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CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 COMMEMORATION 
 
 OF 
 
 WOLFGANG AMAD^ MOZART. 
 
A RECORD 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 COMMEMORATION 
 
 ON DECEMBER 4 and 5, 1891 
 OF 
 
 WOLFGANG AMADE MOZART 
 
 Born Jan. 27, 1756 — Died Dec. 5, 1791 
 EDITED BY 
 
 SEDLEY TAYLOR, M.A., 
 
 SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 HonOon: 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 AND N^W YORK. 
 
 ■uK'iV „-' .-n Y , 
 
 1892 
 
 IJI:): ,n' 
 
 \The Right of Translation is reserved] 
 Mi 
 
 1^ 
 
CCamlrrilifle: 
 
 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 " I "HE thought that some of those who, whether 
 ■*- as collaborators or as auditors, took part at 
 Cambridge in doing honour to the memory of 
 Mozart on the hundredth anniversary of his death, 
 might care to possess a permanent memento of the 
 occasion, has led me to put together this little 
 record of our proceedings. It contains 
 
 1. A lecture on the life of Mozart delivered by 
 me on Dec. 4, 1891, at the Alexandra Hall. 
 
 2. A programme of sacred music by Mozart 
 performed on Dec. 5, 1891, in the Chapel of 
 Trinity College, by the University Musical 
 Society. 
 
 3. A programme of secular music by Mozart 
 performed on Dec. 5, 1891, in the Hall of 
 Gonville and Caius College, by members of 
 the University Musical Society and of the 
 University Musical Club. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 Some regret was at first felt that a performance 
 of the Requiem Mass was not within our possi- 
 bilities, but this feeling was afterwards more than 
 counterbalanced by satisfaction at having publicly 
 drawn renewed attention to the Mass in F major, 
 a work of Mozart's nineteenth year, the exuberant 
 beauty and musicianly strength of which render it 
 worthy of performance by any choir, while the 
 extreme moderation of its orchestral demands — for 
 only first and second violins, and basses, in ad- 
 dition to the organ — should specially commend it 
 to choral societies situated in non-orchestral neigh- 
 bourhoods. 
 
 From the moment when, as the result of an 
 impulse originally given by Mr C. E. Sayle, the 
 strenuous honorary secretary of the University 
 Musical Club, it was decided that a Mozart Com- 
 memoration should be held in Cambridge, both 
 ' Society ' and ' Club ' worked away with sus- 
 tained energy to secure a satisfactory result. 
 The ne plus ultra of possible self-devotion was, 
 howevei;, I think, reached by Mr W. H. Wing, 
 who sang solo at the morning rehearsal and 
 afternoon performance, and, at the evening con- 
 cert, sang three songs — the last of them in 
 the place of Mr F. Macdonnell, who had kindly 
 consented to sing, but was incapacitated by illness 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 — gave us two encores, one of them being the 
 whole of Non piii andrai, and played on the double- 
 bass in all the other numbers of the programme ! 
 
 We did our best to deserve success : whether 
 we attained it, is for others to say. 
 
 SEDLEY TAYLOR. 
 
 Trinity College, 
 Cambridge. 
 
 Jan. 15, 1892. 
 
A LECTURE 
 
 LIFE OF MOZART 
 
 DELIVERED AT CAMBRIDGE 
 
 On December 4, 1891 
 
 SEDLEY TAYLOR, M.A. 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
A commemoration of a great composer will 
 evidently be entered on with the fullest participa- 
 tion by those who, to delight in his music add 
 knowledge of his life and character. I have 
 thought, therefore, that by throwing together 
 within the limits of a single lecture some leading 
 traits of each of these in the case of Mozart, the 
 centenary of whose death we are to keep to- 
 morrow, I might do a useful service to admirers 
 of his who have not the leisure to collect bio- 
 graphical details about him for themselves. What I 
 have to say is neither new nor the result of original 
 research. I have simply taken the best published 
 biography of Mozart, that by Otto Jahn*, and 
 picked out from its numerous — nearly 1500 — 
 pages such matter as, consecutively presented, 
 might convey some idea of the man whose 
 memory, and whose enduring gifts to all music- 
 loving mankind, we are about to commemorate. 
 
 * 'W.A.Mozart.' Leipzig. Breitkopf und Haertel, 1867, An 
 English translation was published by Messrs Novello, Ewer & Co. 
 in 1882. 
 
 T. I 
 
2 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 The childhood and early youth of most great 
 men rarely make much figure in the pages of 
 their biographers ; presumably because presenting 
 little of special interest. In Mozart's case, the 
 powers which marked his ■ maturity manifested 
 themselves in early childhood with a fulness and 
 intensity apparently unique in musical history. 
 His father, Leopold Mozart, was a violin-player 
 and composer, in the service of the Prince-Arch- 
 bishop of Salzburg (the Austrian counterpart of 
 our own ' Salisbury '). No special musical endow- 
 ment can have come to him from his mother who 
 is described as intellectually insignificant, though 
 a capital Hausfrau of the German type, and 
 wholly devoted to her husband and her children. 
 On the other hand the great composer's invincible 
 light-heartedness and his intense appreciation of 
 the humorous side of life, which come out so 
 delightfully in Figaro and in Don Giovanni, were 
 undoubtedly inherited from his mother, who was 
 fond of cheery enjoyment, and of such modest 
 indulgences as the narrow circumstances of the 
 Mozart household permitted ; and who showed an 
 inclination for broad comedy which, for some 
 reason or other, appears to have specially charac- 
 terised the inhabitants of the archiepiscopal city. 
 
 Only two out of seven children born to the 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 3 
 
 Herr Kapellmeister survived infancy, Maria Anna 
 Walburga Ignatia, born June 30, 1751, and Johan- 
 nes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Theophilus, born Jan. 
 27. 1756. In both cases this well-nigh Royal 
 profusion of Christian names underwent substan- 
 tial reduction. The girl was known in the family 
 as " Nannerl," the Austrian equivalent of our 
 'Nanny,' the boy as "Wolfgang" or "Wolfgangerl." 
 'Johannes' and 'Chrysostomus' rarely appeared 
 afterwards even in the composer's signature, and 
 for 'Theophilus' he early substituted the better 
 sounding Italian equivalent 'Ahiadeo.' He usually 
 signed himself ' Wolfgang Amad6 Mozart' 
 
 Nannerl, who, as has been seen, was about 
 four years older than Wolfgang, showed so decided 
 a talent for music that her father began very early 
 to give her pianoforte lessons. This made a great 
 impression on the boy, who was then about three 
 years old ; he used to get to the pianoforte, where 
 he could amuse himself for a long time in hunting 
 out pairs of notes making Thirds with each other, 
 which he then struck together, with manifestations 
 of delight at his discovery. In his fourth year his 
 father taught him at the pianoforte a few minuets 
 and other little pieces: in a short time Wolfgang 
 could play them with the most perfect neatness 
 and in most accurate time. By the end of his 
 
 I — 2 
 
4 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 fourth year he was able to learn a simple minuet 
 and trio in half-an-hour. 
 
 The desire to compose soon showed itself. In 
 his fifth year Wolfgang produced little pieces, 
 which he played to his father and got him to write 
 down. One of these, which, with a few similar 
 pieces belonging to his sixth year, has happily 
 been preserved to us, seems to me to have all the 
 interest of a child's portrait in which the linea- 
 ments of the grown man's face are already discern- 
 ible. The special Mozartean combination of grace, 
 balance and melodious suavity is, to my apprehen- 
 sion, unmistakably perceptible in this infantine 
 production*. 
 
 As early as Wolfgang's fifth year his father 
 began taking the two children long journeys in 
 order to make private and public exhibitions of 
 their talents and acquirements, a system which 
 he pursued at intervals during the next four years 
 or so. One of the first of these journeys was to 
 the Austrian Court, where the Emperor Francis I., 
 who was an excellent musician, took great interest 
 in putting the powers of the "little magician,'' 
 as he called Wolfgang, to all sorts of tests. The 
 child showed himself quite at ease in the imperial 
 circle, jumped upon the Empress' lap and, throwing 
 * See Appendix, pp. 50, 51. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. S 
 
 his arms round her neck, gave her a thoroughly 
 unceremonious kiss ; he further declared his inten- 
 tion of marrying one of the young Archduchesses, 
 who had good humouredly helped him up when he 
 had fallen on the slippery polished floor. When 
 one of the Archdukes, who afterwards became the 
 Emperor Joseph II., took part in a duet with one 
 of the Court musicians, Wolfgang sat among the 
 auditors in the Antechamber, and gave utterance 
 to his opinion of the performance by crying at 
 one moment " Bravo!" and at another " Ugh ! that 
 was wrong." 
 
 We possess first-hand evidence of the extra- 
 ordinary progress which the child had made by the 
 beginning of his seventh year, in a letter written 
 long afterwards to his sister by an intimate friend 
 of the Mozart family, a trumpet-player in the 
 Salzburg orchestra named Schachtner, who was 
 also a violinist and had had a good literary educa- 
 tion. His letter is well worth reading from be- 
 ginning to end, but its length obliges me to content 
 myself with a few, and those abridged, extracts. 
 
 " Here " he writes " are a few curious prodigies 
 belonging to the time when he was from four to 
 five years old, to the truth of which I can take my 
 xoath. 
 
 Having gone with your father to his house one 
 
6 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 day after service in the cathedral, we found the 
 four-year-old Wolfgangerl busy with a pen. 
 
 ' Papa : What are you about ? 
 
 Wolfgang : A concerto for the pianoforte ; the 
 first part is nearly finished, 
 
 Papa : Let me see it. 
 
 Wolfgang : It is 'nt finished yet. 
 
 Papa : Let me see it ; a pretty piece of work 
 that must be ! ' 
 
 Your father took it out of his hand and showed 
 me a jumble of notes which were written, for the 
 most part, over smeared-out ink-blots. The little 
 Wolfgangerl plunged his pen each time to the 
 bottom of the inkstand, and, when the inevitable 
 blot fell on the paper, rubbed it over the surface 
 with the flat of his hand and went on writing upon 
 it. We laughed at first at this seeming jumble, but 
 your father then began to examine the composition 
 itself. He remained for some time intently absorbed 
 in the. sheet of music-paper; at length two tears of 
 astonishment and joy fell from his eyes. Look, Herr 
 Schachtner, he said, how correct and workmanlike 
 the whole thing is, save for its being quite unplay- 
 ably difficult. That's because it is a CONCERTO, 
 broke in Wolfgangerl: it must be practised till it 
 goes. His idea at that time was that to play a 
 concerto and to work miracles were the same thing." 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 7 
 
 " You will remember," continues Herr Schacht- 
 ner's letter, " that I possess a very good violin 
 which, on account of its soft and full tone, Wolf- 
 gangerl always called ' butterfiddle.' Once, soon 
 after you came back from Vienna (beginning of 
 1763) he played upon it and could not praise it 
 enough : a day or two afterwards I came again to 
 pay him a visit, and found him amusing himself 
 with his own violin : he said at once : What is 
 your butterfiddle doing ? and then went on playing 
 out of his head : at last he reflected for a little 
 time, and then said to me : Herr Schachtner, your 
 fiddle is tuned a quarter of a semi-tone lower than 
 mine, if you left it tuned as it was when I last 
 played on it. I laughed at this, but your father, 
 who knew the child's extraordinary perception of 
 pitch, and memory, asked me to fetch my fiddle 
 and see whether what he said was right. I did so, 
 and it was right. 
 
