Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — The Magic Flute; The Requiem; Mozart's Death

_The Magic Flute_ He was ill and despondent but his activity was untiring.

It is an infinite pity that he did not take the hint of Da Ponte and others who were urging him to come to England, where he might easily have made a fortune and become a British idol like Handel before him and Haydn and Mendelssohn after him.

He went on writing because, as he was soon to say, “composition tires me less than resting.

” In the spring of 1791 he was commissioned to compose another opera, which was to be his last and, in a number of respects, his most epoch-making—_The Magic Flute_ (_Die Zauberflöte_).

And with it he was to write one of the most extraordinary works of operatic history, to create German opera in accordance with a long-cherished ambition of his but, like Moses, never to do more than cross the frontier of the promised land he had beheld in vision.

Emanuel Schikaneder, who had known Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart in Salzburg, was a wandering actor and a playwright of sorts.

The head of a traveling company, which gave Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and, for better or worse, operas by Gluck and _Singspiele_ by Haydn and Mozart, he had like numberless barnstormers a keen knowledge of the tastes of audiences, particularly of the plebeian ones to which his players catered.

In his own way as adventurous a person as Da Ponte, Schikaneder took over in 1789 the direction of a playhouse on the Starhemberg estates, the Freihaus-Theater, in the Wieden district.

There he produced comic shows, _Singspiele_, and operettas.

With his grasp of suburban tastes he combined a thorough understanding of what could be done with his brother Mason and old acquaintance, Mozart.

A business rival of the impresario Marinelli, who ran a theater in the Leopoldstadt quarter and made a specialty of “magic plays,” he now approached the composer with his own _Singspiel_.

[Illustration: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1789 _Drawing in silver on ivory by Dora Stock_] [Illustration: Mozart’s wife, Constanze, about 1783 _Lithograph from a drawing by Joseph Lange, Constanze’s brother-in-law_] We cannot here examine the sources from which he assembled his libretto.

There ran through it a powerful strain of Masonic influence, love interest, low comedy in abundance (Schikaneder took care to tailor to his own measure the role of the wandering bird-catcher Papageno), and other surefire theatrical ingredients.

He asked Mozart to supply the music, and the latter, after warning him that since he had never yet written a “magic opera” he hesitated to court failure in this sphere, at length complied.

Between March and the end of September 1791, _The Magic Flute_ was written.

Schikaneder, aware of the glorious bargain he had struck, strove to be the soul of complaisance.

He supplied the composer with every comfort at his disposal—a charming summerhouse on the grounds of the theater where he could work at the score, with food, wine, and pretty actresses to divert him—in short, whatever promised to humor the musician and promote the flow of inspiration.

He even hummed or sang the sort of tunes he considered appropriate to the role he designed for himself.

Let us at this stage dispose of a few legends that, in the course of 160 years, have accumulated about the work.

One is that the play is a farrago of childish nonsense, made tolerable only by the variety and grandeur of Mozart’s music; another, that the plot was altered at a late hour because another manager was about to produce a work similar in its story; a third, that the piece was a failure.

As a matter of fact, the book of _The Magic Flute_ happens to be one of the best librettos in existence from the point of view of good theater.

The imagined “revision” never took place, for considerations of “parallels,” let alone plagiarisms, never bothered theater directors at this epoch.

On the contrary, if a play or opera had one feature that pleased its public, a rival manager was quick to copy this very point on an even broader scale.

Although at the first performance _The Magic Flute_ did not achieve such an overwhelming triumph as its composer had hoped, before many months had passed it was attracting throngs; and not many years later Schikaneder was able to build out of the wealth it brought him that famous Theater an der Wien which still stands and was to become the cradle of various storied masterworks.

As for the much-maligned book, it appealed so powerfully to none other than Goethe that he set out to write a sequel!

While the sick and harried Mozart worked with still inexhaustible fertility at the score of his magic opera he was interrupted by a sufficiently distasteful order from Prague for an opera to be produced there at the coronation of Leopold II as “King of Bohemia.

