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48 PAGES
With which is incorporated THE KEYNOTE.
VOL. XXVI.
,
No. 10.
f 2.00 PER YEAR.
SINGLE GOPJES, 10 CENTS
Published Every Saturday at 3 East Fourteenth Street. New York, March 5,189&
MOZART'S NOTE BOOK.
The musical note-book of the great Mozart,
made in London in 1764, when he was only
eight years old, has just been discovered in
Germany by Prof. Rudolph Genee. Lovers
of music all over the world will regard the
finding of this treasure as an epoch-maker in
the history of modern music. It is a small
volume in octavo, containing on the fly-leaf
the name, " Di Wolfgango Mozart, a Londra
1764," in the ornamented handwriting of
Leopold Mozart, the great master's father.
Eighty-seven pages of writing are com-
prised in the little volume, thirty-seven of
which contain little pieces of melody that
clearly foreshadow the genius of the lad who
composed them.
Prof. Genee says of the boyish volume:
"As a contribution to a study of the gradual
development of the most wonderful musical
genius the world has ever seen the note-book
will be of great value and immense fascina-
tion. All the selections are hasty notes jotted
down, probably with a view to orchestral
treatment, but stated in easy terms for the
piano. The abundance of melodious motifs
is astounding and reveals the extraordinary
influence exercised over the boy's sensitive
artistic temperament by his sojourn in Lon-
don of rather more than a year—from the
April of 1764 to the June of 1765. The im-
portance of this note-book does not in any
way lie in the purely musical value of the
little pieces themselves, which cannot be re-
garded as completed compositions. We must
look rather to the time at which they came
into existence to perceive their significance.
It was not till he came to Paris and London,
between 1763 and 1765, that the genius of the
child unfolded its mighty wings; it needed
free air and an open world to acquire strength
and daring in its flight."
The owner of the note-book is Herr Ernst
von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, of Berlin, a
nephew of Felix, the composer. Through
the principals of the Berlin Mozart Society
Prof. Rudolph Genee will now for the- first
time be enabled to make known the book
which has for so long remained hidden away.
He will print in a new volume shortly to
appear nine little pieces in musical letter-
press, and eight pages of fac-simile besides,
in which we shall have a most faithful repro-
duction of the boy's musical handwriting.
Mozart and his little sister played three
times before the young King George III. and
Queen Charlotte at Buckingham House, and
other notabilities of that day in England.
The announcements of his concerts in the
Public Advertiser give a fresh insight into
the atmosphere which surrounded him during
his stay in London. Here is one of them:
"Concerto on the harpsichord by Master
Mozart, who is a real prodigy of nature; he
is but seven years of age, plays anything at
first sight, and composes amazingly well. He
has had the honor of exhibiting before their
majesties, greatly to their satisfaction."
"QERriAN COnPOSERS" NOT QERriANS.
London musical circles have been thrown
into a ferment by the declaration made by
M. Hadow that many of those " German
composers" whose distinctions have been
sung by admirers are not, in fact, German
composers at all, but musicians whose na-
tivity has been ascribed to Germany unjustly,
unreasonably, and without any warrant of
geography whatever. M. Hadow has issued
a book in England on this subject, and ac-
cording to it not only Germany but Italy as
well has reaped no little fame that belongs
properly to that obscure Hungarian province,
Croatia, of which, it need hardly be added,
M. Hadow is a native. Two illustrious com-
posers heretofore uniformly regarded as Ger-
man, Franz Joseph Haydn and John Sebas-
tian Bach, M. Hadow claims as Slavonians,
and he attributes their supposed German
nationality to the custom which until recent
times prevailed among Slavonians of Ger-
manizing their names—or, rather, of adapt-
ing and translating them into the language
of the country in which they happened to
have settled. Haydn, who was a native of
Rohrau, M. Hadow claims as a South Croa-
tian by ancestry, and he declares that the
Bach family (John Sebastian was born in
Eisenach in March, 1685) dwelt at Pressburg
and were Slavonians. The name of Bach as
borne by their descendants settled at Leipsic
proves nothing, since it was the custom of
the time for Slavonians established in Ger-
man cities to Germanize their names.
To deprive Germany of Bach and Haydn
is serious enough, but M. Hadow goes fur-
ther and declares, that the illustrious and im-
mortal Beethoven, who was a native of Bonn
in Rhenish Prussia, was really Flemish, and
that Hummel was a Bohemian, whose origin
is indicated by his Christian name, " Nepo-
muk." Zingarelli and Tarini were Italianized
Croatians. Most of the Slavonian musicians
who emigrated from their own poor homes
passed into neighboring German lands and
adopted German names. Weber, to whom
M. Hadow does not refer in his book, has
been accepted generally as a German com-
poser, though the fact is that he was not a
native of Germany, and it was never con-
tended by any one that he was. Weber was
born in Eutin, in Denmark. Meyerbeer and
Mendelssohn, veritable and authentic Ger-
mans, were born in Berlin, and the other
German composers whose nationality M.
Hadow, the Croatian, does not dispute are
Mozart, Handel, Schubert, Schumann and
Wagner. Paer, who has sometimes been
described as a German composer, was a na-
tive of Parma, Italy, and it is undoubtedly a
fact that many musicians born in other coun-
tries were educated, developed and achieved
distinction in either Germany or Austria.
There is much popular appreciation of
rudimental music in Hungary, and many Hun-
garians have gained great distinction locally
without achieving the fame which spread be-
yond the borders of that kingdom, the most
conspicuous exception being Franz Liszt.
The Croatians are neighbors of the Hun-
garians, rather than friends, and their love
for music is very marked. M. Hadow de-
clares in his book that every third man in
Croatia is a singer, a player, or a composer,
and makes an abundance of citations to show
that Haydn's wonderful fertility in beautiful
melodies had its origin in the melodic char-
acter of Croatian popular songs. But even
with the loss of a few, Germany has enough
composers left.
O
Music has enjoyed its three periods of cul-
mination; purely choral, under Palestrina;
classic-orchestra, under Beethoven ; and
operatic, under Wagner. "In which direc-
tion we are to look for another epoch-making
composer it would be difficult to say," says
Sir Joseph Barnby. "Russia seemed likely at
one time to fill the vacant space, but that
hope was buried in the grave of Tschaikow-
sky, and in no other direction can we see
another Saul standing head and shoulders
above his fellows. Why should not America
produce the man, or England?"