MOZART has been called "the Raphael of Music." To feel his characteristics most, you should first hear Handel; then he is like moonlight after the broad noon-day sun, a warm, balmy summer's night, such as lovers choose, smiled upon by the pale moon, and yet a night when ghosts walk abroad, and disturbed by crackling, bloodshot meteoric lights.

He was born in Salzburg, in January, 1756, just three years before the death of Handel. His romantic story is better known, and is more of a story, than the lives of most of his brothers in the art. Some anecdotes of Mozart mingle with our childhood's recollections of Arabian tales and of whatsoever was ideal and marvellous to most of us. We briefly review it that it may be seen how much the music and the

man were one.

He was the child of beautiful parents; which may account for his exquisite sensibility. His father was a musician of some note, second chapelmaster to the Prince Archbishop; and devoted his leisure to the musical culture of his two children. When the boy was three years old his sister, a little girl of seven, began to take lessons on the harpsichord. The boy was attracted by the instrument, and would delight to find out thirds upon it. At four he played correctly (and it is said with expression) simple airs and minuets which his father taught him. From four to six he actually composed these little things and dictated them to his father, who wrote them down. Many of these are preserved and published. His father going home one day with a friend, found the child very busily writing. He took from him a paper covered with blotches of ink, asking what it meant. "It is a concerto I am composing," said the boy; "I have finished the first part." The friend laughed at the droll make-believe; but the father looking at it more closely, exclaimed with delight: "These are indeed proper notes, and according to rule; but it is too difficult, nobody can execute it." "It is a concerto," said the boy; "it must be studied; this is

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the way it goes," and tried in vain to play it himself. He was so finely organized that discords were unendurable to him; at the sound of a trumpet he turned pale and swooned. A year or two later he detected the difference of a half-a-quarter of a note in the pitch of a violin from what it was the day before. Moral and mental qualities corresponded. Extreme affectionateness-Ten times a day he would ask, are you sure you love me?" and if answered no, in sport, he would burst into tears. Love of knowledge,-for a period he even renounced his music and engaged eagerly in the usual studies of his age; and when he was learning arithmetic, the tables, chairs, floors and walls were covered with figures. But music was the great passion. He was a sprightly, playful boy at first, but all this fled at the sound of that harpsichord; and ever after music was indispensable to all his amusements. The children used to carry their playthings in procession from rock to rock with him, one of the number singing or playing on a violin.

At the age of six, he was taken to Munich to play before the Elector, and to Vienna, where he astonished the Emperor Francis and his Court. The anecdotes told of this excursion, while they show how wondrously the plant unfolded new beauties every day, also show a modest independence and appreciation of himself. He would not play showy trifles, but he put his whole soul into it when he played before good judges, and he knew who they were. "Where is Mr. Wagenseil ?" he said to the Emperor, as he sat down to the harpsichord; "he understands the thing; send for him ;" and the person in question, a distinguished composer, was made to take the Emperor's place by the piano. "Mr. Wagenseil, I am going to play one of your concertos, and you must turn over the leaves for me."

On their return to Salzburg, he took with him a little violin, which his father had bought him for a plaything in Vienna. On this he taught himself to play, as on the harpsichord. One day 30

they were trying some new trios at his father's. The boy begged that he might play the second violin; his father refused, thinking it too much for him. But he pleaded so earnestly, that the person to whom the part was assigned interceded for him, and he was allowed to play along with him, in an under tone, on his little violin. The man soon saw how it was going on, and winking to the others, laid his instrument aside, and let the child sustain the part alone, which he did to the end of that and two more trios with precision and expression.

And now begins his public life. The next three years were spent in travelling. The whole Mozart family went together; the boy of seven and his sister giving concerts. Touching at the principal German cities, they arrived at Paris, were allowed to appear at Court, and play before the royal family, and were received with admiration. The young Princesses, daughters of Louis XV.,and the dauphiness, even forgot that they were goddesses, and offered the boy their hands to kiss, and patted him on the cheek; and the duchess and marchioness found out how to do the like, when they saw nature sanctioned by such august personages. Here young Mozart composed his first two sets of sonatas, which he dedicated to one of these ladies. Next they went to England. His organ-playing in the Royal Chapel was the most admired; he gave concerts with his sister, in which all the symphonies were his own composing; he played Handel and Bach at sight; he played a new operaduett, with accompaniments for several instruments from the score, at the same time singing one part, and correcting the mistakes of his father, who sang the other; he would extemporize a melody to a given bass; and when the Queen's music-master, holding him on his knees, would play a piece of an air, he would continue it in the same style. But we see the most fore-glimmering of his future destiny, as the master in dramatic music, in the following anecdote related among others by the Hon. Daines Barrington: "I said to the boy that I should be glad to hear an extempore 'love-song,' such as his friend Manzoli might choose in an opera. The boy on this (who continued to sit at the harpsichord) looked back with much archness, and imme

