Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Part 22

Buffalo: Mozart was in his twentieth year when he met Aloysia Weber. She was a gifted singer, surely, and was needlessly healthy. She was of that peculiar, heartless type that finds digression in leading men a merry chase and then flaunting and flouting them. Young Mozart, the impressionable, Mozart the delicate and sensitive, Mozart the aeolian harp, played upon by every pa.s.sing breeze, loved this bouncing bundle of pink-and-white tyranny.

She encouraged the pa.s.sion, and it gradually grew until it absorbed the boy and he grew oblivious to all else. He lived in her smile, bathed in the sunshine of her presence, fed on her words, and as for her singing in opera it was not so much what her voice was now but what he was sure it would be.

His glowing imagination made good her every deficiency. He thought he loved the girl. It was not the girl at all he loved: he only loved the ideal that existed in his own heart. His father opposed the mating and hastily transferred the youth from Vienna to Paris; but who ever heard of opposition and argument and forced separation curing love? So matters ran on and letters and messages pa.s.sed, and finally Mozart made his way back to Vienna and with breathless haste sought out the object of his whole heart's love.

She had recently met a man she liked better, and as she could not hold them both, treated Mozart as a stranger, and froze him to the marrow.

He was crushed, undone, and a fit of sickness followed. In his illness, Constance, a younger sister of Aloysia, came to him in pity and nursed him as a child. Very naturally, all the love he had felt for Aloysia was easily and readily transferred to Constance. The tendrils of the heart ruthlessly uprooted cling to the first object that presents itself.

And so Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Constance Weber were married. And they were happy ever afterward. It would have been much better if they had quarreled, but Mozart's gentle, yielding character readily adapted itself to the weaker nature of his wife. In his music she took a sort of blind and deaf delight and guessed its greatness because she loved the man. But when two weak wills combine, the net result is increased weakness--never strength.

Constance was as beautiful a specimen of the slipshod housekeeper as ever piled away breakfast dishes unwashed, or swept dirt under a settee.

If they had money she bought things they did not need, and if there was no money she borrowed provisions and forgot to return the loan.

Irregularity of living, deprivation and hope deferred, made the woman ill and she became a chronic sufferer. But she was ever tended with loving, patient care by the overburdened and underfed husband.

A biographer tells how Mozart would often arise early in the morning to set down some melody in music that he had dreamed out during the night.

On such occasions he would leave a little love-letter for his wife on the stand at the head of the bed, where she would find it on first awakening. One such note, freely translated, runs as follows: "Good-morning, Dear Little Wife. I hope you rested well and had sweet dreams. You were sleeping so peacefully that I dare not kiss your cheek for fear of disturbing you. It is a beautiful morning and a bird outside is singing a song that is in my heart. I am going out to catch the strain and write it down as my own and yours. I shall be back in an hour."

East Aurora: Aloysia married the man of her choice--an actor by the name of Lange. They quarreled right shortly, and soon he used to beat her.

This was endured for a year or more, then she left him. For a while she lived with Wolfgang and Constance, and Mozart, true to his nature, gave her from his own scanty store and deprived himself for her benefit. He stood G.o.dfather to one of her children and was a true friend to her to the last.

After Aloysia lived to be an old woman, and long after Mozart had pa.s.sed out, and the world had begun to utter his praises, she said: "I never for a moment thought he was a genius--I always considered him just a nice little man."

Mozart's soul was filled with melody, and all of his music is faultless and complete. He possessed the artistic conscience to a degree that is unique. Careless and heedless in all else, if his mood was not right and the product was halting, he straightway destroyed the score. He was always at work, always hearing sweet sounds, always weighing and balancing them in the delicate scales of his judgment.

So absorbed was he in his art that he fell an easy victim to the designing, and never stopped his work long enough to strike off the shackles that bound him to a vain, selfish and unappreciative court.

