Chapter 16

CHAPTER X

MOZART. THE PERFECTION OF

CLASSIC STRUCTURE AND STYLE

Although Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus[120] (1756-1791), was, in
regard to art problems, no more of a broad thinker than Haydn
(Mozart and Schubert being pre-eminently men whose whole na-
ture centered in music), yet on hearing his works we are aware
that aspects of form and content have certainly changed for the
better. In the first place he was more highly gifted than Haydn;
he had from his infancy the advantage of a broad cosmopoli-
tan experience, and he was dimly conscious of the expanding
possibilities of musical expression. It is a perfectly fair distinc-
tion to consider Haydn an able, even brilliant prose-writer, and
Mozart a poet. Haydn we can account for, but Mozart is the ge-
nius “born, not made”—defying classification—and his inspired
works seem to fall straight from the blue of Heaven. Whereas
Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert were all of very lowly parent-
age[121] (their mothers being cooks—a blessing on their heads!),
Mozart’s father and mother were people of considerable general
cultivation, and in particular the father, Leopold Mozart, was an
educated man and somewhat of a composer himself, who since
1743 had been in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, as
director of his private orchestra. An excellent violinist, he had
written and published a treatise on violin playing, which for
many years was the standard work on the subject. Both par-