enough—because I hate such work—not to be able to finish it. I write at it every day, but have to drop it because it bores me. If the reason for its existence were not such a momentous one, rest assured I should let the thing drop. I hope, however, to force it through in time. Ah, yes! if it were a large clock-work with a sound like an organ I'd be glad to do it; but as it is the thing is made up of tiny pipes only, which sound too shrill and childish for me."

(Frankfort-on-the-Main, October 3, 1790, to his wife. "A Piece for an Organ in a Clock." [Kochel's catalogue, No. 594.] It was probably ordered by Count Deym for his Wax-works Museum on the occasion of the death of the famous Field Marshal Laudon. The dominant mood of sorrow prevails in the first movement; the Allegro is in Handel's style.)

CONCERNING THE OPERA

When he was twenty-two years old Mozart wrote to his father, "I am strongly filled with the desire to write an opera." Often does he speak of this ambition. It was, in fact, his true and individual field as the symphony was that of Beethoven. He took counsel with his father by letter touching many details in his earlier operas, wherefore we are advised about their origin, and, what is more to the purpose, about Mozart's fine aesthetic judgment. His four operatic masterpieces are imperishable, and a few words about them are in place, particularly since Mozart has left numerous and interesting comments on "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail." This first German opera he composed with the confessed purpose of substituting a work designed for the "national lyric stage" for the conventional and customary Italian opera. Despite its Hispano-Turkish color, the work is so ingenuous, so German in feeling, and above all so full of German humor that the success was unexampled, and Mozart could write to his father: "The people are daft over my opera." Here, at the very outset, Mozart's humor, the golden one of all the gifts with which Mother Nature had endowed him, was called into play. With this work German comic opera took its beginning. As has been remarked "although it has been imitated, it has never been surpassed in its musically comic effects." The delightfully Falstaffian figure of Osmin, most ingeniously characterized in the music, will create merriment for all time, and the opera acquires a new, personal and peculiarly amiable charm from the fact that we are privileged to see in the love-joy of "Belmont" and "Constanze" an image of that of the young composer and his "Stanzerl."

After "Die Entfuhrung" (1782) came "Le Nozze di Figaro" (1786), "Don Giovanni" (1787), and "Die Zauberflote" (1791). It would be a vain task to attempt to establish any internal relationship between these works. Mozart was not like Wagner, a strong personality capable of devoting a full sum of vital force to the carrying out of a chosen and approved principle. As is generally the case with geniuses, he was a child; a child led by momentary conditions; moreover, a child of the rococo period. There is, therefore, no cause of wonderment in the fact that Italian texts are again used in "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Don Giovanni," and that another, but this time a complete German opera, does not appear until we reach "Die Zauberflote."

Nevertheless it is possible to note a development towards a climax in the four operas respecting Mozart's conception of the world. It has been denied that there is a single red thread in Mozart's life-work. Nevertheless our method of study will disclose to us an ever-growing view of human lift, and a deeper and deeper glimpse into the emotional and intellectual life of man, his aims and destiny. From the almost commonplace conditions of "Die Entfuhrung," where a rascal sings in the best of humor of first beheading and then hanging a man, we reach a plane in "The Marriage of Figaro," in which despite the refinement and mitigation of Beaumarchais's indictment we feel the revolutionary breeze freshly blowing. In "Don Giovanni" we see the individual set up in opposition to God and the world, in order that he fulfill his destiny, or live out his life, as the popular phrase goes today. Here the tremendous tragedy which lies in the story has received a musical expression quite without parallel, notwithstanding the moderation exercised in the employment of means. In "Die Zauberflote," finally, we observe the clarification which follows the fermentation. Here we breathe the pure, clear atmosphere of heaven, the atmosphere within which he can live who has freed himself from selfish desire, thus gaining internal peace, and who recognizes his ego only in the happiness and welfare of others.

22. "I have an unspeakable desire to compose another opera….In Italy one can acquire more honor and credit with an opera than with a hundred concerts in Germany, and I am the happier because I can compose, which, after all, is my one joy and passion….I am beside myself as soon as I hear anybody talk about an opera, sit in a theatre or hear singing."

(Munich, October 11, 1777, to his father, reporting an expectation of making a position for himself in Italy.)

23. "I beg of you do your best that we may go to Italy. You know my greatest longing—to write operas….Do not forget my wish to write operas! I am envious of every man who composes one; I could almost weep from chagrin whenever I hear or see an aria. But Italian, not German; seria not buffa."

(Mannheim, February 2, 1778, to his father. Mozart wanted to go with the Weber family (he was in love with Aloysia, his future sister-in-law) to Italy while his father was desirous that he should go to Paris.)

24. "I am strongly possessed by the desire to write an opera— French rather than German, but Italian rather than either German or French. Wendling's associates are all of the opinion that my compositions would please extraordinarily in Paris. One thing is certain; I would not fear the test. As you know I am able to assimilate and imitate pretty much all styles of composition."

(Mannheim, February 7, 1778, to his father. Wendling was a flautist in Mannheim.)

25. "I assure you that if I get a commission to compose an opera I shall not be frightened. True the (French) language is of the devil's own making, and I fully appreciate all the difficulties that composers have encountered; but I feel myself as capable of overcoming them as any other composer. Au contraire when I convince myself that all is well with my opera, I feel as if my body were afire—my hands and feet tremble with desire to make the Frenchman value and fear the German. Why is no Frenchman ever commissioned to write a grand opera? Why must it always be a foreigner? In my case the most unendurable thing would be the singers. Well, I'm ready. I shall begin no dickerings, but if I am challenged I shall know how to defend myself. But I should prefer to get along without a duel; I do not like to fight with dwarfs."

(Paris, July 31, 1778, to his father.)

26. "Do you imagine that I would write an opera comique in the same manner as an opera seria? There must be as little learning and seriousness in an opera buffa as there must be much of these elements in an opera seria; but all the more of playfulness and merriment. I am not responsible for the fact that there is a desire also to hear comic music in an opera seria; the difference is sharply drawn here. I find that the buffoon has not been banished from music, and in this respect the French are right."

(Vienna, June 16, 1781, to his father. Mozart draws the line of demarcation sharply between tragedy and comedy in opera. ["Shakespeare has taught us to accept an infusion of the comic element in plays of a serious cast; but Shakespeare was an innovator, a Romanticist, and, measured by old standards, his dramas are