Worn by constant work, worried by his wife's continued illness, dogged by creditors, and unable to get justice from those who owed it to him, his nerves at the early age of thirty-five gave way.

His vitality rapidly declined and at last went out as a candle does when blown upon by a sudden gust from an open door.

It was a bl.u.s.tering winter day in December, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one, when his burial occurred. A little company of friends a.s.sembled, but no funeral-dirge was played for him, save the blast blown through the naked branches of the trees, as they hurried the plain pine coffin to its final resting-place. At the gate of the cemetery the few friends turned back and left the lifeless clay to the old gravedigger, who never guessed the honor thus done him.

It was a pauper's grave that closed over the body of Mozart--coffin piled on coffin, and no one marked the spot. All we know is, that somewhere in Saint Mark's Cemetery, Vienna, was buried in a trench the most accomplished composer and performer the world has ever known. It was a hundred years afterward before the city made tardy amends by erecting a fitting monument to his memory.

His best monument is his work. The melody that once filled his soul is yours and mine; for by his art he made us heirs to all that wealth of love that was never requited, and the dreams, that for him never came true, are our precious and priceless legacy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHANNES BRAHMS]

JOHANNES BRAHMS

What is music? This question occupied my mind for hours last night before I fell asleep. The very existence of music is wonderful, I might even say miraculous. Its domain is between thought and phenomena. Like a twilight mediator, it hovers between spirit and matter, related to both, yet differing from each. It is spirit, but spirit subject to the measurement of time; it is matter, but matter that can dispense with s.p.a.ce.

--_Heine_

JOHANNES BRAHMS

Emerson has said that, next to the man who first voices a great truth, is the one who quotes it.

Truth is in the air; it belongs to all who can appreciate it; and the difference between the man who gives a truth expression and the listener who at once comprehends and repeats it, is very slight. If you understand what I say, it is because you have thought the same thoughts yourself--I merely express for you that which you already know. And so you approve and applaud, not stopping to think that you are applauding your own thought; and your heart beats fast and you say, "Yes, yes, why didn't I say that myself!"

All conversation is a sort of communion--an echoing back and forth of thoughts, feelings and emotions. We clarify our thoughts by expressing them--no idea is quite your own until you tell it to another.

Music is simply one form of expression. Its province is to impart a sublime emotion. To give himself is the controlling impulse in the heart of every artist--to impart to others the joy he feels--this is the dominant motive in his life.

Hence the poet writes, the artist paints, the sculptor models, the singer sings, the musician plays--all is expression--a giving voice to the Silence. But it is all done for others. In ministering to others the artist ministers to himself. In helping others we help ourselves. We grow strong through exercise, and only the faculties that are exercised--that is to say, expressed--become strong. Those not in use atrophy and fall victims to arrested development.

Man is the instrument of Deity--through man does Deity create. And the artist is one who expresses for others their best thoughts and feelings.

He may arouse in men emotions that were dormant, and so were unguessed; but under the spell of the artist-spirit, these dormant faculties are awakened from lethargy--they are exercised, and once the thrill of life is felt through them, they will probably be exercised again and again.

All art is collaboration between the performer and the partaker--music is especially a collaboration. It is a oneness of feeling: action and reaction, an intermittent current of emotion that plays backward and forward between the player and his audience. The player is the positive pole, or masculine principle; and the audience the negative pole, or feminine principle.

In great oratory the same transposition takes place. Almost every one can recall occasions when there was an absolute fusion of thought, feeling and emotion between the speaker and the audience--when one mind dominated all, and every heart beat in unison with his. The great musician is the one who feels intensely, and is able to express vividly, and thus impart his emotion to others.

Robert Schumann was such a man. In his youth, when he played at parlor gatherings he could fuse the listeners into an absolute oneness of spirit. You can not make others feel unless you yourself feel; you can not make others see unless you yourself see. Robert Schumann saw. He beheld the moving pictures, and as they pa.s.sed before him he expressed what he saw in harmonious sounds. His many admirers say he gave "portraits" on the piano, and by sounds would describe certain persons, so others who knew these persons would recognize them and call their names.