” With no more than eighteen days to compose the music and assist in the production of this “occasional piece,” he was ordered to set an old text of Metastasio’s (retouched, it is true, by one Caterino Mazzolà)—_La Clemenza di Tito_, an antiquated specimen of _opera seria_, such as the composer had not bothered with since the period of _Idomeneo_.

The available time being so short, Mozart took along with him his pupil Süssmayr, who was asked to perform the almost secretarial job of writing the _secco_ recitatives, leaving the more important parts of the music to the master.

His good friend, the impresario Guardasoni, mounted the opera in sumptuous fashion.

But good will did not supplant genuine inspiration and, for all its craftsmanship, _La Clemenza di Tito_ did not strike fire.

The Empress dismissed it as _porcheria tedesca_ (German rubbish).

A correspondent of _Studien für Tonkünstler und Musikfreunde_ reported that the “beloved Kapellmeister Mozard” did not obtain this time the applause he had a right to expect!

For once, clearly, “his Praguers did not understand him.

” Doubtless, _Tito_ is not a _Figaro_ or a _Don Giovanni_, but those unfamiliar with the work may well ask themselves if it is as bad as history paints it.

Anyway its reception did not raise the master’s spirit.

And he took leave of his friends with tears.

He was now seriously ill.

He had fainting fits and accesses of exhaustion.

On September 28, 1791, he finished _The Magic Flute_—the March of the Priests and the overture being the last numbers set down.

The Masonic symbols and meanings with which the opera is filled (comprehensible, however, only to initiates) are heard in the thrice-reiterated three chords at the opening of the superb tone piece.

This overture is a fully developed sonata movement built on a fugal plan, the mercurial subject having been borrowed from a clavier sonata of his old friend and rival, Clementi.

At the first performance the composer Johann Schenk (later, one of Beethoven’s teachers) crept through the orchestra to Mozart, who was conducting, and reverently kissed his hand, while the composer, continuing to conduct with his right hand, affectionately patted Schenk’s head with his left.

He took pleasure in playing the glockenspiel during Papageno’s air “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” and once, in fun, introduced an unexpected arpeggio which threw Schikaneder completely out for a few minutes.

_The Requiem_ As he was boarding his coach on the trip to Prague, Mozart was startled on being accosted by a gaunt, gray-clad stranger of mysterious mien who asked him if he were willing to undertake, for a certain sum, the composition of a requiem mass to be delivered at a specified time.

He agreed but from this moment the weird visitor, whose identity he was admonished not to try to discover, gave him no rest.

He became convinced that a messenger from the Beyond had sought him out, that the incident had a supernatural aspect, that he was, indeed, ordered by a higher power to compose a death mass for _himself_!

And the certainty that his time was at hand grew steadily upon him.

The incident, in reality, had nothing macabre or mysterious about it.

The “gray messenger” was a certain Leutgeb, steward of the Count Walsegg zu Stuppach who had lately lost his wife and who, aspiring to be known as a composer, planned to perform the requiem as his own work.

But Mozart knew nothing of this.

He had a letter from his old friend, Da Ponte, entreating him to join him in England.

But it was too late and Mozart’s tragedy had to be played out to the bitter close that was now swiftly approaching.

To Da Ponte he dispatched this pathetic missive: “_I wish I could follow your advice, but how can I do so?

I feel stunned, I reason with difficulty, and cannot rid myself of the vision of this unknown man.

I see him perpetually; he entreats me, he presses me, he impatiently demands the work.

I go on writing....

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 the end before having had the enjoyment of my talent.

Life was so beautiful, my career stood at first under so auspicious a star!

But one cannot change one’s destiny!

_” What tortured him more than anything was the thought that, as furiously as he worked, the _Requiem_ might remain unfinished at the death he knew was imminent.