 A little before this, in the first days after you 
 were back from Vienna, and Wolfgangerl had 
 brought with him a little violin which he had got 
 as a present there, our very good violinist Herr 
 Wenzel, who was a beginner' in composition, 
 brought six Trios which he had written during 
 your father's absence, and asked for his opinion 
 upon them. We played these Trios, your father 
 
8 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 taking the bass part on his viola, and Wenzel the 
 first violin. Wolfgang asked that he might be 
 allowed to play the second violin, but your father 
 refused to let him attempt what, as he had not yet 
 had any violin teaching at all, he was presumably 
 quite incapable of performing. Wolfgang said : 
 In order to play a second violin there is no occasion 
 to have had lessons beforehand, and when Papa 
 thereupon insisted that he should at once go away 
 and not disturb us any more, he began to cry 
 bitterly and took himself and his little fiddle off". 
 I begged that he might be allowed to play, and at 
 last Papa said : Play with Herr Schachtner, but so 
 softly that we don't hear you, or else you must go. 
 This was done, Wolfgang played with me. I soon 
 remarked with astonishment that I was entirely 
 superfluous, and quietly laid my fiddle aside: in 
 this way Wolfgang played all six of the Trios. 
 When we had finished, our applause emboldened 
 him so much that he maintained he could also 
 play the first violin. We made, for fun's sake, an 
 attempt, and almost died of laughing when he 
 played this too, in such a way that, in spite of 
 quite wrong and irregular fingering, he never came 
 quite to a stand-still." 
 
 The first published work of the young genius 
 was a set of four sonatas for pianoforte and violin, 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 9 
 
 composed by him, as stated on the title-page, in 
 his seventh year. That not every one would 
 believe them to be his work, was, his father frankly 
 admitted, reasonable enough. Indeed with respect 
 to the whole group of precocious achievements 
 attributed to him in his childhood, the most 
 astounding of which have now been laid before 
 you, there would, but for a most fortunate circum- 
 stance to which I shall immediately advert, be 
 some ground for scepticism, in the fact that we 
 hear of these achievements only through members, 
 or close friends, of his own family, by whom they 
 might easily have been unconsciously exaggerated. 
 
 Nothing, therefore, can ht more satisfactory 
 than to find that when, in 1764, the course of one 
 of the Mozart family's musical tours had brought 
 them to this country, a Fellow of the Royal 
 Society, the hon. Daines Barrington, proceeded, 
 in a manner which showed him to be imbued with 
 the best traditions of that illustrious body, to 
 submit Wolfgang's powers and acquirements to a 
 series of rigorous and absolutely decisive experi- 
 ments. These and their result he communicated 
 to the Royal Society in a; letter which is to be 
 found in the Philosophical Transactions for 1770*. 
 
 " If," begins Mr Barrington, in a sentence well 
 * PP- 54—64- 
 
lO CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 calculated to arrest the attention of non-musical 
 colleagues, " I was to send you a well-attested 
 account of a boy who measured seven feet in 
 height, when he was not more than eight years of 
 age, it might be considered as not undeserving the 
 notice of the Royal Society. 
 
 The instance which I now desire you* will 
 communicate to that learned body, of as early an 
 exertion of most extraordinary musical talents, 
 seems perhaps equally to clain their attention." 
 
 After a few introductory words about little 
 Mozart's reputed achievements, Mr Barrington 
 continues : 
 
 " Upon leaving Paris, he came over to England, 
 where he continued more than a year. As during 
 this time I was witness of his most extraordinary 
 abilities as a musician, both at some public concerts 
 and likewise by having been alone with him for a 
 considerable time at his father's house; I send 
 you the following account, amazing and incredible 
 almost as it may appear. 
 
 I carried to him a manuscript duet, which 
 was composed by an English gentleman to some 
 favourite words in Metastasio's opera of Demo- 
 foonte. 
 
 * The letter is formally addressed to the Secretary of the Royal 
 Society. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. II 
 
 The whole score was in five parts, viz. accom- 
 paniments for a first and second violin, the two 
 vocal parts, and a base {sic). The parts for the 
 voices were written in the Contralto cleff. 
 
 My intention in carrying with me this Manu- 
 script composition, was to have an irrefragable 
 proof of his abilites {sic) as a player at sight, it 
 being absolutely impossible that he could have 
 ever seen the music before. 
 
 The score was no sooner put upon his desk, 
 than he began to play the symphony in a most 
 masterly manner, as well as in the time and stile 
 which corresponded with the intention of the 
 composer. 
 
 I mention this circumstance, because the great- 
 est masters often fail in these particulars on the 
 first trial. 
 
 The symphony ended, he took the upper part, 
 leaving the under one to his father. 
 
 His voice in the tone of it was thin and infantinfe, 
 but nothing could exceed the masterly manner in 
 which he sung. 
 
 His father, who took the under par.t in this duet, 
 was once or twice out, though the passages were 
 not more difficult than those in the upper one ; on 
 which occasions the son looked back with some 
 anger, pointing out to him his mistakes, and setting 
 him right. 
 
12 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 He not only, however, did complete justice to 
 the duet, by singing his own part in the truest 
 taste, and with the greatest precision, he also threw 
 in the accompaniments of the two violins, wherever 
 they were most necessary, and produced the best 
 effects. 
 
 It is well known that none but the most capital 
 musicians are capable of accompanying in this 
 superior stile." 
 
 After having, by a most happily-chosen illus- 
 tration, explained for the benefit of non-musical 
 F. R. S.s the nature of the difficulties surmounted 
 in such a performance at first sight from the 
 score, Mr Harrington continues as follows : 
 
 " When he had finished the duet, he expressed 
 himself highly in its approbation, asking with some 
 eagerness whether I had brought any more such 
 music. 
 
 Having been informed, however, that he was 
 often visited with musical ideas, to which, even in 
 the midst of the night, he would give utterance on 
 his harpsichord : I told his father that I should 
 be glad to hear some of his extemporary compo- 
 sitions. 
 
 The father shook his head at this, saying, that 
 it depended entirely upon his being as it were 
 musically inspired, but that I might ask him 
 whether he was in humour for such a composition. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 1 3 
 
 Happening to know that little Mozart was 
 much taken notice of by Manzoli, {sic) the famous 
 singer, who came over to England in 1764, I said 
 to the boy that I should be glad to hear an 
 extemporary Love Song, such as his friend Manzoli 
 might choose in an opera. 
 
 The boy on this (who continued to sit at his 
 harpsichord) looked back with much archness, and 
 immediately began five or six lines of a jargon 
 recitative proper to introduce a love song. 
 
 He then played a symphony which might 
 correspond with an air composed to the single 
 word Affetto*- 
 
 It had a first and second part, which, together 
 with the symphonies, was of the length that opera 
 songs generally last : if this extemporary compo- 
 sition was not amazingly capital, yet it was really 
 above mediocrity, and showed most extraordinary 
 readiness of invention. 
 
 Finding that he was in humour, and as it were 
 inspired, I then desired him to compose a Song of 
 Rage, such as might be proper for the opera stage. 
 
 The boy again looked back with much archness, 
 and began five or six lines of a jargon recitative 
 proper to precede a Song of Anger. 
 
 * By this I take to be meant that the boy sang this one word 
 over and over again as the text of his song. 
 
14 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 This lasted about the same time with the Song 
 of Love ; and, in the middle of it, he had worked 
 himself up to such a pitch, that he beat his 
 harpsichord like a person possessed, rising some- 
 times in his chair. 
 
 The word he pitched upon for this second ex- 
 temporary composition was, Perfido*. After this 
 he played a difficult lesson, which he had finished 
 a day or two before : his execution was amazing, 
 considering that his little fingers could scarcely 
 reach a fifth on the harpsichord. 
 
 His astonishing readiness, however, did not 
 arise merely from great practice : he had a 
 thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles 
 of composition, as, upon producing a treble, he 
 immediately wrote a base {sic) under it, which, 
 when tried, had a very good effect. 
 
 He was also a great master of modulation, 
 and his transitions from one key to another were 
 excessively natural and judicious ; he practised in 
 this manner for a considerable time with an hand- 
 kerchief over the keys of the harpsichord. 
 
 Witness as I was myself of these extraordinary 
 facts, I must own that I could not help suspecting 
 that his father imposed with regard to the real age 
 
 * See preceding note. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 1 5 
 
 of the boy, though he had not only a most childish 
 appearance, but likewise had all the actions of that 
 stage of life. 
 
 For example, whilst he was playing to me, a 
 favourite cat came in, upon which he immediately 
 left his harpsichord, nor could we bring him back 
 for a considerable time. 
 
 He would also sometimes run about the room 
 with a stick between his legs by way of horse. 
 
 I found likewise that most of the London 
 musicians were of the same opinion with regard 
 to his age, not believing it possible that a child 
 of so tender years could surpass most of the 
 masters in that science.'' 
 
 Mr Harrington then tells how, in order to clear 
 up this one suspicious point, he procured, through 
 the Bavarian Ambassador in London, a certified 
 copy of the register of little Mozart's birth, from 
 which it appeared that his father had not " imposed 
 with regard to the boy's age," which was, at the 
 time when Mr Barrington saw him (June, 1765), 
 only eight years and five months, as his father 
 represented it. 
 
 The absolutely unassailable evidence provided 
 for us by Mr Barrington's investigations, of what 
 Mozart could do at eight and a half, makes it only 
 reasonable to infer that he could do correspond- 
 
l6 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 ingly surprising things at an earlier age, and thus 
 removes all ground for disbelief in the substantial 
 truth of the accounts of his infantine achievements 
 which have come down to us from actual witnesses 
 of them. 
 
 The Mozart family's three years' European 
 tour ended in November 1766: the two children 
 returned to their home at Salzburg covered with 
 musical laurels and, apparently, quite unspoiled 
 by the most unbounded outpourings upon them 
 of public and private laudation, accompanied by 
 enough presents to have stocked a small shop. 
 
 Wolfgang, now eleven years old, worked away 
 steadily with his excellent father at both practice 
 and theory. Archbishop Sigismund, who found it 
 impossible to believe in the powers of composition 
 attributed to the boy, is said to have had little 
 Mozart brought to his palace and kept there for a 
 whole week, during which time he was not allowed 
 to see anyone,- and had to compose an oratorio 
 the text for which was archiepiscopally supplied. 
 Wolfgang completed, under these conditions, the 
 work required of him, which was received at its 
 performance with general approval. The score 
 shows, says Jahn, in manifold blots, and words 
 spelt according to the Salzburg local orthography, 
 unmistakable marks of boyish work, while the 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 1 7 
 
 music itself appears to be that of a mature 
 man. 
 
 In 1768, when he was in his twelfth year, 
 Wolfgang performed another astonishing feat. An 
 influential Jesuit priest at Vienna had obtained for 
 him the commission to compose a mass for the 
 solemn dedication of the church of the Waisenfiaus, 
 or orphan-asylum, there. The work was laid out 
 for soli, chorus and orchestra. It was performed 
 on Dec. 7, 1768, in the presence of the Emperor 
 and the imperial Court. Wolfgang himself con- 
 ducted, bdton in hand, with the greatest accuracy, 
 and sang in the motets into the bargain "amidst 
 geraeral approval and astonishment," as a Viennese 
 newspaper wrote a co'uple of days afterwards. 
 
 This success led to another, for the Salzburg 
 Archbishop now ' commanded ' the performance of 
 an opera buffa which Wolfgang had composed a 
 year before at Vienna. It took place in a theatre 
 specially rigged up in the palace of the Prince- 
 Archbishop, who thereupon publicly recognised 
 the merits of its composer by bestowing on him 
 the title of Concertmeister, in which capacity his 
 name is duly enrolled in the Salzburg Court-Calen- 
 dar of 1770. 
 
