Last Years of Mozart

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21280, 25 February 1939, Page 12

Last Years of Mozart

BROKEN UNDER BLOWS OF FATE

Like the earlier letters the latest edition of “Mozart’s Last Letters” are casual, “non-literary,” intimate, and unforced. But the dewy gaiety of Mozart’s young manhood is not so evident; sometimes he is Pagliacci putting on a bold front to .-pare those who love him; in the last letters the mask is off and the broken creature is shown naked and bleeding. Customs of the Times It was the custom in the 18th century for court musicians t- be treated in the same way as ordinary servants in the retinue of a prince, archbishop, or any other great lord. But Mozart had been feted by kings and emperors; he knew himself to be far superior to princelings, and naturally resented the humiliation. There is his halfhumorous protest in a letter he wrote to his father, March 17, 1781 (Mozart was 25), from Vienna, whither he had

gone with the Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg:—

“Our party consists of the two valets, that is, the body and soul attendants of His Worship, the controlcur, Brunetti and—my insignificant self. By the way, the two valets sit at the top of the table, but at least I have the honour of being placed above the cooks.”

Later Mozart was to be in open rebellion, and Sa'~burg wrs to know him no more. From that time onwards his life was to be a series of tragic disappointments; but he was now the Mozart that we know. His genius flowered from the time he left Salzburg. He was entering on what Mozart lovers sometimes call the Viennese period. In- the seven years that followed, he wrote most of his greatest works; twelve piano r rertos; the six Haydn quartets; the quartet in D; three piano Quartets; two string quintets; five piano'trlos; five great symphonies; innumerable songs, sonatas, divertimenti, suites, piano pieces; and the three masterpieces, “11 Seraglio,” “Figaro,” and “Don Giovanni.” Sad Years Approach But on May 28, 1787, Mozart’s father died. Cn April 4, Wolfgang' had written to him:— “This very moment I have received a piece of news which greatly distresses me, the more so as I gathered from your last letter, you were very well indeed. But now I hear yru are really ill. I need hardly tell you how greatly I am longing to receive some reassuring news from yourself. And I will expect it; although I have now made : habit being prepared in all affairs for the worst. As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence. I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, "'at his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity (you know what I mean) of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that—young as I am—l may not live to see another day. Yet no one of my acquaintances could say that in company. I am morose or disgruntled.” The last sad years were approaching. As Sacheverell Sitwell says so expressively, the shadows were closing in on him. “A period was now beginning in which Mozart, owing to poverty and helplessness, produced very little music.” Poverty sat at his elbow as be wrote. The old lie that to produce masterpieces you have to pinch the belly of genius never has been true. Actually, in the last three years of his life, Mozart produced only half as much as he had written in the previous three years.

Mozart’s Own Requiem

There are agonised appeals for money. To Michael Puchberg, at the beginning of July, 1788, he wrote:— “Owing to great difficulties and complications my affairs have become so involved that it is of the utmost importance to raise some money on these two pawn-broker’s tickets. In the name of our friendship I implore you to do me this favour; but you must do it immediately. Forgive my importunity, but you know my situation.” And a few days later he sends an even more heart-rending letter. And a third. And a fourth. However, Puchberg seems to have helped in the end. So it goes on. His condition becomes helpless. He is at breaking point. And worse is to happen. When he is in this exaggerated hysterical state of

nerves, “a tall grave-looking man, dressed from head to foot in grey, and calculated to make a striking and weird impression, presented Mozart with an anonymous letter begging him, with many allusions to his accomplishments as an artist, to name his price for composing a Requiem, and the shortest time in which he could undertake to complete it.” So Mozart’s biographer, Otto Jahn, describes the weird scene. Mozart became obsessed his visitor was an emissary of Death. He had been commissioned to write his own Requiem. “I feel stunned,” he wrote. “I reason with difficulty, and I cannot rid myself of the vision of this unknown man. I see him perpetually, he entreats me, presses me, and impatiently demands the work. Igo on writing, because composing tires me less than resting. Otherwise, I have nothing more to fear. I know from what I suffer that the hour is come; I am at the point of death; I have come to an end before having had the enjoyment of my talent. Life was, indeed, so beautiful, my career began under such fortunate auspices; but one cannot change one’s own destiny ” Mozart became very ill in November, 1791, and died on December 5 to be remembered forever as one of the greatest musicians of all time.

['The Letters of Mozart,” translated and edited by Emily Anderson; with extracts from the letters of Constanze Mozart to Johann Andre, translater and edited by C. B. Oldman: Volume 111. London: MacMillan and Co., Ltd.]

It is given to few men already famous in one sphere of art to take up another and to achieve distinction in it so late in life as Sir Rabindranath, Tagore, an exhibition of whose paintings was opened in December in London (says “The Times” Literary Supplement). Sir Rabindranath, who is now in his eightieth year, began to paint 12 years ago, having been fascinated by the strange and fantastic shapes he elaborated from the corrections and erasions in his manuscripts. He still draws his pictures with coloured inks in pen-lines and blot, rarely using a brush. When some of his pictures were shown for the first time in London, at the rooms of the British Indian Union in 1930 he told how the enthusiasm of some artists whom he met in the South of France and who saw his pictures first induced him to exhibit his work in Paris.

A very distinguished scholar and writer has been lost to India by the dealth of Sir Brajendranath Seal. After holding a professorship at the City College, Calcutta, he was successively principal of the Morris College, Nagpur, the Berhampur College, and the Victoria College, Cooch Behar. In 1914 he returned to Calcutta to become George V. Professor of Mental and Moral Science at the University, and after holding that post for six years he became, in 1920, ViceChancellor of Mysore University. It was during this last period that he did much of his writing. He published “Comparative Studies in Vaishnavlsm and Christianity” and “The Quest Eternal,” as well as “New Essays in Criticism” and an "Autobiographical Record.” His studies in mathematics, which he regarded as a recreation, produced a “Memoirs on Co-e’dcients of Numbers.” He contributed to Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray’s “History of Hindu Chemistry,” a section dealing with the atomic theory of the ancient Hindus, which he afterwards expanded into a separate book. His daughter, Mrs Sarayubala Sen, is the well-known Bengali authoress.