He had numberless discussions with his pupil, Xaver Süssmayr, but it was daily becoming clearer to him that he had small chance of completing the mass himself.

On a walk in the Prater with Constanze in the early autumn he exclaimed: “It cannot last much longer Certainly, I have been given poison; that is a feeling I cannot shake off!

” And this, presumably, is the basis of the age-old slander that Salieri had been his murderer!

At all events growing weakness forced him to take to his bed on November 20. He was never to leave it.

“I know,” he had said shortly before, “that my music-making is about at an end.

I feel a constant chill which I cannot explain.

I now have no more to do save with doctors and apothecaries!

” His hands and feet were beginning to swell.

Yet he struggled desperately to get on with the composition of the mass.

The visits of a few friends seemed to comfort the sick man, and he asked them to try over in his presence certain completed pages of the score.

At the beginning of December he himself struggled to sing some of the alto part of the work.

When the _Lacrymosa_ was reached he gave up the attempt after a few measures and, overcome by the certainty that he was doomed never to finish the music, he broke down in a fit of weeping.

And in these days, with tragic irony, there dawned a promise of better things!

The rapidly growing popularity of _The Magic Flute_ augured a carefree future; a group of Hungarian nobles began to raise a subscription that would have assured Mozart an annual income of 1000 Gulden; and from Holland there came, almost at the twelfth hour, news of an even more gratifying project.

Mozart’s Death In the last hours his sister-in-law, Sophie Haibl, lent what assistance she could.

Constanze, grief-stricken and stupefied, was helpless.

The sick man, tortured to the last by the thought of his unfinished _Requiem_, was shaken by the chills and fires of fever.

It was found necessary to take a canary out of the sickroom because the singing of the bird seemed to cause the sufferer physical pain.

He appealed to Sophie to remain with him, to comfort Constanze, and to “see me die.

I

have the taste of death on my tongue already and who is to care for my Constanze when I am gone?

” A doctor who attended him was at the theater when summoned and, realizing the hopelessness of the case, promised to come “when the play was over.

” Sophie was dispatched to call a priest.

When she returned she found the dying man bending over some sketches of the _Requiem_ and giving Süssmayr some final directions about the work.

At last he lapsed into unconsciousness, a few moments before the end puffing out his cheeks and making what the tearful bystanders imagined to be an effort to imitate the sound of the drums in his unfinished score.

And five minutes before one on the morning of December 5, 1791, he died.

Of what illness did Mozart die?

Typhus say some; a result of childhood illness, say others, complicated by the strain of overwork, traveling, disappointments, and deprivations.

The most plausible medical explanation would appear to have been supplied by a modern Salzburg physician, Dr. H.

Kasseroller, who diagnosed the cause of the master’s early demise as uremia resulting from Bright’s disease.

And this may explain the composer’s persistent idea in his last weeks that he had been administered poison.

The rest of the pitiful story need not detain us.

The parsimonious Baron van Swieten advised Constanze to observe economy in making the funeral arrangements; and so Mozart was buried in a pauper’s grave.

On December 6, the body was taken to the cemetery of St. Marx.

A handful of mourners who followed the hearse dispersed when a heavy snowstorm made progress difficult.

The stricken Constanze found it impossible to accompany the pathetic little cortege; and when some time later she attempted to discover her husband’s resting place, a new gravedigger who replaced the earlier one had no idea whatever where he lay.

What matter that posterity has never discovered the whereabouts of his sepulcher?

Mozart, the incessant wanderer, the infinitely lonely, now lives more fully and gloriously than ever in the hearts and souls of all true worshipers of the divinest in music.

And if his earthly tragedy has never seemed so poignant as it does today, we can take consolation from the circumstance that our generation has learned to prize the greatness, elevation, and beauty of his art more, perhaps, than did any of our predecessors.

[Illustration: Harp and cello logo] Transcriber’s Notes --A few palpable typos were silently corrected.

--Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break.

--Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar.

(U.

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