 With the close of the year 1769 begins a period 
 which had a most important bearing on the develop- 
 T. 2 
 
l8 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 ment of Wolfgang's genius, indeed fixed some of 
 its most delightful characteristics. Between De- 
 cember 1769 and March 1773 his father took him 
 three times to Italy where they spent, in all, more 
 than two entire years. During this period, which 
 was occupied alternately by journeys, and by so- 
 journs in the most musically active cities, Wolfgang 
 was brought into personal relations with, practically, 
 every famous musician in Italy, heard all the music 
 that was best worth hearing, and drank in those 
 inexpressibly benign influences of sky and air and 
 hill and lake — of august memories and delightfully 
 ardent human beings — which Goethe has fixed for 
 us, so far as poetry can do it, in immortal lines : 
 
 Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluhn, 
 Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-orangen gliihn, 
 Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himtnel weht, 
 Die Myrte still, und hoch d'er Lorbeer steht, 
 Kennst du es wohl? 
 
 Knowest thou the land where the pale citron grows. 
 And the gold orange through dark foliage glows? 
 A soft wind flutters from the deep-blue sky. 
 The myrtle blooms, and towers the laurel high, 
 Knowest thou it well? 
 
 (Aytoun and Martin's translation.) 
 
 Those who now hear Figaro, or Don Giovanni, 
 can still feel the sweet Italian air which lapped 
 their composer in his boyhood, breathing out in 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 1 9 
 
 balmy fragrance in these immortal productions of 
 his prime. 
 
 A few incidents from Wolfgang's happy Italian 
 time must suffice to us here. One of them, his 
 writing down from memory the notes of Allegri's 
 Miserere, has obtained a great celebrity. The 
 work rh question, which is written alternately for a 
 four-part and five-part, and at last for a nine-part, 
 choir, was always sung on the Wednesday, and 
 again on the Friday, of Holy Week by the Papal 
 choir in the Sistine chapel. The members of the 
 choir were — so wrote Leopold Mozart home to his 
 wife — prohibited, on pain of excommunication, 
 from taking the music out of the chapel, or making 
 or giving away copies from it. After the Wednes- 
 day performance Wolfgang put on paper his recol- 
 lections of the music, and, at the repetition of the 
 work on Good Friday, he held the manuscript 
 inside his hat and corrected a few passages where 
 his memory had not been quite true to him. When, 
 afterwards, he was asked, at a social gathering, to 
 play over the version of Allegri's Miserere thus 
 obtained, and one of the Papal singers, who was 
 present, admitted its correspondence with the 
 original, this feat of memory excited general 
 astonishment. At Salzburg the arrival of the 
 news caused his mother and sister some conster- 
 
 2 — 2 
 
20 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 nation, as both were persuaded that, in taking 
 down the Miserere, he had committed a sin against 
 the Church, which, on the affair becoming known 
 to the Papal authorities, would get him into serious 
 trouble. A second letter from Leopold Mozart 
 must, however, have reassured them. "When we 
 read your remarks about the Miserere" he wrote, 
 " neither of us could help bursting out laughing. 
 There is nothing in the affair to cause the slightest 
 uneasiness.... All Rome, and even the Pope himself, 
 know that Wolfgang has written down the Miserere. 
 There is nothing at all to fear, on the contrary the 
 achievement has brought him great honour. You 
 are to be sure to let everybody read the letter, and 
 to take care that his High-Princely Grace (the 
 Archbishop) hears of it." A few months later the 
 Pope received Wolfgang in person and gave him a 
 decoration, the cross of the golden spur, which 
 carried with it the title of Cavaliere. 
 
 The Academia filarmonica of Bologna, a famous 
 society then more than a hundred years old, 
 invited Wolfgang to become a candidate for ad- 
 mission to membership as a maestro compositore, 
 for which purpose they specially relaxed their rule 
 requiring candidates to be 20 years old, but by no 
 means the rigour of their musical examination. 
 At 4 p.m. on the 9th of October, 1770, he had to 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 21 
 
 present himself in the academic hall. There the 
 Princeps academicz and the two Censors (both old 
 maestri di capella) gave him, in the presence of all 
 the members, an Antiphon which, in a side room 
 whither he was ushered, and the door shut upon 
 him, by the Bedell, he was to set to : music for four 
 voices. When he had finished the composition, it 
 was examined by the Censors and all the other 
 members present, and then voted upon by ballot. 
 As all the balls came out white, Wolfgang was 
 summoned ; and, after the Princeps academics had 
 announced to him his acceptance by the society, 
 there were great clappings of hands and congratu- 
 lations. Poor Leopold Mozart was, all this time, 
 ruthlessly kept shut up in the ' academical library ' 
 on the opposite side of the hall, and thus lost the 
 pleasure of seeing his son take his degree, or what 
 corresponded to it, at fourteen years of age. 
 
 A few months later, Wolfgang's opera Mitridate 
 was produced at Milan, the composer conducting, 
 and was entirely successful, the enthusiastic and 
 kindly Italians setting up, after nearly every song, 
 an "astonishing" clapping of ha;nds, and shouts 
 of Evviva il Maestro, Evviva il Mciestrino — the 
 charming Italian diminutive of Maestro. 
 
 The last of the three Italian tourt ended in 
 March 1773. A new ecclesiastical and temporal 
 
22 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 ruler, Hieronymiis, had now succeeded at Salzburg 
 to Sigismund, the Archbishop of Wolfgang's child- 
 hood and boyhood. There appears to be some 
 doubt whether, under the former prelate, his ap- 
 pointment of Concertmeister brought him any 
 regular salary : under the latter it was fixed at 
 the modest sum of £i^ per annum. The next 
 four-and-a-half years, from March 1773 to October 
 1777, the bulk of which he spent in active duty 
 at Salzburg, could hardly have been applied under 
 conditions better suited to further the develop- 
 ment of his genius. Returning from Italy with a 
 complete mastery over the forms of composition 
 as then practised, and full of ideas how to throw 
 new life and beauty into them, what he next 
 wanted was a field in which to put these ideas 
 to the test of continuous practical experimentation. 
 The choral and instrumental resources of the 
 Archbishop of Salzburg's musiciansj applied to 
 sacred purposes in his cathedral as spiritual, and 
 to secular ones in his palace as temporal, ruler^ 
 offered precisely such a field. Indeed they did 
 more than this; they supplied a stimulus and 
 even exercised some coercive pressure in the 
 direction of progress. 
 
 " The Kapellmeisters and organists," writes Jahn, 
 " did not confine themselves to directing perform- 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 23 
 
 ances of Church music ; they made it a paint of 
 honour that the music performed at solemn services 
 should itself be their own work." He adds that 
 on the great festivals of the Church new composi- 
 tions were regarded as indispensable, and that 
 during the rest of the year, too, provision for 
 variety was made by means of new music, both 
 sacred and secular. 
 
 How richly our young composer's genius sup- 
 plied, and outran, such demands is shown by the 
 works which he produced during this invaluable 
 period of final preparation, at the close of which, 
 in his twenty-first year, he stood before the world 
 with fully matured powers of composition — as the 
 greatest living performer on the harpsichord — and 
 as a first-class virtuoso on the organ and on the 
 violin. We, too, are bound to recognise this de- 
 velopment, which obliges me henceforth to speak 
 no longer of the delightful boy, Wolfgang, but of 
 the distinguished man, Mozart. 
 
 It was now plainly to be desired, in the highest 
 interests of music, that our composer should pass 
 from the necessarily confined limits of a small 
 ecclesiastical principality. Nevertheless his depar- 
 ture from Salzburg would probably not have taken 
 place anything like so soon as it did, but for the 
 action of Archbishop Hieronymus. From the first 
 
24 ■ ■ CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 accession of this prelate to the sovereignty there 
 seems to have been no love lost between him and 
 his Salzburgian subjects. When, at his election 
 by the capitular conclave, the name ' Hieronymus ' 
 was proclaimed from the balcony of the chapter- 
 house, the crowd beneath, who were ahxiously 
 awaiting the result, received it with absolute dis- 
 may. The first solemn entry, too, of the new 
 sovereign into his cathedral was marked by a 
 significant incident. While the assembled spec- 
 tators maintained a gloomy silence, a single street- 
 boy amused himself by setting up a cheer : " You 
 young scoundrel" said a respectable citizen, ac- 
 companying these words with a box-on-the-ear, 
 " do you cheer while the people weep ? " 
 
 The relation which grew out of this beginning 
 was one of dislike on the part of the people, 
 and of systematically manifested contempt for 
 them on that of the ruler. One' of his ways of 
 making them feel this lay in addressing even his 
 owns privy councillors^-in fact everybody except 
 members" of the high nobility-^in the peremptory 
 third person singular, instead, of in the courteous 
 third person plural — as Er instead of as Sie. 
 Whenever he intervenes in Mozart's affairs, it is 
 with some trait of meanness,' jealousy, or over^ 
 bearing rudeness. For some reason or other the 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 25 
 
 Archbishop took a dislike to the young composer, 
 and on one occasion told him that he knew 
 nothing of his art and had better go to the 
 Conservatoire at Naples in order to learn some- 
 thing there. 
 
 From early in 1775 until September 1777, 
 Mozart had not left Salzburg. It was thus be- 
 coming imperatively necessary, if his reputation 
 was not to be allowed to fade into oblivion, 
 that he should again undertake a journey in order 
 to show himself in public as a composer and 
 executive artist. A petition for leave of ^absence 
 for father and son was accordingly presented to 
 the Archbishop, who, however, flatly refused it 
 on the ground that he could not put up with 
 "these mendicant tours" — this from a Prince- 
 Ecclesiastic who presumably saw nothing wrong 
 in keeping Mozart's annual salary at £1$' ^nd 
 in never giving him a farthing — I mean a Kreuzer 
 — for all the compositions with which he had 
 enriched the Salzburg repertoire. This refusal 
 was more than Mozart Would brook: he applied 
 for his discharge from the Archbishop's . service, 
 which was at once given him in the most un- 
 gracious terms. It wa:s at first expected that the 
 Archbishop's displeasure would lead him to dis- 
 miss the elder Mozart from his post of Kapell- 
 
26 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 meister, but this was not done, and he remained 
 in the Archbishop's service to the end of his 
 days. 
 
 On Sept. 23, 1777 — a month after the occur- 
 rences just described — a travelling-carriage, loaded 
 with luggage for an absence of long duration, 
 carried Mozart and his mother from Salzburg. 
 The Kapellmeister, prevented, by the Archbishop's 
 refusal of leave of absence, from himself accom- 
 panying his son, whose total inability to deal 
 with the outside world in practical, and more 
 especially in money, matters, nevertheless made the 
 help of some more or less business-like companion 
 quite indispensable, had painfully screwed himself 
 up to the sacrifice involved in sending away his 
 wife to act in that capacity, while he and his 
 daughter remained at home. When the carriage 
 had driven away, the poor Kapellmeister tottered 
 upstairs and threw himself into an arm-chair ; 
 then, suddenly remembering that in the struggle 
 to avoid breaking down during the parting he 
 had forgotten to give to his son his paternal 
 blessing, he rushed, too late, to the window to 
 wave it after him. Poor Nannerl burst into a 
 paroxysm of tears, and remained for a long time 
 quite inconsolable. 
 
 The immediate purpose for which this journey 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 27 
 
 was undertaken — that Mozart might obtain some 
 permanent musical appointment by which to Hve, 
 or, failing, that, might make some money — was far 
 from being attained. Not only was no appointment 
 obtained and no money made, but, in order to 
 defray the cost of travelling and of living in hotels, 
 the Kapellmeister, whose own income was very 
 small, found it necessary to place his shrunken 
 household on a footing of the most rigid economy, 
 and even to go heavily into debt, under the degra- 
 dation of which this singularly upright man 
 evidently suffered long and acutely. After a year 
 and a quarter spent at Munich, Augsburg, Mann- 
 heim and Paris, Mozart had, financially speaking, 
 attained nothing : at Paris he was overtaken by 
 calamity, in the death of his mother, whom he lost 
 after a few days' illness. 
 
