HISTORY OF MUSIC. 



before him ; but the intensity of his existence was 

 such that, in the brief five-and-thirty years that 

 were allotted to him, he lived twice as much as 

 any ordinary man. If Haydn is associated in the 

 history of musical art with the symphony, Mozart 

 is similarly associated with the opera. In sym- 

 phony-writing, he has been overshadowed by the 

 colossal genius of Beethoven ; his pianoforte 

 sonatas were juvenile compositions, by which he 

 himself did not wish to be judged ; his masses also 

 he did not himself esteem highly, although the 

 No. XII. is so popular at the present time as to be 

 positively 'hackneyed' it is upon his dramatic 

 works that his fame depends. Judged by com- 

 parison with his predecessors, it would be almost 

 impossible to praise Mozart's operas too highly, 

 nor, judged by comparison with the later com- 

 posers of Italian opera,* would it be possible to 

 find any to rival them ; so far the opinion of 

 his warmest admirers is fully justified. There is, 

 however, a school of musicians whose devotion 

 to Mozart prevents their seeing, or at least ad- 

 mitting, the possibility of any one going beyond 

 him : they consider Don Giovanni as complete 

 a work of art as, for instance, Beethoven's seventh 

 symphony. Now it may readily be admitted that 

 Mozart takes the same place in relation to Italian 

 opera which Beethoven takes in relation to the 

 symphony form, and so far the composers may be 

 put on a level. But, judged on their own merits, 

 there is a wide difference between the value of 

 these two musical forms. The symphony has been 

 already spoken of; it does not seem possible for 

 us, as yet, to conceive of a higher form of instru- 

 mental music. But it does not require any search- 

 ing to find the imperfections of Italian opera, 

 imperfections which Mozart's music, composed in 

 that form, and not out of it, inevitably shares. 

 We shall have something to say farther on about 

 the wholesale reforms made or attempted by 

 Gluck. Mozart, too, made some reforms ; but 

 while his musical genius was greater than Gluck's, 

 his intellectual appreciation of the whole ques- 

 tion was not so clear. Gluck first asserted the 

 supremacy of the writer of the music over the 

 performer of it, and afterwards the equality in 

 importance of the poetry and music in a perfect 

 musical drama. To Mozart, on the other hand, 

 the music was everything. He was ready enough 

 to curtail the liberties of the singer, but not to 

 increase the importance of the librettist f So far 

 as he was concerned, the duty of the latter 

 was merely to furnish verses which could con- 

 veniently be 'set' in the established forms of 

 recitative, air, finale, and so on. With him, 

 'absolute' music was everything; dramatic and 

 poetic expression were only secondary. It fol- 

 lows naturally from this that he cared very 

 little what his libretti were, and set to music 

 some that were utter trash. It has been re- 

 peatedly noticed, however, that even Mozart 

 was, unconsciously, so far dependent on his 

 poetry, that his most successful operas, as Don 

 Giovanni, or Le Nozze di Figaro, are just those 

 in which he has a spirited and intelligible libretto ; 

 while in spite of beauties of detail, a stupid libretto 

 results in tame music, as in La Clemenza di Tito. 



* The genus ' Italian opera ' is, of course, quite distinct from 

 operas written to Italian words. 



t So called because he writes the words or libretto of the 

 opera. 



( It would have been Mozart,' as Wagner writes, 

 the most absolute of all musicians, who would 

 have solved the problem of the opera long ago 

 that is, who would have assisted in producing the 

 truest, the most beautiful, and most perfect drama, 

 f he had met with a poet whom he as a musician 

 would only have had to assist. But such a poet 

 he, unfortunately, was never to find.' ' It was not 

 in his tender and unpolemical nature to destroy 

 established forms with the sword of the reformer ; 

 he could only make us forget the narrowness of 

 these fetters.' 



THE SYMPHONY BEETHOVEN. 



The name of Ludwig von Beethoven is the 

 greatest as yet inscribed on the roll of musicians. 

 ' He took up musical art where Haydn and Mozart 

 left it; he adopted the manner of those great 

 masters, but developed and improved it till it 

 became absolutely transformed by his genius/ 

 j wrote a contemporary. f Beethoven was essen- 

 tially an instrumental composer. He wrote 

 ; several masses, and a complete cantata, or, as it 

 is often called, oratorio, the Mount of Olives, all 

 , of them full of genius and originality ; but it is 

 1 quite plain from these that choral writing was not 

 I his forte he treats his voices too much like 

 instruments. Even in his songs (he said he ' did 

 | not like writing songs '), it will be noticed often 

 I how his interest has been rather in the accom- 

 i paniment than in the vocal part. He wrote only 

 one opera, Fidelia, in the music of which he has 

 in parts restricted himself by conventional usages. 

 Fidelia would suffice to immortalise any one but 

 Beethoven ; Beethoven is immortal without it 



His fame rests upon his instrumental works, 

 i and chiefly upon his orchestral symphonies. Of 

 these there are only nine in existence, for Beetho- 

 ven, in contrast with many composers, only com- 

 ! pleted works with great deliberation and care, 

 j and perfected each bar until he felt he could do 

 I no more to it. He is said not even to have 

 i allowed to be mentioned in his presence some 

 pieces which he had written when quite a lad, 

 but which sqme foolish friends had managed to 

 get into print. During the latter part of his life 

 , he was perfectly deaf, and to this has been 

 J attributed the peculiarities and unintelligibility of 

 ! some of his later compositions, which are assigned 

 to what some of his biographers have called his 

 j 'third period.' But a musician like Beethoven 

 ; would know the effect of his scores just as well by 

 ! looking at them as by hearing them played ; and 

 the ' third period ' seems to have been simply a 

 convenient way for his critics to dispose of what 

 they did not understand. With the progress of 

 i musical culture, the works assigned to this period, 

 including the ninth symphony (the choral), are 

 becoming better appreciated, because better under- 

 stood, and it is seen how they arc the legitimate 

 development of his earlier compositions. 



It would be impossible to attempt here any 

 analysis of Beethoven's symphonies, or even to 

 give any details of their leading features, and 

 mere praise of them seems almost impertinent. 

 The following passage, from the pen of Beethoven'* 

 greatest successor, describes very beautifully the 

 growth of the symphony, and the place it took in. 

 Beethoven's hands. Wagner says : ' Haydn was 



Quoted by Hueffer. 



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