{+} A Personal Portrait: Mozart

ADOLPH HEINRICH VON SCHLICHTEGROLL

Mozart never reached his natural growth. During his whole life his health was delicate. He was thin and pale, and though the form of his face was unusual, there was nothing striking in his features but its extreme variableness. The expression of his face changed every moment, but indicated nothing more than the pleasure or pain which he experienced at the instant.

His body was perpetually in motion; he was either playing with his hands or beating the ground with Ins foot. There was nothing extraordinary in his other habits, except his extreme fondness for the game of billiards. He had a table in his house on which he played every day by himself when he had no one to play with. His hands were so habituated to the piano that he was rather clumsy in everything else. At table he never carved, or if he attempted to do so, it was with much awkwardness and difficulty. His wife usually undertook the office.

The same man who, from his earliest age, had shown tire greatest expansion of mind in what related to his art, in other respects remained a child. He never knew how properly to conduct himself. The management of domestic affairs, the proper use of money, the judicious selection of his pleasures, and temperance in the enjoyment of them, were never virtues to his taste.

The gratification of the moment was always uppermost with him. His mind was so absorbed by a crowd of ideas, which rendered him incapable of all serious reflection, that, during his whole life, he stood in need of a guardian to take care of his temporal affairs. His father was well aware of his weakness in this respect and it was on this account that he persuaded his wife to follow him to Paris in 1777, his engagements not allowing him to leave Salzburg himself.

But this man, so absent, so devoted to trifling amusements, appeared a being of a superior order as soon as he sat down to a piano. His mind then took wing, and his whole attention was directed to the sole object for which nature designed him, the harmony of sounds. The most numerous orchestra did not prevent him from observing the slightest false note, and he immediately pointed out, with surprising precision, by what instrument the fault was committed, and the note which should have been played.

Music was his constant employment and his most gratifying recreation. Never, even in his earliest childhood, was persuasion required to get him to go to the piano. On the contrary, it was necessary to take care that he did not injure his health by application.

He was particularly fond of playing in the night. If he sat down to the instrument at nine o’clock in the evening, he never left it before midnight, and even then it was necessary to force him away from it, for he would have continued to to play the whole night. In his general habits he was the gentlest of men, but the least noise during the performance of music offended him violently.

Of his operas, Mozart esteemed most highly Idomeneo and Don Giovanni. He was not fond of talking of his own works; or, if he mentioned them, it was in a few words. Of Don Giovanni he said one day: “This opera was not composed for the public of Vienna, it is better suited to Prague; but to say the truth, I wrote it only for myself and my friends.”

The time which he most willingly employed in composition was the morning, from six to seven o’clock when he got up. After that, he did no more for the rest of the day unless he had to finish a piece that was wanted. He always worked very irregularly. When an idea struck him, he was not to be drawn from it. If he was taken from the piano, he continued to compose in the midst of his friends, and passed whole nights with his pen in his hand. At other times he had such a disinclination to work that he could not complete a piece till the moment of its performance.