 At the beginning of 1779 he was compelled by 
 sheer want of money to submit to the humiliation 
 of returning to the service of the insufferable 
 Archbishop of Salzburg, who, having meantime 
 found out what he had lost by Mozart's absence, 
 now offered him the principal organ-appointment 
 and that of second Kapellmeister under his father, 
 with an income of £'i.oo a year, and under 
 endurable conditions as to leave of absence. 
 
 A considerable series of sacred and secular 
 
2S CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 compositions marked the short period of this 
 renewed service. 
 
 In the spring of 178 1 Mozart received the 
 Archbishop's commands to accompany him, as 
 one of his personal suite, during a forthcoming 
 visit to the Imperial Court at Vienna. On getting 
 there he was soon made acquainted with further 
 unwelcome traits in the character of his archi- 
 episcopal sovereign. 
 
 Hieronymus set his Court musicians to dine 
 at the same table with his valets and his cooks, 
 whose "stupid coarse jokes" reduced Mozart to a 
 disgusted silence. 
 
 At whatever parties the Archbishop attended 
 his musicians had to exhibit their skill, but his 
 "frugal mind" was shown by absence of all 
 remuneration for these services, except apparently, 
 as far as Mozart was concerned, on a single 
 occasion. When, too, a number of Viennese ladies 
 offered to sell tickets themselves for Mozart, if he 
 woiild give a concert of his own, the Archbishop 
 refused him the requisite leave. 
 
 A storm was meantime brewing which was 
 presently to blow Mozart straight out of the 
 Salzburg haven in which we saw him forced to 
 take refuge uiider stress of financial bad weather. 
 For some unexplained reason, which is commonly 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 29 
 
 found in the Archbishop's jealousy of his own 
 Kapellmeister, Mozart had by this time got com- 
 pletely into his bad books. Hieronymus, after 
 having on two occasions expressed to him per- 
 sonally, in terms which had at least the merit of 
 frankness, a decidedly low View of his character, 
 finally sent a footman to him . with a verbal 
 message to the effect that he was to pack up his 
 things afid return to Salzburg by the next diligence. 
 The Archbishop was, it is true, himself intending 
 to quit Vienna, but the other musicians of his suite 
 were assigned a later date for their journey ; 
 Mozart alone was ordered to go at once. 
 
 As he found it practically out of the question 
 to break every engagement he had made in 
 Vienna, Mozart, on being thus summarily ejected 
 from the quarters hitherto provided for him, threw 
 himself on the hospitality of a friend, and made 
 his arrangements to leave Vienna in the course of 
 four or five days. The Archbishop, irritated by 
 this delay, sent for Mozart who, in a letter to his 
 father, gives the following account of what followed. 
 " Archbishop. Well ! when, then, is he going, 
 fellow } — I : I wanted to go to-night, but the 
 diligence was already full*. On that he said in 
 
 * This, I am sorry to say, was an unworthy fib intended to 
 ward off the Archbishop's anger. 
 
30 CfAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 one breath that I was the most dissipated fellow 
 he knew ; that no human being served him so 
 badly as I, that he advised me to start that^ very- 
 day or he would write home to have my salary 
 stopped — there was no chance of getting in a word, 
 it was like a house on fire. I listened to it all 
 
 quite calmly., he called me a ragamuffin, 
 
 a noisome* lout, dregs — O, I can't write it all to 
 you. At last my blood got too much stirred and 
 I said : Is, then, Your High Princely Grace not 
 content with me ? — What ? Does he mean to 
 threaten me ? he dregs ! O he dregs ! there is the 
 door ! I will have nothing more to do with such a 
 wretched fellow! — At last I said : and I also nothing 
 more with you — Then go he." And go Mozart 
 accordingly did. For some time he found it 
 impracticable to gain access to the Archbishop in 
 order to obtain his formal release, and at last, on 
 his presenting himself in the Antechamber for that 
 purpose, the High Chamberlain, Count Arco, after 
 roundly abusing him, kickedf him out of the 
 
 * The Archbishop employed a specific term of abuse, which I 
 have preferred to generalize rather than to translate. 
 
 t The translatress of Jahn's book for the English edition 
 represents (Vol. II. p. 185) Count Arco as having "pushed" 
 Mozart "tovifards the door vfith his foot." It would be interesting 
 to learn how she supposes this operation, which involves obvious 
 mechanical difficulties, to have been performed. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 3 1 
 
 apartment — whether with or without previous 
 archiepiscopal sanction is not known. Mozart 
 was at first bent on returning this uncourtly farewell 
 in kind, but he allowed himself to be dissuaded 
 by his father, who was alarmed at the possible 
 consequences of such an application to the person 
 of " a noble gentleman and Count" 
 
 It is part of the calm irony of history that, for 
 you and me, neither His High-Princely Grace 
 Archbishop Hieronymus, nor the noble Count 
 Arco, his High Chamberlain, would have had any 
 existence at all but for their having come into 
 contact with that " ragamuffin," that " noisome 
 lout" the Kapellmeister W. A. Mozart, among 
 whose other memorials they are incidentally 
 preserved, like flies — and uncommonly ugly ones 
 too — in the amber of his fame. 
 
 After Mozart's deliverance from the Salzburg 
 house of bondage, nearly eleven years of life 
 remained to him. They were spent almost entirely 
 at Vienna, and presented but few active incidents 
 beyond the production of one immortal work after 
 another — events which, though full of important 
 consequence for- the progress of music, must be 
 narrated in full detail, if they are to escape being 
 reduced to an insufferably dull chronicle of last re- 
 hearsals and first performances. Much of Mozart's 
 
32 . CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 « 
 
 private life during these years was a miserable 
 struggle with a penury partly, no doubt, due to 
 adverse circumstances beyond his control, but 
 still more, I fear, to an easy-going open-handedness, 
 and even recklessness, in money-matters which his 
 pecuniary circumstances were far from warranting 
 and which was, therefore, in his case, distinctly cul- 
 pable. He lived in an atmosphere of duns, whose 
 attentions, when they became too pressing, had to 
 be staved off by payments on account, money for 
 which was obtained by endless entreaties for loans 
 addressed by Mozart to his private friends. 
 
 How, under circumstances so humiliating, he 
 should have been, able to pour forth compositions 
 radiant with a sunshine in which posterity has 
 never ceased to bask, is a crux explicable in some 
 measure by the fact that in the wide circle of his 
 musical friends he found a delightfully cheery 
 society competitively eager to secure even a few 
 minutes of his presence, and where the joys of 
 musical and artistic cameraderie drove away, for a 
 time, the shadows of dunning creditors, and fired 
 his creative energies into a fresh glow. Amidst 
 such anxieties, and such joys, masterpieces like 
 Figaro, Don Giovanni, the Zauberflote and the 
 Symphonies in E flat, G minor and C major, came 
 into the world. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 33 
 
 I have no time now to say a word about them, 
 but must pass at once to the close of their author's 
 life, which itself I can only epitomize. 
 
 He died, after but a fortnight of acute illness, 
 very early in the morning of Dec. 5, 1791. The 
 assiduity of his medical attendant may be gauged 
 by the circumstance that he went to the theatre 
 on the eve of Mozart's death, and when, after a 
 long hunt, he was found there by a messenger 
 sent by his dying patient's wife, refused to budge 
 before the end of the piece. 
 
 A sister-in-law, who was despatched to the 
 clergy of St Peter's church to beg one of them to 
 " look in upon Mozart as if by chance," reported 
 that they had for a long time refused, and that it 
 had cost her great trouble to secure the attendance 
 of one of these " inhuman clerics." Several hours 
 before his death Mozart had lost consciousness, 
 but his last wanderings appear to have been 
 connected with the Requiem, for he puffed out his 
 cheeks and seemed trying to convey a particular 
 effect of the kettle drums. Towards midnight 
 he raised himself up, his eyes were fixed, he then 
 bowed his head towards the wall and appeared to 
 fall asleep : an hour later his spirit had departed. 
 
 In regard to Mozart's burial, data subsequent 
 to those given in Jahn's book have been ascertained 
 T. 3 
 
34 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 and made public. I owe my knowledge of them 
 to a short programme-article by Sir George Grove* 
 which Mr Wood of Caius College kindly placed in 
 my hands. 
 
 " It was," writes Sir George Grove, " three in 
 the afternoon of the 6th before the coffin was 
 deposited in one of the chapels on the North side 
 of St Stephen's. Van Swieten, Salieri, SUssmayer, 
 and two other musicians named Roser and Orsler, 
 appear to have been the only persons present, 
 beside the officiating priest and the bearers of the 
 coffin. It was a terribly inclement day, rain and 
 sleet coming down fast ; and an eye-witness de- 
 scribes how the little band of mourners stood 
 shivering round the hearse with their umbrellas up 
 as it left the door of the church. It was then far 
 on in the dark cold December afternoon, and the 
 evening was fast closing in before the solitary 
 hearse had past the Stubenthor, and reached the 
 distant graveyard of St Mark, in which, among 
 paupers of the " third class," the great composer of 
 the Jupiter Symphony and the Requiem found his 
 resting-place. By this time the weather had proved 
 too much for all the mourners ; they had dropped 
 off one by one, and Mozart's body was accompanied 
 only by the driver of the carriage. There had 
 
 * Crystal Palace, Saturday concert, Dec. 5th, 1885. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 35 
 
 been already two pauper funerals that day, and 
 Mozart was to be the third in the grave, and the 
 uppermost. When the hearse drew up in the slush 
 and sleet at the gate, it was met by a strange pair, 
 Franz Harruschka, the assistant grave-digger, and 
 his mother Katharina, known as " Frau Kathi," 
 who filled the quaint office of official mendicant 
 {privilegirte Bettleriii) to the place. The old 
 woman was the first to speak — " Any coaches or 
 mourners coming.'" A shrug from the driver of 
 the hearse was the only response. " Whom have 
 you got there, then.?" continued she. "A band- 
 master " replied the other. " A musician .■• they're 
 a poor lot. Then I've no more money to look for 
 to-day ; it is to be hoped we shall have better luck 
 in the morning." To which the driver said, with a 
 laugh, " I'm knocked up too — not a kreuzer of 
 drink-money have I had." After this curious 
 colloquy the coffin was dismounted, and shoved 
 into the top of the grave already occupied by the 
 two paupers of the morning; and such was 
 Mozart's last appearance upon earth." 
 
 The Requiem mass, as to which, when first 
 undertaking it, Mozart had told his wife that he 
 desired to apply all his powers to produce a work 
 which his friends and enemies should continue 
 studying " even after his death," can find no place 
 
 3—2 
 
36 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 in this lecture. The whole story of it, and of the 
 involved, and even now not finally settled, contro- 
 versy which afterwards arose about it, is fully told 
 in Dr W. Pole's book ' The Story of Mozart's 
 Requiem*.' 
 
 Those who care to read only a very summary 
 account of the subject will find one in the Cam- 
 bridge University Review\ of Feb. 28, 1889, 
 which was compiled by me in preparation for a 
 performance of the Requiem by the University 
 Musical Society on March 7, 1889. 
 