Sterndale Bennett has told of Schumann's playing Weber's "Invitation to the Dance," and accompanying it with little verbal explanations of what he saw, thus: "There," said the player as he struck the opening chords, "there, he bows, and so does she--he speaks--she speaks, and oh! what a voice--how liquid! listen--hear the rustle of her gown--he speaks, a little deeper, you notice--you can not hear the words, only their voices blending in with the music--now they speak together--they are lovers, surely--see, they understand--oh! the waltz--see them take those first steps--they are swaying into time--away!--there they go--look!--you can not hear their voices now--only see them!"

Schumann studied law, and had he followed that profession he would have made a master before a jury. He saw so clearly and felt so deeply, and was so full of generosity and bubbling good-cheer, that he was irresistible. As we know, he proved so to Clara Wieck, who left father and mother and home to cleave to this unknown composer.

This splendid young woman was nine years younger than Robert, but she had already made a name and fortune for herself before they were married.

In pa.s.sing it is well enough to call attention to the fact that this is one of the great loves of history. It ranks with the mating of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. How strange that such things are so exceptional that the world takes note of them!

Yet for quite a number of years after their marriage, Madame Schumann was at times asked this question: "Is your husband musical?"

But Robert Schumann, like Robert Browning, was too big a man to be jealous of his wife. Jealousy is an acknowledgment of weakness and insecurity. "Robert and Clara," their many dear friends always called them. They worked together--composed, sang, played, and grew great together. And as if to refute the carping critics who cry that domesticity and genius are incompatible, Clara Schumann became the happy mother of eight children, and not a year pa.s.sed but she appeared upon the concert stage, while a nurse held the baby in the wings. Schumann was very proud of his wife. He was grateful to her for interpreting his songs in a way he could not. His lavish heart went out to every one who expressed the happiness and harmony which he felt singing in his soul.

And so he welcomed all players and all singers, and all who felt the influence of an upward gravitation. Especially was he a friend of the young and the unknown. His home at Dusseldorf was a Mecca for the aspiring--worthy and unworthy--and to these he gave his time, money and influence. "Genius must have recognition--we will discover and bring forth these beautiful souls; we will liberate and give them to the world," he used to say. Not only did he himself express great things, but he quoted others.

Among those who had reverenced the Schumanns from afar, came a young man of twenty, small and fair-haired, from Hamburg. He was received at the regular "Thursday Night" with various other strangers. These meetings were quite informal, and everybody was asked to play or sing. On being invited to play, our young man declined. But on a second visit he sat down at the piano and played. It was several minutes before the company ceased the little buzz of conversation and listened--the fledglings were never taken seriously except by the host and hostess. The youth leaned over the keyboard, and seemed to gather confidence from the sympathetic att.i.tude of the listeners, and especially Clara Schumann, who had come forward and stood at his elbow.

He played from Schumann's "Carnival," and as he played, freedom came to him. He surprised himself. When he ceased playing, Robert kissed his cheek, and the company were vehement in their applause. Next day Schumann met Albert Dietrich, another disciple who had come from a distance to bask in the Schumann sunshine, and said with an air of mystery: "One has come of whom we shall yet hear great things. His name is Johannes Brahms."

We have at least four separate accounts of Brahms' first appearance and behavior when he arrived at the city of Dusseldorf. These descriptions are by Robert and Clara Schumann, Doctor Dieters and Albert Dietrich.

All agree that Johannes Brahms was a most fascinating personality.

Dieters and Dietrich were about the age of Brahms, and were lesser satellites swinging just outside the Schumann orbit. Very naturally when a new devotee appeared, they gazed at him askance. Many visitors were coming and going, and from most of them there was nothing to fear, but when this short, deep-chested boy with flaxen hair appeared, Dietrich felt there was danger of losing his place at the right hand of the Master.