diately began five or six lines of a jargon recitative, proper to introduce a love song. He then played a symphony, which might correspond with an air composed to the single word, “Affetto." It had a first and second part, which, together with the symphonies, was of the length that opera-songs generally last. Finding that he was in humor, and, as it were, inspired, I then desired him to compose a song of rage. The boy again looked back with much archness, and began five or six lines of a jargon recitative, proper to precede a song of anger. This lasted also about the same time with the song of love; and in the middle he had worked himself up to such a pitch, that he beat his harpsichord like a person possessed, rising sometimes in his chair. The word he pitched upon for this second extempore composition, was "Perfido."

He returned to Salzburg in 1766; and there spent one quiet year in regular musical studies, (his instinct seems to have taught him all thus far,) with his father.

His models were Handel,

the younger Bach, (Ch. P. Emanuel, who formed the stepping-stone from the old strict style to the freer style of Haydn,) and the most melodious of the old Italian church-writers. The next year he was playing before the Emperor, Joseph II. in Vienna, again, and composed an opera, which was approved by Metastasio; being now twelve years old. Another year of study at home prepared him for his career in Italy. We will not follow him from place to place. He was not yet fifteen, and all Italy acknowledged him a master; stars and orders were given him in one city; he was made a member of the selectest musical society in another, (composing the trial anthem in half an hour); the greatest opera composer, Hasse, said, "he will eclipse us all;" he was commissioned to compose the opera for the carnival season in Milan ; and (greatest of all) after two hearings of the famous "Miserere," in the Pope's chapel, which it was forbidden to copy on pain of excommunication, he wrote it all down in all the parts, without losing a note. Most of his time was spent in Italy, composing operas and music for festival occasions, now and then returning to execute similar orders in Germany, until 1775, when he returned to Salzburg at the age of nineteen.

name."

Here ends the chapter of the "infant phenomenon." The charm was gone, for vulgar eyes. Inwardly the man had more than kept the promise of the child; but the world-then, as always, seeking for a "sign"-had no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, this real miracle. The show was over what market was there now for genuine merit? The young man who at nineteen had won all the musical honors of Italy, whose fame filled Europe from London to Naples, as a composer in every department of his art, could not find a patron among all the thousands of musical noblemen in Germany. For three years he waited in his native city with the vain expectation of being appointed chapel-master. Then he started for Paris, his mother accompanying him, on account of his extreme ignorance of worldly affairs. He stopped at Munich and Augsburg by the way; but one prince had no vacant place for him; and another said, "It is too early-let him go to Italy, and make to himself a His letters to his father from these places, full of sincerity and vivid perception of things and relations, and written in a simple and graceful style, show the struggle between his inward consciousness of superiority, and his perfect humility and nothingness in the great world. It was more than vanity, which compelled him to say, "Let the prince come to the proof: let him assemble all the composers of Munich; let him send for those of Italy, France, Germany, England, and Spain; I will engage with them all." In Paris it was worse. The great did not deign to notice him; the musicians were jealous of him; the opera-managers thought only of catering for a low public taste; for even the great revolution in opera produced by Gluck, had not yet taken effect. To add to his misfortunes he lost his mother, and he left Paris with a heavy heart, renewing his vain applications in different places by the way, for home. Mozart, the admiration of the world, could not even with great pains obtain the situation of music-teacher to the children of the Elector of Mentz, worth forty pounds a year! This is not a rare case in the history of genius. Real greatness and the talent of succeeding are separable things, not inconsistent with each other, also not essential to each other. Mozart was admired, and everywhere ac