 Britons have a habit of asking, when they are 
 told of a man's death, how much he has died 
 'worth,' i.e. what amount of bullion, represented by 
 securities at his bankers', or by entries in a register 
 of landed property, gives the net result of his life, 
 its 'worth' or real value. If this question be 
 asked with respect to Mozart, the answer must be 
 that he died worth less than nothing. If, however, 
 we adopt a less sordid test, and measure his worth 
 by what he did during his short life of less than 
 36 years, the answer is that, even leaving out of 
 consideration the merits of his compositions, their 
 mere bulk is astonishingly great. According to 
 Kochel's catalogue of them he composed no less 
 
 * London. Novello, Ewer & Co., 1879. 
 t Cambridge. Elijah Johnson. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 37 
 
 than 626 works, many of which were of large 
 dimensions — 28 masses, 49 symphonies, SS con- 
 certos, and 84 pianoforte sonatas, quartetts and 
 other concerted chamber compositions. If we sup- 
 posed him to have gone on composing uniformly 
 from the moment of his birth to that of his death, 
 the above figures would require him to turn out, on 
 an average, one new composition every three 
 weeks. I am sorry not to have had time to say 
 a word about any of these compositions. I have, 
 however, written, for the programme of to-morrow 
 afternoon's concert, an account of the mass in 
 F major then to be performed, and have pointed 
 out in detail some very interesting similarities 
 between it and Mozart's latest work, the Requiem 
 mass. 
 
 I have now done what the announcement of 
 this lecture promised, by passing in review the 
 most salient features in the life of Mozart. But I 
 do not choose to close amidst associations of 
 ingratitude and of the charnel-house. The Latin 
 poet's " non omnis moriar " is eminently true of all 
 the really great musical composers, and of Mozart 
 it may safely be said that, while of his contempo- 
 raries none more deserved a national funeral than 
 he, none assuredly needed one less. I have, accord- 
 ingly, reserved for my last words a few traits of his 
 
38 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 character and genius such as one would cherish in 
 the case of a loved and lost personal friend, to 
 whose memory one can look back with a sense of 
 abiding happiness when time has laid its mercifully 
 effacing finger on the poignant associations of 
 severance and dissolution. 
 
 Mozart was an immensely generous man, not 
 merely with money, but with personal efforts. He 
 was singularly ready to play to any one who asked 
 him to do so, looking only for silence and atten- 
 tion. When these were refused him, he grew very 
 angry, and indicated this feeling with much vivacity. 
 On one occasion he abruptly rose from the piano- 
 forte and left the room : on others he punished 
 his inattentive auditors with sallies of satirical 
 humour. 
 
 To assist a brother or sister musician in distress 
 he would do almost anything, lend them his manu- 
 script scores, and even thrust aside his own work, 
 however urgent, in order to play at their benefit 
 concerts, or compose for such occasions new music 
 in the hope of attracting for them a larger 
 audience *- 
 
 * There is a pretty story which, however, I fear, lacks all 
 corfirmation, that, when walking one day with his wife in Vienna, 
 Mozart saw a necessitous-looking street musician trying to earn 
 something by playing on a little portable pianoforte. Recognising 
 a humble craft-brother, he immediately stopped, and questioned the 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 39 
 
 "Silver and gold" Mozart, like the Apostle, 
 " had none," but what he had he most freely gave. 
 Nor was his generosity less in that, perhaps even 
 higher, region where it takes the form of a genuine 
 appreciation and hearty recognition of other men's 
 work and merits. For old Haydn — " Papa Haydn'' 
 he used to call him— from whom he said he had 
 learned quartet-writing, he entertained a strong 
 and affectionate regard. A composer named Koze- 
 luch set to work one day in his presence to 
 depreciate Haydn's merits as a composer, and, in 
 reference to a particular passage in one of his 
 compositions, said to Mozart, " f should not have 
 written that so." " Neither should /," replied 
 Mozart, " but do you know why .? Because neither 
 you nor I should have hit upon the idea." 
 
 Mozart entertained strong feelings of brotherly 
 compassion for suffering human beings in general, 
 and towards the close of his life he sought — not 
 unsuccessfully — to give organized effect to them 
 by becoming an extremely ardent free-mason. 
 
 poor fellow as to his receipts. On learning that the day's earnings 
 had been miserably small, Mozart said " Come ; do you get up and 
 let me have a turn at the pianoforte and try what luck I have." 
 This was done : the new performer at once attracted the notice of 
 the passers by, and presently a voice called out: "It's Mozart." 
 A crowd instantly collected, and, at the proper moment, Frau 
 Mozart carried round the hat, with a result which sent the poor 
 ambulatory pianist home radiant with unexpected prosperity. 
 
40 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 Love of political freedom, and admiration of those 
 countries whose institutions most fully guaranteed 
 it, would naturally go hand-in-hand with such 
 feelings and aspirations. It was, therefore, with- 
 out surprise, though certainly not without great 
 pleasure, that I came across the following extract 
 from a letter written by Mozart in 1782, in reply 
 to an enquiry from his father whether he had 
 heard of the repulse by the English of the 
 Spaniards' attempt to storm Gibraltar. "Yes, I 
 have indeed heard of England's victories, and to 
 my great joy, for, as you well know, I am an out- 
 and-out Englishman {Erz-Engldnder)!' 
 
 That the kind of character which I have thus 
 hurriedly indicated made a singularly loveable 
 man, let a single incident confirm. Hummel, the 
 famous pianoforte-player, was, as a boy, a pupil of 
 Mozart's and an inmate of his house. He very 
 early appeared in public, and happened, in 
 1789, to be giving a concert at Berlin which 
 Mozart, of whose presence in that capital Hummel 
 knew nothing, attended. When the boy recognized 
 him among the audience, he could hardly hold 
 jhimself in, and, the moment he had finished 
 playing, he rushed through the midst of the 
 assembled public to give Mozart the kind of salu- 
 tation which, perhaps on the whole fortunately, 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 41 
 
 few but Germans are in the habit of bestowing on 
 their brother man. 
 
 In Mozart's prime we meet with musicianly 
 faculties developed to fullest maturity, which, in 
 his early boyhood, we saw singled out for admira- 
 tion by the hon. Daines Barrington. You remember 
 what his power of playing from score was at 8^. 
 Here is what an opera-composer named Umlauf 
 said of it when he was 26^ : " This much is certain 
 that Mozart has the devil in his head, his body 
 and his fingers : he played me my opera, in spite 
 of its being so miserably written that even I can 
 hardly read it, as if he had composed it himself" 
 
 The power of improvisation, which Mr Barring- 
 ton so rightly admired in the two songs set to 
 the words Affetto and Perfido, had, in Mozart's 
 later years, developed into an art in which he 
 stood absolutely alone among his contemporaries. 
 Niehmetschek said of it in extreme old age : " If I 
 were allowed to ask for one more earthly joy at 
 God's hand, it would be to hear Mozart improvise 
 once more on the pianoforte : whoever has not 
 heard him do so, cannot even dimly imagine what 
 he was then capable of." Even a critic who had 
 heard Beethoven improvise, wrote that to him 
 Mozart always remained the ne plus ultra in this 
 art. At Prague on one occasion he ended a 
 
42 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 concert by improvising for a good half hour. The 
 enthusiastic Bohemian audience compelled him to 
 return to the instrument, when he delighted them 
 still more, and they then insisted on a third impro- 
 visation. This outdid both its predecessors, when, 
 in the midst of the dead silence, a voice in the pit 
 called out : " Something from Figaro !," whereupon 
 Mozart led up to the motivo of the favourite air 
 non piu andrai, produced on the spur of the 
 moment a dozen of the most interesting and 
 artistic variations, and ended amidst the most 
 uproarious jubilation. 
 
 The following instance presents us with a still 
 more difficult feat — beautiful improvisation of a 
 contrapuntal character on themes imposed from 
 without. At the house of Sophie Niclas, an 
 excellent singer at Berlin, he was once called on 
 to improvise. Two themes were given him by 
 musicians present. His hostess stationed herself 
 by the side of his chair to see him play. " Well !" 
 said Mozart to her, "have you, too, got a little 
 theme on your conscience .-"" She sang him one. 
 He then began to play most charmingly, now with 
 one theme and now with another, and at the close 
 brought them all three together, to the highest 
 delight and astonishment of those present. 
 
 It is interesting to know that Mozart was 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 43 
 
 himself aware of his unique preeminence in the 
 power of improvisation. After playing a concerto 
 in public at Leipzig, he said to an old and excel- 
 lent violin player " I am now well warmed to the 
 work : come home with me, and I will play you 
 something more, such as befits musicians among 
 themselves." After a short meal, he poured forth 
 his ideas and feelings on the instrument until near 
 midnight. Then, suddenly jumping up, as was 
 his wont, he exclaimed " Well, are you satisfied ? 
 Now, Papa, you have heard Mozart in his own 
 style : the rest other people can do too." 
 
 At such moments of inspiration Mozart's 
 countenance assumed a peculiar radiancy, of itself 
 enabling those who saw it to recognize in him the 
 great artist, whom under ordinary conditions there 
 was nothing in his appearance to suggest. His 
 stature was diminutive, and his outward man, 
 apparently, so insignificant that on one occasion 
 the door-keeper at a theatre, where 'Figaro' was 
 going to be given, at first refused him admittance 
 to the rehearsal, having "taken him for a little 
 journeyman-tailor." When, however, the applicant 
 quietly remarked "You surely will allow the 
 Kapellmeister Mozart to hear the rehearsal," the 
 poor door-keeper was, as he afterwards explained, 
 " quite overwhelmed with confusion." 
 
44 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 Next in greatness to Mozart's original creative 
 endowments may be ranked his powers of forming 
 a perfectly definite mental picture of a musical 
 composition in all its parts, before a note of it had 
 been put on paper ; and of fixing it in his memory 
 in this condition. These powers enabled him to 
 get through the actual work of scoring with a 
 celerity limited only by the mechanical difficulties 
 of legible writing. He was not, in fact, while 
 thus occupied, properly speaking 'composing,' 
 but merely putting down musical phrases from 
 memory, just as we might thus write out lines 
 of poetry already learnt by heart. In the eyes of 
 those who imagined that the act of composition 
 began only when the composer sat down at his 
 writing table, Mozart's habit of scoring new com- 
 positions amidst the ordinary interruptions of a 
 family or friendly circle, with perfect accuracy and 
 at tearing speed, must have seemed absolutely 
 miraculous. Indeed, explain it as we may, it 
 remains sufficiently astonishing, as a few instances 
 will readily convince you. 
 
 Much of Don Giovanni was scored at a stone 
 garden-table in a vineyard near Prague, amidst 
 constant noise, both of conversation and of games 
 at skittles. 
 
 In the course of a journey Mozart spent a 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 45 
 
 night at Leipzig, at the house of Doles who was 
 Cantor (Choirmaster) of the Thomaskirche, and had 
 been a pupil of John Sebastian Bach. At parting, 
 Doles and his son asked for a line of the composer's 
 hand-writing as a memento. Mozart made a little 
 show of resistance, and then asked for a sheet, of 
 music-paper, and, tearing it into two pieces, sat 
 down to write, and, in not more than S or 6 
 minutes, gave them back to his hosts with a little 
 composition on each. One was a Canon without 
 words for three voices, written in semibreves, which 
 when sung sounded beautiful and very pathetic. 
 The other was also without words, but written 
 in quavers, and verj?- droll. Presently it was 
 discovered that both could be sung together, 
 whereupon Mozart wrote under one, " Fare ye 
 well till our next meeting," and under the other, 
 "Why not howl like ancient women.''" 
 
 This is clearly meant* to be taken as an 
 instance of real composition on the spur of the 
 moment, within the possible limits of which the 
 feat may well come, considering the shortness 
 and simplicity of the work produced, wonderful 
 as is the degree of technical mastery which it 
 implies. 
 
