Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Die Zauberflote and the Requiem.

In Cosi fan tutte, Da Ponte's wit and Mozart's irony were above the heads of musicians before Richard Strauss ; but this work is now recognized as a subtle parody that constantly totters on the verge of reality. In Die Zauberflote Mozart is in a masonic lodge of a degree higher than is known on earth. Though Mozart's head was in the heavens, his feet were very firmly planted on the stage, and he and Schi kaneder understood each other perfectly and united to achieve something unique in opera; combining the gorgeousness of a pantomime with the solemnity of a ritual and the contemporary interest of a political satire.

From the solemnity of freemasonry there is but one step to that most pathetic of unfinished monuments, Mozart's Requiem. Its finished portions contain the most sublime Church music be tween Bach and the Missa solemnis of Beethoven. Siissmayer's completion is so well designed that even the slightness of his themes has the effect of a gesture of reverence and love. The re turn of the music of Te decet hymnus at the words Lux aeterna, which enables Siissmayer to end with ten pages of authentic Mozart is placed like a stroke of genius (though Mozart is re ported to have contemplated an independent final number) ; while the latter part of the Lacrimosa, though not in Mozart's hand writing, must surely have been dictated by him. The instrumen tation of Mozart's skeleton score is almost entirely ascertainable by the rules of his scheme ; but that of the supplied numbers goes wrong at once. In the Requiem, as in some wonderful

polyphonic designs before it, Mozart was forming a new style which might have transcended everything we know of him. Never theless, what he has left us is unique, and the intelligent love of Mozart's music is a liberal education in the meaning of art.

The Mozart Catalogue.

Mozart's extant works are cata logued by Kochel in 626 items, beginning with minuets written at the age of four and ending with the Requiem. In addition to these 626 there are many tantalizing fragments. Kochers work was very necessary and, with corrections from the researches of Wyzlewa and Saint Foix, it remains necessary to-day, for no composer has had so many spurious works thrust upon him as Mozart. The famous "Twelfth Mass" and four others in Novello's edition ought never to have deceived good musicians. They were the work of one Zulehner, whose avowed compositions remain unpublished in the archives of Schott at the present day. Nor are such deceptions unknown in the 20th century. A concertante for four wind instruments went round Europe in 1905 as a long lost work written in Paris in 1778.

On the other hand, five little divertimenti for two clarinets and bassoon were, in 1911, found to be Mozart's work in his ripest manner as soon as two spurious and hideous horn-parts were re moved. A seventh violin concerto appeared in Nov. 1907 and, though inferior to the earlier ones, is in every detail exactly in keeping with Mozart's progress in 1777, its alleged date.

(D. F. T.)