Mozart the Genius

Mozart! In the world of music this name alone suffices to define the place Mozart holds in the history of music and the development of its production. He began composing at the age of four, and his father surrounded him with the care one would expect to be given to a child of such unique genius.

Mozart turned his gaze toward the far horizons; triumph revealed itself to him, and thereupon he began to walk with his wide strides toward the hoped-for goal. His soul overflowed with feeling, and ideas took body in his mind; he released them upon the palm of the winds as captivating melodies that all but carry away the very being of the soul. When he wished to compose, he would press the whole of his mental effort into this kind of production, and his melodies would come forth strongly wrought and smooth of style, for they unite the simplicity of a singular intelligence with the strength of an iron will. He could well have squandered something of his gifts, given the glory and splendor granted him; but his good conduct of life made glory and renown two means of encouraging him to persevere in work for the service of art and the fulfillment of the mission laid upon his strong and mature thinking. Yet glory did not stand between Mozart and misery: he spent a stretch of time in a harsh financial crisis, until he said: "I am in need of selling my gifts — how dreadful!!"

And despite the forebodings and vicissitudes that assailed him in his life, he remained as he was, of an astonishing lightness of spirit.

As for his musical œuvre, it is an optimistic one, built for the most part upon the optimistic idea that sees life amid plenty and easy living. Life in itself might be generous to him, or might be cruel; but he calls it his ever-flowing mother, who begrudges him nothing. And so his melodies became a wellspring for the wretched and for those in need of a rapture of joy to sustain their lives weighed down with sorrows and forebodings. He took music as a consoler of his griefs, entrusting to it his secrets and the hidden things of his heart, pouring these powerful elements into a splendid mold of rare like; and he ordered it all with so complete an order that it came to be said: "Mozartean order."

If we listen to "The Marriage of Figaro" (Les noces de Figaro), we feel at close hand the influence of Italian music, which came to him through his contact with the great theater musician Rossini. In this play he showed a true grasp of psychological problems, analyzing them minutely from every approach. And I suspect he multiplied the characters and the number of the roles in order to show us with what rare skill the outcome of the play issues in the triumph of the optimistic idea; for the play ends, like the rest of his pieces, with a hymn of delight and joyous melodies gushing with vitality and energy. Throughout the play we may hear a deep voice repeating from time to time: I do not know what impulse drives me to activity and work; I feel a vital element within me encouraging me to persevere in going forward.

Hence his melodies took on that invigorating, encouraging stamp which lifts the soul to a level where it understands the measure of its own energy, and then understands the values of life and walks the road of life, rugged though it be.

Then if we listen to "The Magic Flute" — a marvelous wonder of art and composition — we feel, like a touch upon our heart, a rebellious spirit that would free itself of all the pains now present in the world of art, so as to come out before connoisseurs with new principles containing a fair measure of the spirit of truth, of social solidarity, and of joining hands in the march toward a single goal: the reform of society by way of art — a lasting reform, because it addresses feeling before it wins over thought.

Thus this composition appeared as a turning point in the development of Mozart's mind: after composing merely out of his familiarity with music, he began to produce and to struggle in the service of his milieu and, by extension, of society, and his melodies became for those who savor them like a strong pillar in the world of thought and production. Hence the truth of what Haydn said of him: he is the rare reformer and the rebellious genius.