knowledged as one who had the divine fire in him; still the world would not move at his bidding; still the natural consequences of what he was, and had a right to expect, did not seem to follow; still nobody bought what everybody wanted; he called, but it would not sound; he was there, but his presence did not seem to cause any movement, or displace any particle of matter, more than an incorporeal ghost; all was well willed and prepared on his part, and off he would start, but the foot seemed glued to the ground, as in a nightmare, and so, dismayed, he had to learn the contradiction between the Ideal and the Actual. In truth, he had not the inherent faculty of influence; he was not one of those Powers whom all heads and hands involuntarily serve. A pale, diminutive young man, with "a countenance remarkable for nothing but its variableness," sensitive, nervous, and awkward, seeking sympathy, but with nothing imposing about him. He had not that moral magnetism, by which a Handel, a Napoleon, and his own " Don Juan," always tell upon the world-always succeed, say what else you will of it. We believe he understood himself, and did not care to quarrel with a higher will so plainly indicated. He despised ambition, and rather than cherish a love of influence for its own sake preferred to have no influence. Handel was ideal and commanding, both. But he was of another mould. Perhaps a man in whom sensibility is the main quality, should not have that power. Perhaps it is a wise fatality which excludes him from all the vulgar politics of life, and postpones his influence, that it may not strike, but pervade and last forever. The world, by its very neglect, pays such characters the highest compliment, by seeming to take for granted that they are the peculiar care of heaven. And so they are. It is mysterious how they live without “getting along," how they glide through circumstances as calmly as the moon through clouds, making the clouds look beautiful. And Mozart so felt it. In one those letters to his father he closes thus: "My best regards to my dear father, and many thanks for the compliment which he paid me on my birth-day. Let him feel no anxiety; I never lose sight of my God-I acknowledge his power; dread his wrath; but at the same time, love to admire his

ît. When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer, -say travelling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep-it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come I know not, nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory, and I am accustomed, as I have been told,

to hum them to myself. If I continue in

this way, it soon occurs to me how I may

turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it-that is to say, agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, the peculiarities of the different instruments, &c. All this fires my soul; and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost finished and complete in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture, or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. The delight this gives me I cannot express. All this inventing, this producing, takes place, as it were, in a pleasing, lively dream; still the actual hearing of the tout ensemble is, after all, the best. What has been thus produced I do not easily forget; and this is, perhaps, the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank for. "When I proceed to write down my ideas, I take out of the bag of my memory, if I may use that phrase, what has previously been collected into it in the way I have mentioned; for this reason, the committing to paper is quickly done; for everything, as I said before, is already finished, and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination. At this occupation I can, therefore, suffer myself to be disturbed; for, whatever may be going on around me, still I write, and even talk on trifling matters. But why productions take from my hand that particular form and style which makes them Mozartish, and different from the works of other composers, is probably owing to the same cause which renders my nose so-and-so, large or aquiline, or, in short, makes it Mozart's, and different from those of other people; for I really do not study to aim at any originality. I should, in fact, not be able to describe in what mine consists; though I think it quite natural that persons who have really an individual appearance of their own, are also differently organized from others, both externally and internally. Let this suffice, and never, my best friend, never trouble me again with such subjects."

Excessive application, together with

excessive love of pleasure, soon began to wear upon his health. For the last three or four years of his life he worked with an incredible rapidity, yet with a perfect throughness of execution, which seemed inspired by the presentiment that he had not long to live, and that there was still the secret of his life to be told. "Life is short and art is long," is a truth which grew upon him with a more and more alarming emphasis.

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The very last few months of his life witnessed the production of three of his greatest works. The opera of the Magic Flute," was undertaken to save an opera manager from bankruptcy. It was produced in a month-a month during which he wrote day and night, letting nothing tempt him from his work till he sank back exhausted on his couch. His wife and friends would try to win him from his infatu

ated abstraction in which he was fast

tending to realize his own presentiment, by getting him out to walk, amid the green fields and happy groups of people, a sight always grateful to him. But in vain. He walked as a duty; his mind was studying far away the while. She would get his friends to visit him late at night, as if by accident; but he would not talk; he would write on as if they were not present, till sleep or exhaustion overcame him. While yet in the midst of this work, the coronation of the Emperor Leopold called him away to the composition of another opera; and a fortnight witnessed the conception and completion of his "Clemenza di Tito." Still the

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Zauberflöte" went on, was ready by the day appointed, and its magic music saved the sinking manager. It was a perfect "Midsummer Night's Dream" in music, full of the most exquisite and fairy-like inventions and of beautiful songs, like the "Dolce Concento" and the "Manly Heart," which have become as common as Scotch songs, yet never can be hacknied. It seemed a miracle how he completed it. He said that the whole second act was conceived in one day in a stage-coach, and that he only wanted more hands to write it down fast enough. It was played over one hundred nights in succession. He directed the performance in person only the few first times; his health permitted it no longer; but he would sit looking at his watch and imagine the progress of the piece; say