were not encouraging. Leopold hoped that his son, now twenty-one years old, might obtain some pro fitable court appointment ; but in this he was disappointed. And, worse still, poor Wolfgang fell in love at Mannheim with a promising young vocalist named Aloysia Weber, whose father, the prompter of the theatre, was very nearly penniless. On hearing of this Leopold ordered his wife and son to start instantly for Paris, where they arrived on 23d March 1778. Wolfgang s usual success, however, seemed on this occasion to have deserted him. His recep tion was a cold one ; and, to add to his misery, his mother fell seriously ill. He wrote home in unspeakable distress ; but the worst had not yet come. On 3d July the parent to whom he was so tenderly attached expired in his arms. Reduced almost to despair by this new trouble, he left Paris in September, rested for a while on his way home in Mannheim and Munich, was received by Aloysia Weber with coldness almost amounting to contempt ; and in June 1779 he returned to Salzburg, hoping against hope that he might make some better terms with the archbishop, who re lented so far as to attach a salary of 500 florins (about <50) to his " concertmeister s " appointment, with leave of absence in case he should be engaged to write an opera elsewhere. Two years later the desired opportunity presented itself. He was engaged to compose an opera for Munich for the carnival of 1781. The libretto was furnished by the abbate Varesco, court chaplain at Salzburg, a truly sympa thetic collaborates. On 29th January 1781 the work was produced under the title of Idomeneo, Re di Greta with triumphant success, and thenceforth Mozart s position as an artist was assured; for this was not only the finest work he had ever written but incontestably the finest opera that had ever yet been placed upon the stage in any age or country. It marked an era in the history of art, and raised the lyric drama to a level till then unknown. And now the archbishop s character exhibited itself in its true colours. Art for its own sake he utterly dis dained ; but it flattered his vanity to retain a famous artist in his service with the power of insulting him at will. On hearing of the success of Idomeneo he instantly summoned the composer to Vienna, where he was spending the season. Mozart lost not a moment in presenting him self, but he soon found his position intolerable. That he should be condemned to dine with his patron s servants was the fault of the age, but the open disrespect with which the lowest menials treated him was due to the arch bishop s example. Though received as an honoured guest in the houses of the Jxiute noblesse of Vienna, he was uni-. formly addressed by the archbishop in the third person singular, a form used in Germany to express the utmost possible contempt. His salary was reduced from 500 to 400 florins, he was left to pay his own travelling ex penses, and he was not permitted to add to his means by giving a concert on his own account or to play anywhere but at the archiepiscopal palace ; indeed it was only at the instance of a large number of the nobility that he obtained leave to take part, gratuitously, in a concert given for the poor. Archbishop Hieronymus was hated at court, and most of all by the emperor Joseph, who, on retiring to Laxenburg for the summer, did not place his name on the list of invited guests. This offended him so deeply that he left Vienna in disgust. The household were sent on to Salzburg, but Mozart was left to find lodgings at his own expense. Thereupon he sent in his resignation ; and for this act of contumacy was insulted by the archbishop in terms too vulgar for translation. He persevered, however, in his resolution, taking lodgings in a house rented by his old friends the Webers, and vainly hoping for pupils, since Vienna at this season was per fectly empty. Happily he had a sincere though not a generous Avell-wisher in the emperor, and a firm friend in the archduke Maximilian, who, in common with many noblemen of rank, were disgusted with the archbishop s behaviour. By the emperor s command he wrote a German opera, Die Entfiihrung aus dem Serail, which on 16th July 1782 was received with acclamation, and not long afterwards was performed with equal success at Prague. This great work raised the national " singspiel " to a level commensurate with that which Idomeneo had already attained for the Italian "opera seria." Gluck s great reform of the lyric drama (based, not, as is sometimes erroneously supposed, on new principles invented by him self, but on those enunciated by Peri and his associates as early as the year 1600, when the first Italian opera was produced at Florence) had already attracted immense atten tion in Paris, and was everywhere producing good fruit. It was impossible that it should do otherwise, for it was founded on pure dramatic truth. But what Gluck worked out in obedience to a carefully-elaborated theory Mozart effected by simple force of natural dramatic instinct. Moreover, with all his love for graceful melody, his power of expression, and dramatic force, Gluck was not great as a constructive musician. On the other hand, the erudi tion which in 1770 had won Mozart s diploma from the Accademia at Bologna was no mere rusty exhibition of scholastic pedantry. It enabled him to cast his music into symmetrical and well-considered form, without sacrificing the demands of dramatic consistency ; to enchant the un learned hearer with an endless flow of melody, while satis fying the cultivated musician with the most ingenious part-writing that had ever been imagined in connexion with the stage ; to construct the grand finales that have made his operas the finest in the world; and all this with equal reverence for the claims of legitimate art on the one side and those of passionate expression on the other. For the finales are no dead forms, but living scenes developing the action of the drama. And the impassioned utterances are no poor passages of "sound and fury, signify ing nothing," but well-constructed music, shapely and beautiful,- music which Gluck himself, with all his genius, could no more hope to rival than Hasse could hope to rival the choruses in Israel in Egypt. For Gluck, though his taste was as refined and his intellect as highly cultivated as Mozart s, was, as Handel justly observed, no contrapuntist ; and works like Mozart s needed an intimate acquaintance with the mys teries of counterpoint, no less than purity of taste and intellectual culture. And so it comes to pass that Mozart s operas still retain a stronger hold upon the affections, both of the general public and the initiated worshipper of art, than any other dramatic music that has ever been written. The next great event in Mozart s life was a disastrous one. Though Aloysia Weber had long since rejected him, his renewed intimacy with the family led to a most unfor tunate marriage with her younger sister, Constance, a woman who, neither his equal in intellect nor his superior in prudence, added little to the happiness of his life and less than nothing to its prosperity. The wedding took place at St Stephen s on 16th August 1782. By the end of the year the thriftless pair were deeply in debt. Mozart