 The extent to which Mozart could rely on his 
 * by Jahn. 
 
46 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 memory of what existed only in his own brain, 
 is well illustrated by the following incident. He 
 had promised Regina Strinasacchi, an excellent 
 Italian violinist, to compose for, and play with, 
 her at her concert at Vienna, a sonata for violin 
 and pianoforte. Only the evening before that of 
 the concert, did she succeed in extorting from 
 him the violin-part, which she studied the next 
 morning without rehearsing with Mozart, whom 
 she saw no more until the concert. He, meantime, 
 had prepared no pianoforte-part, and took his seat 
 at the instrument with nothing before him but a 
 sheet of music-paper with bars marked upon it. 
 Both artists played excellently, and the new 
 sonata made a great hit. 
 
 Meanwhile the musical Emperor Joseph II. 
 had been narrowly scrutinizing the situation 
 through his opera-glass, and, having come to the 
 conclusion that Mozart had no notes before him, 
 presently commanded him to repair to the imperial 
 box and bring the manuscript of his sonata with 
 him, when of course the whole story had to come 
 out. 
 
 Two similar incidents attach to the scoring of 
 Don Giovanni. Mozart wrote the trumpet and 
 drum parts to the second finale of that opera 
 without access to the score, brought them to the 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 47 
 
 rehearsal himself, and at once drew attention to 
 the place where there would certainly be found in 
 them a mistake of four bars, only he could not say 
 whether of four too many, or too few. The result 
 confirmed this statement. 
 
 The second incident relates to the overture to 
 Don Giovanni and has obtained a wide notoriety. 
 The day before that fixed for the first performance, 
 and when the general rehearsal was already over, 
 Mozart said, in the evening, to his wife that he 
 meant to write the overture during the night ; she 
 was to make punch for him and sit up with him to 
 keep him cheery. She did this by telling him all 
 sorts of laughable stories, which amused him 
 hugely. The punch made him so drowsy that he 
 fell asleep when she left off relating, and only 
 worked as long as she talked. At last, when this 
 exertion, the drowsiness, and his frequent noddings 
 and sudden awakings made the work insuffer- 
 ably burdensome to him, his wife advised him to 
 go to sleep on the sofa, promising that she would 
 wake him at the end of an hour. He was, however, 
 then sleeping so heavily that she did not find it in 
 her heart to wake him for another hour, by which 
 time it was 5 o'clock. At 7 o'clock, when the score 
 was to be sent for, in order that the copying out of 
 the orchestral parts might be put in hand, the 
 
48 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 overture was ready. It was a tremendous drive to 
 get the parts copied in time for the performance, 
 which, on this account, began a little late. The 
 well trained and enthusiastic orchestra played the 
 overture at sight so well that, at its conclusion, 
 Mozart was able to say to the musicians who sat 
 nearest to him : " In spite of a good many notes 
 having fallen under the desks, the overture has 
 come off capitally." 
 
 What I will venture to call ray own poor little 
 overture to the Cambridge celebration of Mozart's 
 centenary is also coming to an end within a few 
 more bars. Were I, after working up a final cres- 
 cendo by means of Mozartean motivi, to attempt 
 a peroration of my own, the result could only be a 
 disastrous anticlimax. A timely perception of 
 this fact set me enquiring whether Mozart him- 
 self could not be made to supply a peroration 
 to this prelude, even as he has supplied its 
 substance. 
 
 I have chosen for this purpose two sentences 
 which bear directly on important questions in- 
 volved in the development of the musical art in 
 our own day. We may, I think, hear in them 
 Mozart giving us, across the century which sepa- 
 rates his station from ours, his opinion on these 
 questions : 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART, 49 
 
 "Melody is the essence of music. I 
 
 COMPARE A GOOD MELODIST TO A FINE RACER, 
 AND COUNTERPOINTISTS TO HACK POST- 
 HORSES."* 
 
 "Music, even when representing the 
 
 MOST horrible SITUATIONS, MUST NEVER 
 OFFEND THE EAR, BUT STILL AFFORD IT SOME 
 GRATIFICATION, AND, THEREFORE, ALWAYS CON- 
 TINUE TO BE MUSIC." t 
 
 * Said to Michael Kelly about 1784, see his 'Reminiscences' 
 (i. p. 2^8), quoted by Jahn (l. 721). 
 
 + From a letter to his father written in September 1781 (Jahn 
 I. 677)- 
 
 T. 
 
so 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Minuet and Trio* composed by Mozart 
 
 sEy 
 
 E^ 
 
 his fifth year. 
 
 ^; 
 
 p^e 
 
 3=^F 
 
 m=^ 
 
 mf 
 
 wrn^ 
 
 W"^^ - 
 
 § 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^=s^ 
 
 ■7=i- 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 *t 
 
 ^ 
 
 *^« 
 
 E^^ 
 
 -LsPJ-^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 =f=e 
 
 -ff-^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 * I have, by permission of Messrs Breilkopf and Haertel, reprinted this 
 little composition as it stands in their edition of Mozart's works, Series 22, 
 No. r. According to Kochel's catalogue, the autograph, which is preserved 
 at the Mozarteum at Salzburg, bears a certificate written and signed by 
 Mozart's sister, as Frau von Berthold-Sonnenburg, to the following effect : 
 
 "The undersigned testifies that this piece was composed and written by 
 her brother in his 5th year." 
 
 As many of the slurs which appear in the above version are not found 
 in that published in Jahn's book, it is permissible to suppose that iAej/ are 
 not all covered, by the certificate, as being Mozart's contemporary handiwork. 
 
SI 
 
 SI=^Z _gLJ_iJ:J ^ 
 
 ^§ 
 
 -l^^pi 
 
 ^ 
 
 m^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 :^ 
 
 Fine 
 
 ^ 
 
 Trio 
 
 
 
 V i * f r 
 
 ^S 
 
 J J.'J- 
 
 j III 
 
 mtiCT 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
 4=-i« 
 
 J^ 
 
 s 
 
 s 
 
 -^ 
 
 f^ 
 
 6^ 
 
 Menuetto da Capo al Fine. 
 
PROGRAMMES 
 
 TWO CONCERTS 
 
 GIVEN IN CAMBRIDGE IN COMMEMORATION 
 OF MOZART 
 
 DECEMBER s, 1891, 
 
 THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS 
 DEATH. 
 
ar.m.jm.^. 
 
 FORTY-EIGHTH YEAR. 
 
 COMMEMORATION OF MOZART 
 
 IN TRINITY COLLEGE CHAPEL 
 
 {BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE COLLEGE COUNCIL) 
 
 On SATURDAY, Dec. 5th, 1891, 
 
 AT HALF-PAST TWO O'CLOCK. 
 
S6 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 Cambridge itmtesiig pwskal 3ami^, 
 
 iPatron. 
 
 His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, Chancellor 
 OF THE University. 
 
 17ic£=^atron». 
 
 The Vice-Chancellor. 
 
 The Mayor of Cambridge. 
 
 The Professor of Music. 
 
 The University Organist. 
 *The Rev. the Master of Peterhouse. 
 ■f-The Master of Sidney. 
 
 Sir George Grove, D.C.L. 
 
 Rev. F. W. Hudson, Trinity College. 
 
 Rev. T. P. Hudson, Trinity College. 
 
 Professor Jebb, M.P., Trinity College. 
 
 Professor Joachim, Trinity College. 
 
 Rev. J. R. LuNN, St John's College. 
 
 Rev. C. J. E. Smith, St John's College. 
 
 Sedley Taylor, Esq., Trinity College. 
 
 Sir Wm Thomson, Peterhouse. 
 
 G. F. Cobb, Esq., Trinity College. 
 
 * The University Musical Society was founded in Peterhouse in 
 the year 1843. 
 
 t The Fitzwilham Musical Society, which was amalgamated with 
 the University Musical Society in the year 1875, was founded and 
 held its Concerts in Sidney Sussex College from the year 1858. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 57 
 
 ({Officers;, 
 
 The Provost of King's. 
 
 Dr Garrett, St John's. 
 Mr Sedley Taylor, Trinity. 
 Mr W. A. Gill, Magdalene. 
 
 SktttttKXS, 
 A. A. Markham, B.A., Trinity. 
 
 'Ettainttt. 
 Dr A. S. Lea, Caius. 
 
 Sibratian. 
 C. Wood, B.A., Mus. Bac, Caius. 
 
 CDonDuctor. 
 Professor Stanford, Mus.D., Trinity. 
 
 0ommitt;e. 
 
 W. G. Crum, Trinity. 
 
 A. W. H. CoMPTON, B.A., Emmanuel. 
 
 C. M. Rice, St John's. 
 
 R. Symes, Trinity. 
 
 R. W. Broadrick, Trinity {Assistant Hon. Sec). 
 
 F. A. Fisher, Corpus. 
 
58 
 
 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 ^utiitord. 
 
 Mr J. E. Nixon, King's. 
 Rev. E. T. S. Carr, St Catharine's. 
 
 2at)ieg' ©otnmtttte. 
 
 Mrs Burn {Hon. Sec), St Chad's. 
 
 Hon. Mrs Neville, Magdalene Lodge. 
 
 Mrs Dunn, Little Shelford. 
 
 Mrs H. Darwin, The Orchard. 
 
 Mrs Austen Leigh, King's Lodge. 
 
 Mrs Stanford, to, Harvey Road. 
 
 ®oIkg 
 
 e ^MtetatUs. 
 
 Cuius 
 
 .. C. Wood. 
 
 Trinity Hall 
 
 .. A. H. Biggs. 
 
 Corpus Christi 
 
 .. F. A. Fisher. 
 
 King's 
 
 .. A. F. Jones. 
 
 Jesus 
 
 .. C. L. Barrow. 
 
 St John's ... 
 
 .. C. M. Rice. 
 
 Trinity 
 
 .. R. Symes. 
 
 ,, 
 
 .. W. G. Crum. 
 
 ,, ... 
 
 .. H. J. Edwards. 
 
 Emmanuel 
 
 A. W. H. COMPTON 
 
 Downing . . . 
 
 .. H. Brownsword. 
 
 Selwyn 
 
 .. E. G. Ingrams. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 
 
 59 
 
 ^togtamme. 
 
 ORCHESTRAL DIRGE in C minor. 
 
 SHORT MASS in F major (for Soli, Chorus, 
 Strings and Organ). 
 
 SONATA DI CHIESA (for Organ and 
 Strings) in C major. 
 
 CHORALE MOTET. "Ave verum corpus." 
 
 ORGAN FANTASIA in T minor. 
 
 \ 
 
 Mozart. 
 
6o 
 
 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 ©rctestta. 
 
 First Violins. 
 
 Mr H. Inwards. 
 „ S. Blagrove. 
 
 „ W. ACKROYD. 
 
 „ R. Symes. 
 „ H. Butler. 
 
 Violoncellos. 
 
 Mr T. Hill. 
 „ F. Williams. 
 
 „ G- G. SCHOTT. 
 
 Second Violins. 
 
 Mr C. Jacobs. 
 „ W. A. Boxall. 
 „ A. C. Dixon. 
 „ W. E. Dalby. 
 
 Double Basses. 
 
 Mr R. Hawkins. 
 „ J. Bishop. ,, 
 „ A. H. Miller. 
 
 Soloists- 
 
 Miss C. Russell, 
 Miss J. Rankin, 
 
 Mr J. Reed, 
 
 Mr. W. H. Wing. 
 
 Organist—Mr T. Tertius Noble 
 
 (Assistant Organist of Trinity College). 
 
