Chapter V (2)

He now worked uninterruptedly on his _Requiem_, and the theatre was left to a younger _Capellmeister_. He frequently wrote until two o’clock in the morning. He even refused to give lessons in music to a lady for a very dear Vienna friend. He had, he said, a piece of work in hand which was very urgent and which he had very much at heart; and, until it was finished, he could do nothing else. Even while engaged on the last pieces of the _Magic Flute_, such as the march and the chorus, “O Isis and Osiris,” he sometimes sank exhausted in his chair, and had short fits of fainting; for his whole heart and soul were wrapped up in his work. But he cared less than ever now about physical exhaustion, since he was directly concerned with the erection of a worthy monument to his sentiment and feeling of the Eternal in the holy sanctuary itself. He had an earnest feeling of the terror of guilt, even if the feeling seemed to him no more than a weakness. But he felt also, and infinitely more deeply, the power of forgiving love which was the life of his own soul. That mighty mediæval, Christian poem, the _Dies irae_, inspired and stimulated his fancy. He wished to show the world its own painfully tragic meaning and its blessed reconciliation. Certain it is that no composer ever went to work with a more honest intention to give a true artistic form to religious expression in the mass for the dead. True, it is only certain parts that are in complete keeping with this deep, religious feeling; while his secular compositions are throughout appropriate to the subject treated. The explanation of this difference is the fact, that Mozart was too long and too exclusively engaged in writing operatic music, and that the operatic character had, as we have already seen, crept into the music which was now in favor in the service of the Catholic Church. But these parts, especially the thrilling accords descriptive of man’s consciousness of guilt, the _Gedenke gnaedig meines Endes_, and the close of the _Confutatis_, the touching prayer for loving mercy in the _Lacrimosa_--these parts were in entire harmony with the religious feeling of their author and with his unsurpassed artistic power. And this it was that made the work so very dear to himself. It was his favorite, his dying song. Art had subsequently to take another and very different direction in this department of music, but the language of the heart overflowing with the feelings of its God and of the purest confidence in his undying love, will always be heard in this _Requiem_. That language is its very soul.

We are rapidly approaching the end. The funeral bell is already tolling. Melancholy is the last picture in the life of an artist who never had an equal.

Constance observed the growing infirmity and melancholy of her beloved husband with increasing alarm. She did all in her power to take him away from his work and to brighten him up by cheerful society. But Mozart, who was wont to be so social, was turned in upon himself, depressed, and could give only wandering answers to the questions put to him. She rode out into the open air with him. Nature had always had the effect of relieving and cheering him, so that he worked best traveling, when he insisted on having his “portefeuille,” as he called his leather case filled with music paper, in the side-fob of the carriage, at hand. They rode out in this manner, one beautiful November day, into the _Prater_. The aspect of dying nature and the falling of the leaves suggested to him thoughts of the end of all things. He now began to speak of death, and said, with tears in his eyes: “I know very well I am writing the _Requiem_ for myself. I am too conscious of myself. Some one must have poisoned me; I cannot rid myself of that thought.” His utter debility without any noticeable external cause readily suggested that suspicion. He could not imagine that his strength had been exhausted by sheer intellectual labor. And then, had not care and sorrow gnawed at his vitals for years?

Constance was exceedingly alarmed, and succeeded in getting the score of the _Requiem_ from him. She consulted a physician, who recommended complete rest. This had so favorable an effect, in a short time, that Mozart was able to write the cantate _Das Lob der Freundschaft_--“the praise of friendship”--for a newly established lodge, and, shortly afterwards, to direct its production himself. The success of the work,--which itself bears internal evidence to a feeling of greater calmness and cheerfulness in its author--had a refreshing and comforting effect upon him. He now declared his suspicions that he had been poisoned, the effect of his ill-health, and demanded the _Requiem_ back. But a few days later, he again fell a victim to his melancholy feelings, and his strength left him. “I feel that I shall soon have done with music,” he said one morning to the faithful person who had once surprised him waltzing about his room with Constance, gave him back his wine and made an appointment to meet him next morning on some matters of business. When the latter reached the threshold of Mozart’s house, on the following day, he was met by the servant maid with the news that her master had been taken seriously sick during the night. Mozart himself looked at him fixedly from his bed, and said: “Nothing to-day, Joseph. To-day we have to do with doctors and apothecaries.”

He did not leave his bed any more after this. It was not long before worse symptoms appeared. His consciousness did not leave him for a moment. Neither did his loving sweetness and kindness. But the thought of his wife and children filled his heart with melancholy. New and better prospects were now before him. The Hungarian nobility and some rich Amsterdam gentlemen, lovers of music, asked him to write compositions for them, in consideration of a large annual honorarium. And then there was the success of the _Magic Flute_, in which he was deeply interested. “Now the first act is over! Now they have come to the place _Dir, grosse Koenigin der Nacht_”--he was wont to say in the evening with the watch at hand. The day before his death, he exclaimed: “Constance, if I could only hear my dear _Magic Flute_ once more!” And he hummed away the air of the “bird-catcher,” in a voice that was scarcely audible.

