KEISER

A contemporary of his was Reinhard Keiser, who died three years later at the age of sixty-six, and who wrote one hundred and sixteen operas for the German stage.  Like his contemporary, Haendel, he attempted management, and like Haendel went into a magnificent bankruptcy, but quite unlike the woman-hater Haendel, he married his way out of poverty.  In 1709 he entered into a matrimonial and financial partnership with the daughter of an aristocratic town musician of Oldenburg, Hamburg.  She was a distinguished singer, and her talent brought new charm to the production of his works, and restored prosperity.  She seems to have died before him, for twenty years after his marriage he went to Moscow with his daughter, who was a prominent singer, and had an engagement there.  She married a Russian violinist, Verocai, and her father spent his last years at her home.

BONONCINI AND THE SCARLATTIS

Of that exquisite and elegant scamp Bononcini, who was the great rival of Haendel in the London operatic war, I find no amorous gossip, though Hawkins says he was the favourite of the Duchess of Marlborough, who gave him a pension of L500 per year, and had him live in her home until he was compelled to leave London, by various scandals attached to his repute as an honest gentleman.  He had been in his youth a great admirer of the style of Alessandro Scarlatti, an eminent composer, both in opera and sacred music, of whom little is known, except his work; he left a son, Domenico, who was hardly less famous.  But he was a confirmed gambler, and left his family in great destitution, from which the famous artificial soprano, Farinelli, rescued them.

CHAPTER XIII.

MOZART

As we come nearer to our own day, the documents concerning the personal lives of composers begin to multiply.  Of the love of Bach we have only that tantalising allusion to the “stranger maiden.”  Of Haydn we have amorous documents enough to make a brochure.  When we reach Mozart, his letters alone fill two comfortable volumes.  Of Beethoven there are still more numerous possessions.  By Wagner and Liszt we are fairly overwhelmed.

Search not for the artist’s self in his works of art.  This is good cautious advice.  But there are occasional exceptions, and of these Mozart is the most radiant.  The qualities of eternal youth and of juventine gaiety; of intimate tenderness; of swagger that winks while it swaggers; of love that is ever deep but sunlit to the depth; and of tragedy with a touch of fatalistic horror,—­all those qualities that are found scattered through his sonatas and symphonies and his various operas—­all the qualities that are combined in “Don Giovanni,” are the qualities of Mozart’s own nature, always excepting the ruthlessness and the fanatic libertinism of his Don Juan.