 Conductor— PROY'ESSO'R. STANFORD. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 6 1 
 
 LAUDEMUS VIROS GLORIOSOS, ET PARENTES NOSTROS 
 IN GENERATIONE SUA ; PERITIA SUA REQUIRENTES MODOS 
 MUSICOS, ET NARRANTES CARMINA SCRIPTURARUM. FILII 
 EORUM PROPTER ILLOS USQUE IN AETERNUM MANENT ; 
 SEMEN EORUM ET GLORIA EORUM NON DERELINQUERE- 
 TUR. ECCLUS. XLIV. I, S, 13. 
 
 JOHANNES CBRYSOSTOMUS WOLFGANG 
 THEOPHMS MOZART. 
 
 Born at Salzburg, Jan. 2'jth, 1756, 
 Died at Vienna, Dec. stk, 1791. 
 
62 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 ANALYTICAL REMARKS. 
 
 ORCHESTRAL DIRGE. 
 
 (K. 477.)* 
 
 This work was composed by Mozart in 1785 
 on the occasion of the deaths of two brother free- 
 masons named Mecklenburg and Esterhazy. It 
 is scored for strings, wood-wind, largely repre- 
 sented, and horns, but without trombones. On 
 the present occasion an attempt will be made 
 to produce, so far as that is possible, its main 
 orchestral effects on the organ. As some indi- 
 cation of the kind of feeling which the composer 
 intended to express in this composition, an extract 
 is appended from a letter which he wrote to his 
 father two years afterwards, on receiving the news 
 of the latter's perilous illness. "As death is, 
 
 * This and similar later references are to Kochel's catalogue 
 of Mozart's works. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 63 
 
 properly speaking, the real purpose of our life, 
 I have for the last year or two made myself so 
 familiarly acquainted with this best friend to man 
 that his image has for me, not only nothing 
 terrible, but very much that is reassuring and 
 consolatory. And I thank my God that he has 
 bestowed upon me the fortunate opportunity of 
 coming to recognise in death the key to our 
 true blessedness. I never lay myself down in 
 bed without reflecting that perhaps (young as I 
 am) I may next day have ceased to be ; and yet 
 no human being among all those who know me 
 could say that in my intercourse with them I was 
 morose or dismal ; and for this .happiness I thank 
 my Creator every day of my life, and wish it 
 with all my heart to every one of my fellow- 
 creatures. I have already written to you what 
 I feel on this point, in reference to the sad death 
 of my dearest, best friend Count von Hatzfeld. 
 I do not pity him — but I do heartily pity myself, 
 and all those who knew him as closely as I did." 
 
64 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 MASS IN F MAJOR. 
 
 For Soli, Chorus, Strings and Organ. 
 
 (K. 192.) 
 
 Mozart wrote this Mass for Salzburg cathedral 
 in June 1774, when he was in his nineteenth year. 
 Otto Jahn* draws special attention to it, as con- 
 taining, in a degree equalled by no other of 
 Mozart's church compositions, germs of musical 
 ideas which were to receive their final develop- 
 ment in his death-song, the immortal " Requiem 
 Mass." " Inventive genius, technical scholarship, 
 and deep clear comprehension, are more evidently 
 displayed by Mozart in this Mass than ever before ; 
 the subjects have an intensity, a charm of beauty, 
 which had scarcely been suggested. Here, for the 
 first time, we become aware of that wonderful 
 beauty, Mozart's most special endowment, which 
 we may designate sweetness, if we mean by that 
 the perfect harmony of a naturally developed 
 artistic organism. The absolute freshness of its 
 manifestation here only increases the charm, and 
 points to further expansion." "I- 
 
 The simple manner in which the composer 
 
 * The Life of Mozart, English Translation, Vol. i. pp. 257 — 60. 
 f lb. p. 260. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 6$ 
 
 has handled his vocal forces, and the extreme 
 sparseness of the instrumental accompaniment by 
 which he supports them, afford the hearer an 
 opportunity, rarely presented by more heavily- 
 orchestrated choral works, of easily recognising 
 the beauty of structural workmanship, both vocal 
 and instrumental, which marks this composition. 
 The solo and chorus voices are never heard to- 
 gether, but are used to produce contrast by alter- 
 nate entries, so that no more than four-part vocal 
 writing is found throughout the work. Neither 
 wind instruments nor drums are employed, and 
 string-parts are provided only for first and second 
 violins and a bass, while for the organ no separate 
 part appears in the score, but only a figured bass. 
 Mr T. Tertius Noble has been led, by his zeal 
 for a worthy performance of the work, to write 
 for it, in accordance with the indications of the 
 score and the composer's presumable intentions, a 
 complete organ-part which he will play to-day. 
 
 It would appear, to judge by difficulties en- 
 countered in procuring the necessary 'parts' for 
 the present performance of the Mass in F, that its 
 beauties, though acknowledged, have not of late 
 led to frequent public productions of it. Our 
 demand for copies of the pianoforte-score pub- 
 lished by Messrs Novello, Ewer and Co. exhausted 
 T. 5 
 
66 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 their whole stock of it and put the edition out 
 of print. The orchestral parts published by Messrs 
 Breitkopf and Hartel were already in that con- 
 dition, so that those used to-day have had to 
 be specially copied for us by hand from the full 
 score. Some degree of interest, therefore, attaches, 
 merely on the ground of rarity, to to-day's per- 
 formance of the Mass in F major. 
 
 For the sake of those not already acquainted 
 with the work, a few indications are here added 
 of salient points which may profitably be listened 
 for during its performance. 
 
 Kyrte. — The little orchestral prelude, with its 
 frequent shakes and delightfully tuneful thrice- 
 heard violin phrase, which recurs again and again 
 in the course of this movement, enables us at the 
 very outset to recognise Mozart, as it were, by 
 his voice. An effect of gathering urgency of 
 appeal is given by the voices of the chorus enter- 
 ing consecutively, from the bass to the treble, 
 with the same musical phrase, first at a bar's 
 distance, and then at half a bar's distance, from 
 each other. The solo soprano has a tantalizingly 
 short passage of beautifully suave ornament, a 
 fragment of which is immediately taken up in 
 imitation by the choral soprani and tenors. The 
 full roulard then reappears in the solo contralto 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 6/ 
 
 part, while its fragmentary repetition is assigned 
 to the choral contralti and tenors. The movement 
 is pervaded throughout by the specifically Mozart- 
 ean beauty, which it is difficult not to feel, and 
 quite impossible to describe. The tone of religious 
 feeling which it seems to express is one of happy 
 buoyant confidence, untouched by serious suffering, 
 and without a trace of the agonised entreaty for 
 pardon and divine help which cries out of the 
 pages of the " Requiem." 
 
 Gloria. — The soprani lead off with a stately 
 canto fermo to the words et in terra pax hominibus, 
 which is provided with an accompaniment in the 
 strings somewhat beneath the dignity of the situa- 
 tion. After a short entry of the Soli, the canto 
 fermo is resumed by the choral contralti ; but the 
 working is rather commonplace until the words 
 propter magnam gloriam tuam are reached, where 
 the contralti have the canto fermo, and some bold 
 stalking octaves started by the soprani and taken 
 up in imitation by the tenors have a very fine 
 effisct. A tenor solo of eight bars, beginning 
 Domine Fill, is remarkable for a figure in the 
 accompaniment identical with one employed in 
 the Recordare of the Requiem Mass. This is 
 immediately followed by the words Domine Deus, 
 chorally treated with octave sequences analogous 
 
 5—2 
 
68 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 to those mentioned above. The only remaining 
 points of interest in this movement are a very 
 strenuous setting of Suscipe deprecationem nostram, 
 and the re-appearance in fortissimo unison of the 
 opening canto fermo on the last Amen. 
 
 Credo. — This is contrapuntally the most inte- 
 resting movement of the whole work. It is built 
 up on a phrase of four notes of equal duration, 
 which, in the key of C, would be denoted by 
 C D F E. This sequence has been used with great 
 effect long before Mozart's time, — for instance, by 
 Bach in the well-known fugue in E in the "48," 
 and by Handel at the opening of the lead, "And 
 triumph over death," in his chorus, "Then round 
 about the starry throne." Mozart, however, seems 
 to have had quite an unique penchant for this 
 phrase, for Jahn enumerates four compositions, 
 beside the present one, into which he worked it, 
 one being — as we have recently been practically 
 reminded — the last movement of the Jupiter 
 symphony. What is most remarkable in his treat- 
 ment of it in the case in hand is, as Jahn has 
 well remarked, the way in which he makes it 
 convey the impression of firm conviction when 
 set to the word credo, of indignant grief in the 
 crucifixus, and of triumphant jubilation when it 
 is turned into a fugue at et vitam futuri sceculi. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 69 
 
 At the Amen following these words the same 
 phrase is again worked in very close canonical 
 form, and then appears for the last time, as an 
 expression of calm unruffled faith, on a twice- 
 uttered credo. Independently of these and other 
 contrapuntal feats, there are fine passages of de- 
 clamation at descendit de calls, and at et unam 
 sanctam Catholicam et Apostolicam. ecclesiam, the 
 latter of which works up to a splendid fortissimo 
 climax. In the setting of cujus regni non erit 
 finis the four consecutive choral shouts of "non" 
 entering each time at unaccented parts of the bar, 
 anticipate very markedly one of the greatest effects 
 in the Requiem Mass, the four shouts of " Rex " 
 on unaccented, beats heard at the opening of the 
 chorus Rex tremendcs majestatis. 
 
 SanctuS.' — The first nine bars have a synco- 
 pated figure in the violins exactly like that em- 
 ployed in the Hostias of the " Requiem," to which, 
 in other respects, too, they present some affinity. 
 The treatment of pleni sunt cceli et terra gloria tua 
 is very broad and dignified, while the twice-heard 
 sequence of a semi-quaver and two crotchets on 
 sunt cceli et terra, and the sustained climax on 
 gloria are no unworthy foretastes of the supreme 
 setting of this section in the " Requiem." 
 
 OSANNA. — Notice the wonderful radiancy of 
 
70 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 this little fugue, which reminds one of faces in 
 Fra Angelico's best pictures. The setting is re- 
 peated after the next movement. 
 
 Benedictus. — This quartet consists of but a 
 single phrase of the simplest kind, treated in two- 
 part, three-part, and four-part Canon, with much 
 contrapuntal ingenuity, but so that a non-analysing 
 listener perceives in it no trace of scientific con- 
 struction, and feels only a flow of melodious and 
 apparently absolutely unpremeditated tenderness. 
 The ars celare artem could hardly be more happily 
 applied than it is here. 
 
 Agnus Dei. — In this movement the affinity 
 with some of the finest parts of» the " Requiem," 
 not only with respect to technical means employed, 
 but also as to the effects produced, becomes quite 
 unmistakable. The figure in the violins in the 
 instrumental introduction and throughout the 
 movement reappears, doubtless in a glorified form, 
 in the " Requiem " setting of the same words. 
 The short passages for Soli soprano, contralto and 
 tenor here, have corresponding antitypes in the 
 Benedictus there. The two choral closes on the 
 word nobis are magnificent specimens of part-writ- 
 ing. In the first of these the change of harmony 
 effected by the passage of the basses from C sharp 
 to C natural (which by the way reappears note for 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 7 1 
 
 note in the twenty-third bar of the " Ave verum 
 corpus," presently to be sung, except that the half- 
 tone descent is there assigned to the tenors) is as 
 beautiful as it could well be. The second close 
 is no unworthy predecessor of the de profunda lacu 
 passage in the Offertorium of the Requiem Mass. 
 
