MOWING MACHINE 



MOZART 



MOWING, mo 'ing, MACHINE, a machine 

 for cutting grass. Its essential part is a frame 

 carrying a long steel blade with sharp, triangu- 

 lar teeth along one edge, which moves rapidly 

 back and forth in a metal guard. The gras 3 is 

 swept against the guard as the machine moves 

 forward, and the keen knives sever the stalks 

 close to the ground. The horizontal guard, or 

 arm, is usually about four feet long, and it 

 cuts a swath equal to its length. A good ma- 

 chine will cut from seven to ten acres of grass 

 in a day. Two horses can pull it and furnish 

 all the power that is needed to operate the 

 knives. The wheels on which it rests are so 

 attached to the blade that their circular motion 

 is Transformed into a rapid back-and-forth, or 

 reciprocating, motion. The mowing machine 

 is a simpler kind of reaping machine. Up to 

 1917 no mowing machines had been manufac- 



1 to be run by tractor, or gasoline, power. 

 See REAPING MACHINE. 

 MOZAMBIQUE, mozambeek', CHANNEL, 



passage between the east coast of Africa 

 and the island of Madagascar, bordering the 

 province of Mozambique in Portuguese East 

 Africa. The channel is over 1,000 miles in 

 length and varies in width from 250 miles at 

 the center to 600 miles at either end. A warm 

 current passes through it, which, striking Agul- 

 has Bank to the south, produces one of the 

 roughest seas in the world. In the northern part 



he channel, midway between Africa and 

 Madagascar, are the Comoro Islands. On the 

 west shore are the ports of Beira and Mozam- 



te. Several submarine cables are laid in the 

 channel from Mozambique and Beira to other 

 East African ports and Madagascar. For illus- 



<>n, see colored map AFRICA, or MADAGAS- 



MOZART, mo'zahrt (in German, mo'tsahrt), 

 .IIH\N\ CHRYSOSTOMUS WOLFGANG AMADEUS 

 'M79D, a German musician, born at Salz- 

 burg. At the age of two he showed such in- 

 terest in the music lessons which his father 

 was giving the daughter Nanncrl that the 

 ambitious parent began to teach him also, and 

 at the age of three he was receiving a daily 

 lesson an hour long. At five years of age he 

 was composing short pieces for the harpsichord, 

 and at six played befmv the Elector of Munich 



resa of Austria, at 

 na. 



When the boy was seven years old he played 



re royalty at Versailles and Paris, and at 



tin- fonm r nty hud thf pleasure of seeing four 



of his compositions published. Then he and 



MOZART 



his father went to England and played before 

 Queen Charlotte. There Johann composed his 

 first symphony and astounded the Royal So- 

 ciety by his 

 knowledge of 

 music. ''The pro- 

 fessors of Europe 

 stood aghast at 

 one who impro- 

 vised fugues on 

 a given theme and 

 then took a ride- 

 a-cock horse on 

 his father's stick." 

 By this time the 

 imperious Arch- 

 bishop of Salz- 

 burg, by whom 

 the father was 

 employed as 

 choirmaster, demanded their return, and, hop- 

 ing to prove the lad a fraud, locked him in a 

 room for a week to write an oratorio by him- 

 self. Johann did it, and the oratorio was sung 

 in the archbishop's church a few weeks later. 



In 1769 the boy went to Italy to learn some- 

 thing of the music of that country, and while 

 there played before astonished audiences in 

 Milan, Bologna, Verona, Naples and Rome, 

 and received from the Pope the title of Cava- 

 liere and the badge of the Order of the Golden 

 Spur, honors bestowed upon only the very 

 greatest. There in Rome, also, he performed 

 the wonderful feat of writing from memory 

 the long papal Miserere, copies of which were 

 never allowed to be taken by the singers from 

 the Pope's chapel. Then at Milan the four- 

 teen-year-old boy wrote an opera, Mitridate, 

 which was sung twenty nights in succession. 

 In 1775 he wrote an* opera for the Munich car- 

 nival, and, every song in it was greeted with "a 

 tremendous uproar and clapping of hands." 



At twenty-two he went to Mannheim, Ger- 

 many, and began to teach and compose for his 

 living, and thorn it was that the tragedy of his 

 lit'- 1 began. He boarded with a family named 

 Weber, and fell madly in love with Aloysia 

 Weber, who was train inn to be an opera singer. 

 I! was soon called to Paris, \\li.i, . \\ith his 

 mother as a companion, he worked earnestly. 

 Suddenly the mother died, nnd Mozart jour- 

 <1 back to the Wcbcrs for consolation, only 

 to find that Aloysia V head h:i<l I- 1 by 



a little success in singing and that she would 

 have nothing to do with him. He returned in 

 sorrow to his home in Salzburg, where he 