But he had the _Requiem_ still more at heart, and he had so far sketched its principal features, that his pupil, Suessmayer who had also written the recitative for Titus was subsequently able to complete it. During the afternoon that preceded the last night of his life, he had the score of the _Requiem_ brought to him in bed. The Tamino of Schikaneder’s troop took the soprano, Sarastro the bass, his brother-in-law, Hofer the tenor, and Mozart, as usual, the alto. They sang until they reached the _Lacrimosa_ when Mozart burst into tears and put the score aside. The thought of his approaching end and of God’s all-merciful, eternal love, filled his heart with an unspeakable feeling which made it overflow with a melancholy joy. This is plainly evident from the infinitely mild, conciliating tones in which Mozart has described that day of tears on which eternal grace and goodness are to make compensation for the eternal guilt of men.

His sister-in-law, Sophie, came in the evening. He said to her: “Ah, my dear, good Sophie, how glad I am you are here! You must stay to-night, and see me die. I have the death-taste on my tongue. I have the odor of death in my nostrils. And who will then help my dear Constance?” Constance hereupon asked her sister to go for a clergyman, but it was no easy matter to induce one to come. The patient was a Free Mason, and the order of Free Masons was opposed to many of the institutions of the Church.

When she returned she found Suessmayer at his bedside. Mozart was explaining to him how to finish the _Requiem_, remarking as he did so: “Did I not say that I was writing it for myself?” In the evening, the crisis came. Cold applications to his burning head so shattered him that he did not regain consciousness any more. Thirty-five years after his death, his sister-in-law Sophie wrote: “The last thing he did was to endeavor to imitate the kettle-drums in the _Requiem_. I can hear him still.” About midnight he raised himself up. His eyes had a fixed gaze. He then turned his head towards the wall and seemed to drop asleep. He died at one o’clock in the morning, on the 5th day of December, 1791.

The last account we have of him says: “It is impossible for me to describe with what an expression of infinite wretchedness his devoted wife cast herself on her knees and called on the Almighty for aid.” She threw herself on his bed, that she might die of the same sickness, as if the cause of his death was some accidental disease. The three medical opinions assigned each a different cause for Mozart’s premature death--inflammation of the brain, purple fever and dropsy!

The people walked about his house in the _Rauhenstein’gasse_ in crowds and wept. The poem of the order of Free Masons on the occasion refers, in touching terms, to the way in which he carried assistance to many a poor widow’s hut. The owner of the art-cabinet for whom the two fantasias in F minor were written, came and took an impression of his “pale, dead face” in plaster of Paris. The two sublime funeral odes were now made to serve as his own mausoleum.

Van Swieten took charge of his burial. But as he left only sixty guldens, a common grave had to be selected for his body; and thus it happens that we do not know to-day where Mozart’s last resting place is. When Constance, sick and sorrowful, went to the churchyard, some time after the grave-digger had been replaced by another, who could not point out where all that was mortal of our artist lay. Not a friend followed his bier to the cemetery. All turned back at the gate, on account of the bad weather. Mozart’s skull, however, was saved, and is preserved in Vienna. The churchyard keeper’s son secretly abstracted it from the grave.

As the parting words of our great artist, who, spite of all the sorrows he had to bear, preserved, throughout a cheerful, joyous nature, we may cite the following lines from a note of his, written near the close of his life--lines eloquently indicative of his sweet composure during his last days. They run thus: “Dear sir,” he replies to the admonitions of a friend--the original autograph, in Italian, is preserved in London--“willingly would I follow your advice, but how can I do it? My brain is distracted. It is with difficulty that I can collect my thoughts, and I cannot dismiss the picture of that unknown man from my mind. He is ever before me, praying for, urging me for, demanding that _Requiem_. I continue working because work does not exhaust me as much as the absence of employment. I know by my feelings that my hour has come. It is striking even now. I am in the region of death. I have reached my end, without having reaped the pleasure my talent should have brought me. And yet life was so beautiful! My career opened under such happy auspices; but one cannot change his destiny. No one can fix the number of his days. We must be resigned and do what Providence decrees.”

“Wir wandeln durch des Tones Macht
Froh durch des Todes duestre Nacht.”

Thus gravely and solemnly sing the soulfull and ideally transfigured lovers in the _Magic Flute_--Mozart’s own confession. It is the expression of the new and deep spring of life given to humanity in his music; and Mozart remained to his latest breath a consecrated priest of the purifying and sanctifying influence of his own melodies. His creations will live as long as humanity clings to the life of its own soul, and seeks higher nutriment for that life.

THE END.

TALES FROM FOREIGN TONGUES,

COMPRISING

=MEMORIES; A STORY OF GERMAN LOVE.=
BY MAX MÜLLER.

=GRAZIELLA; A STORY OF ITALIAN LOVE.=
BY A. DE LAMARTINE.

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BY ALEX. PUSHKIN.

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HIS PATRIOTISM AND HIS TREASON.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] A _capellmeister_ is the director of a choir or band.

[2] Mozart Museum.

[3] My heart and thy sweet voice, dear,
Understand each other too well--too well.

[4] “I gladly leave the maiden who doesn’t care for me.”

[5] “This picture is charmingly beautiful.”

[6] “O how anxiously, O how fiery!”

[7] Ah, I loved and was so happy.

[8] When the tears of joy are flowing.

[9] A _Freihaus_ is a house subject to a jurisdiction other than that
in which it is situated.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.