 DONA. — The concluding petition of the Roman 
 liturgy is usually set brightly, as expressing the 
 return of the worshipper to the ordinary duties 
 and pleasures of life with the happy consciousness 
 of service accepted and inward strength bestowed. 
 With some composers, and it must be admitted 
 that Mozart is among them, the attempt to be 
 bright has occasionally been unaccompanied by a 
 sufficiently firm determination not to be operatic. 
 The present setting has not this defect, but it is 
 annoyingly disfigured by the occurrence, once for 
 the soprani and contraiti, and once for the tenors 
 and basses, of an exceedingly commonplace, and 
 even rather vulgar, passage in consecutive thirds. 
 With this exception, it breathes a simple pure- 
 hearted joyousness, reminding one, as an officer 
 of the C. U. M. S. aptly remarked on hearing it, 
 of some of Gluck's choral writing in "Orfeo," 
 which, in the objectionable sense of the word, is 
 not operatic at all. Indeed we may, not improt 
 bably, have to do here with a direct musical 
 
72 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 influence emanating from Gluck, whose composi- 
 tions Mozart is known to have carefully studied, 
 and at the first performance of whose "Alceste" 
 he had, as a boy, been present. All men who 
 make creative progress begin by climbing up upon 
 their predecessors' shoulders, and the greatest 
 among them gladly recognise, as our own Newton 
 did in respect to "the giants who preceded him " 
 — Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo — the 
 extent and the indispensable character of these 
 obligations. From Mozart's recorded saying that 
 he had learned how to write quartets from Haydn, 
 we know how readily he Would have told us what 
 he owed to Gluck. 
 
 SONATA DI CHIESA IN C MAJOR. 
 
 For Strings and Organ. 
 
 (K. 328.) 
 
 It was the custom in Salzburg cathedral, down 
 to the year 1783, to perform, between the reading 
 of the Epistle and of the Gospel, a short movement 
 for orchestral instruments and organ. Such a 
 movement was called a Sonata di ckiesa, to dis- 
 tinguish it from one intended for secular occasions, 
 which was called a Sonata di camera. The present 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 73 
 
 work was written in 1780, when Mozart was, for 
 the second time, in the service of the Archbishop 
 of Salzburg. The violins are throughout it treated 
 as the principal instruments, the organ merely 
 supplying an accompaniment of the simplest kind, 
 and nowhere playing an independent part. 
 
 CHORAL MOTET, "AVE VERUM 
 CORPUS." 
 
 This unambitious little work was composed in 
 1790 during a summer sojourn at Baden, near 
 Vienna, probably for a choirmaster there named 
 Stoll, to whom Mozart lent masses for production 
 by his choir. It has been very generally recognised 
 as one of the most beautiful specimens of simple 
 vocal part-writing in existence. 
 
 ORGAN FANTASIA IN F MINOR. 
 
 (K. 608.) 
 
 This work is dated March 3rd, 1791, and so 
 belongs to the period of its composer's highest 
 maturity. From one point of view it is humiliating 
 to see Mozart, in the plenitude of his powers, 
 forced by poverty into accepting a commission 
 to compose for a mechanical organ, which was 
 
74 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY. 
 
 actually the original destination of this fantasia. 
 From another, and a higher, point of view, it is 
 splendid to see him, even under that humiliation, 
 laying out those powers as he must have done, 
 to produce the admirable work which Mr Noble, 
 will interpret for us on an instrument thoroughly 
 worthy of it. 
 
 SEDLEY TAYLOR. 
 
MOZART CENTENARY. 
 
 ORCHESTRAL CONCERT 
 
 OF 
 
 WORKS BY MOZART 
 
 IN 
 
 GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE HALL 
 {By kind permission of the Master and Fellows') 
 
 On SATURDAY, December 5th, 1891, at 9 p.m. 
 Conductor— QYiKKUE^ WOOD. 
 
programme. 
 
 OVERTURE 
 
 " Idomeneo." 
 
 SONGS 1^' "''^bendempfindung." 
 
 \6, "Vedro mentr'io sospiro" (^«^ 
 
 sospiro" {Mgaro). 
 W. H. Wing. 
 
 PIANOFORTE CONCERTO in D minpr. 
 a. Allegro, i. Romanza. c. Finale prestissimo. 
 Pianoforte — F. Pickford. 
 
 SONG, "Non piii andrai" {Figaro). 
 W, H. Wing. 
 
 SYMPHONY (No. 35) in D. 
 
 a. Allegro con spirito. b. Andante, c. Minuetto e Trio. 
 d. Finale. Presto. 
 
 MOZART. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. TJ 
 
 Song " Abendempfindung " Mozart. 
 
 Abend ist 's, die Sonne ist verschwunden 
 
 Und der Mond strahlt Silberglanz. 
 
 So entflieh'n des Lebens schonste Stunden, 
 
 Flieh'n voriiber wie ein Tanz ! 
 
 Bald entflieht des Lebens bunte Scene, 
 
 Und der Vorhang rollt herab ; 
 
 Aus ist unser Spiel, des Freundes Thrane 
 
 Fliesset schon auf unser Grab. 
 
 Bald vielleicht mir weht, wie Westwind leise, 
 
 Eine stille Ahnung zu ; 
 
 End' ich dieses Lebens Pilgerreise, 
 
 Fliege in das Land der Ruh ! 
 
 Werdet ihr an meinem Grabe weinen, 
 
 Trauernd meine Asche seh'n, 
 
 Dann O Freunde will ich euch erscheinen 
 
 Und will Himmel auf euch weh'n. 
 
 Schenk auch du ein Thranchen mir 
 Und pfliicke mir ein Veilchen auf mein Grab; 
 Und mit deinem seelenvollen BHcke 
 Sieh dann sanft auf mich herab. 
 Weih' mir eine Thrane und ach ! schame 
 Dich nur nicht sie mir zu weih'n, 
 O sie wird in meinem Diademe 
 Dann die schonste Perle sein. 
 
78 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 "Evening Thoughts" {Prose Translation). 
 
 'Tis evening, the sun has disappeared, 
 
 and the moon casts silvery light. 
 
 So flee away life's fairest hours, 
 
 flee away as if a dance ! 
 
 Soon the motley scene of life is over 
 
 and the curtain is rolled down. 
 
 Finished is our play, already friendly tears 
 
 are flowing on our grave. 
 
 Soon perhaps there breathes on me, 
 
 like gentle Western breeze, a silent boding 
 
 that I end this pilgrimage of life 
 
 and fly into the land of rest. 
 
 Will ye shed a tear upon my grave 
 
 and mourn when I am gone 1 
 
 Then, O friends, I will appear to you 
 
 and rain heaven's influences on you down. 
 
 Thou, too, grant one tear to me, 
 
 and pluck a violet on my grave, 
 
 and, with soul looking from thine eyes, 
 
 cast but a single glance on me. 
 
 Consecrate to me a tear, and O 
 
 let it not shame thee so to do, 
 
 that tear will surely then become 
 
 upon my diadem the fairest pearl. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 79 
 
 SONG.."Vedr6 mentr'io sospiro" (Figaro).. Mozart. 
 
 Vedro, mentr' io sospiro, felice un servo mio ? 
 E un ben che invan desio ei posseder dovra? 
 Vedr6 per man d' amore unita a un vile oggetto, 
 Chi in me dest6 un' affetto che per me poi non ha ! 
 
 Ah no ! lasciarti in pace, non v6 questo contento ! 
 Tu non nascesti, audace ! per dare a me tormento, 
 E forse ancor per ridere di mia infelicita ! 
 Gia la speranza sola delle vendette mie 
 Quest' anima consola e giubilar mi fa ! 
 
8o CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 Song ... "Non piu andrai" {Figaro) ... Mozart. 
 
 Non pifi andrai, farfallone amoroso, 
 
 Notte e giorno d' intorno girando, 
 
 Delle belle turbandd il riposo, 
 
 Narcisetto, Adoncino d' amor ! 
 
 No/i piii avrai questi bei pennachini, 
 
 Quel capello leggiero e galante, 
 
 Quella chioma, quell' aria brillante. 
 
 Quel vermiglio donnesco color. 
 
 Fra guerrieri, poffar Bacco ! 
 
 Gran mustacchi, stretto sacco, 
 
 Schioppo in spalla, sciabla al fianco, 
 
 Collo dritto, muso franco, 
 
 Un gran casco, o uri gran turbante, 
 
 Molto onor, poco contante. 
 
 Ed in. vece del fandango 
 
 Una marcia per il fango, 
 
 Per montagne per valloni, 
 
 Colle nevi e i solleoni, 
 
 Al concerto di tromboni, 
 
 Di bombarde, di cannoni, 
 
 Che le palle in tutti i tuoni 
 
 Air orecchio fan fischiar. 
 
 Cherubino, alia vittoria ! 
 
 Alia gloria militar ! 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 8t 
 
 The following account of a rehearsal of "Figaro" 
 before its first public performance, by one who 
 witnessed it, will be read with interest in con- 
 nexion with the above song : " All the original 
 performers had the advantage of the instruction of 
 the composer, who transfused into their minds his 
 inspired meaning. I never shall forget his little 
 animated countenance, when lighted up with the 
 glowing rays of genius : it is as impossible to de- 
 scribe it, as it would be to paint sun-beams 
 
 I remember at the first rehearsal of the full band, 
 Mozart was on the stage with his crimson pelisse 
 and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the 
 music to the orchestra. Figaro's song, 'Non piu 
 andrai, farfallone amoroso,' Bennuci* {sic) gave, 
 with the greatest animation, and power of voice. 
 
 "I was standing close to Mozart, who, sot^o voce, 
 was repeating Bravo! Bravo! Bennuci, and when 
 Bennuci came to the fine passage ' Cherubino, alia 
 vittoria, alia gloria militar,' which he gave out with 
 stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself, for 
 the whole of the performers on the stage, and those 
 in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of 
 delight, vociferated Bravo, Bravo, maestro — Viva, 
 viva, grande Mozart. Those in the orchestra I 
 
 * Benucci. 
 
82 CAMBRIDGE CENTENARY 
 
 thought would never have ceased applauding by 
 beating the bows of their violins against the music 
 desks." 
 
 Michael Kelly, Reminiscences, London 1826, 
 I. 258, 259. 
 
COMMEMORATION OF MOZART. 
 
 83 
 
 <©tcJ)estta. 
 
 First Violins. 
 H. Inwards. 
 R. Symes. 
 H. Butler. 
 
 G. MODEN. 
 
 R. J. E. Meade. 
 
 E. R. J. Wyatt-Davies. 
 
 W. E. Dalby. 
 
 Second Violins. 
 
 E. D. Chetham-Strode. 
 A. F. Jones. 
 
 C. L. Barrow, 
 A. D. Perrott. 
 A. C. Deane. 
 C. M. Hutchinson. 
 
 Violas. 
 A. C. Dixon. 
 A. C. Jordan. 
 A. Walker. 
 
 'Cellos. 
 
 F. T. Dixon. 
 
 G. G. SCHOTT. 
 
 Basses. 
 W. H. Wing. 
 A. H. Miller. 
 W. Ward. 
 
 Flutes. 
 
 E. J. BUTTAR. 
 
 H. B. Bell. 
 
 Oboes. 
 
 H. Bond. 
 
 J. B. Masters. 
 
 Clarinets. 
 
 A. A. Horlock. 
 W. Gibson. 
 
 Bassoon. 
 R. Graves. 
 
 Horns. 
 W. F. Blandford. 
 
 W. J. CORNWELL. 
 
 Trumpets. 
 
 J. J. S. Kent. 
 J. F. Wheaton. 
 
 Drums. 
 F. Bowman. 
 
CEamtrtSp : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND, SONS, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS..