MOZART'S NOSE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 221, 4 October 1906, Page 4

MOZART'S NOSE.

The nose with which Mozart was endowed was a noso such as made Cyrano do Bergerac say of his own, " II te faut le mistral pour t'enrhumer." Mozart, of course, was the pupil of Haydn, who onco challenged him to compose a piece of music which he could not play at sight. Mozart accepted the wager, and the loser was to pay a champagne dinner. When the two composers had made all arrangements, Mozart took his pen and a piece of paper, and in a few minutes had written a beautiful little composition, which he handed to Haydn, saying, "This is the composition* sir, which you are unable to play, and I can. Will you please give the first trial?" .THE MIDDLE KEY. Haydn smiled with a little contempt at the presumption and confidence of his own pupil, and placing the music before him, touched the keys of the instrument. The simplicity of the instrument caused him no little surprise, and he continued until he reached the middle of the piece, when, stopping all at once, he exclaimed, "How's this, Mozart? How's this? Here my hands are stretched out to both ends of the piano, yet there is a middle key to be touched. Nobody could ever play such music—not even yourself, who is the composer?" Mozart laughed at the perplexity of the great musician, and assuming the seat the latter had just left, struck the keys with such an air of self confidence that Haydn began to be still mote perplexed, not knowing if he had been duped. After running along the simple passages, he came to that part which his master had found impossible to be played—" not even yourself, who is the composer." But Mozart thought of his nose. Reaching the difficult passage, he stretched both hands to the extreme long ends of the piano, and, leaning forward, bobbed his nose against the middle key nobody could play. Haydn burst into a fit of laughter, and, * after acknowledging defeat, he confessed that Mozart could draw music from his fingers, his head, his heart, and his—nose.

MARIE ANTIONETTE

It was the Emperor Francis I. of Austria who nicknamed Mozart the " Little Sorcerer" when the latter was not quite seven years old. In the Mozart collection at Salzburg one notices a painting of Mozart in a Court dress that was presented to him by the Emperor. " Would you like to know what Wolferl's dress is like?" writes Mozart's father to the boy's mother. " It is of the finest lilac-coloured cloth, the vest of moire of the same colour, coat and topcoat with a double broad border of gold. It was made for the Hereditary Duke Maximilian Franz." Mozart, it seems, was particularly attached to Marie Antionette, who once helped.him up when he slipped on the polished floor in Schonbrunn. In return he told her, "I will marry you when I am grown up, because you are so good. The others .only laughed when I fell, but you helped me."