HOW GREAT MUSIC WAS WRITTEN.

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 28 August 1912, Page 3

HOW GREAT MUSIC WAS WRITTEN.

A theatrical vagabond named Schikaneder had acquired a lease on a rundown theatre, some old scenery with Masouic emblems, and a hold on tho gullible Mozart's heart. The composer lived like a genius, which is au* other way of saying that he ( was accorded the honors of a prince, and at the same time needed the alms of a beggar. Sohikaneder promised him 100 ducats for an opera when completed, but there is no evidence that the money was ever paid. Mozart set to work in a beautiful pavilion in a Viennese garden that the wily manager had given him, well knowing that the more beautiful the surroundings of the composer during the creation of his opera, the more entrancing the music and the bigger box receipts. He was also careful to provide the sensitive, dreamy Mozart, with one eye on earth and the other in heaven, with entertainment not always the most elevating. The opera was to be a fairy one, and at this Mozart chafed, for he had never written a fairy opera. But his beloved wife was lying at the point of death, and he succumbed to need and Schikaneder's entreaties.

As his name might indicate, the manager was a star buffoon, and demanded the 'fattest parts" himself. He knew what the public wanted, or thought he did j poor Mozart knew only his Art. There was the inevitable

clash.

After three months of anguish with an uncongenial subject, and a coarse interferer, Mozart got "The Magio Flute" ready for rehearsal. Then Shikaneder burst in upou orchestra and singers with the crushing news that a rival theatre was putting on an opera of the same theme. Vienna could not stand two "Magic Flutes." Dazed at the blow, the musician put down his conductor's baton and gazed at the out-of-place Masonic scenery. Then suddenly he rushed away to the seclusion of his pavilion, and when he emerged it was with the air of a conquerer. The story had been turned upside down; the precepts of the Masouic Order had bee^n dragged into this Oriental fairy opera. The buffoonmanager was delighted; the Masons would attend en masse; the scenery, too, would fit as if made to order. The opera was an extraordinary success; people forgot in the music the absurdities of the story.

The easiest way to train a child in the way he should go is to go that way yourself.