The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 600 pages of information about The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07.

The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 600 pages of information about The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07.

“Is it possible!  When?  Oh! three weeks ago, when you were to go to Eisenstadt.”

“Exactly.  This is how it came about.  I came in after ten (you were fast asleep) from dinner at the Richters’. and intended to go to bed early, as I had promised, for I was to start very early in the morning.  Meanwhile Veit had lighted the candles on the writing-table, as usual.  I made ready for bed mechanically, and then thought I would take just a look at the last notes I had written.  But, cruel fate! with woman’s deuced inconvenient spirit of order you had cleared up the room and packed the music—­for the Prince wished to see a number or two from the opera.  I hunted, grumbled, scolded-all in vain.  Then my eye fell on a sealed envelope from Abbate—­his pot-hooks in the address.  Yes; he had sent me the rest of his revised text, which I had not hoped to see for months.  I sat down with great curiosity and began to read, and was enraptured to find how well the fellow understood what I wanted.  It was all much simpler, more condensed, and at the same time fuller.  The scene in the churchyard and the finale, with the disappearance of the hero, were greatly improved.  ‘But, my excellent poet,’ I said to myself, ’you need not have loaded me with heaven and hell a second time, so carelessly.’

“Now, it is never my habit to write any number out of order, be it never so tempting; that is a mistake which may be too severely punished.  Yet there are exceptions, and, in short, the scene near the statue of the governor, the warning which, coming suddenly from the grave of the murdered man, interrupts so horribly the laughter of the revelers—­that scene was already in my head.  I struck a chord, and felt that I had knocked at the right door, behind which lay all the legion of horrors to be let loose in the finale.  First came out an adagio—­D-minor, only four measures; then a second, with five.  ’There will be an extraordinary effect in the theatre,’ thought I, ’when the strongest wind instruments accompany the voice.’  Now you shall hear it, as well as it can be done without the orchestra.”

He snuffed out the candles beside him, and that fearful choral, “Your laughter shall be ended ere the dawn,” rang through the death-like stillness of the room.  The notes of the silver trumpet fell through the blue night as if from another sphere—­ice-cold, cutting through nerve and marrow.  “Who is here?  Answer!” they heard Don Juan ask.  Then the choral, monotonous as before, bade the ruthless youth leave the dead in peace.

After this warning had rung out its last notes, Mozart went on:  “Now, as you can think, there was no stopping.  When the ice begins to break at the edge, the whole lake cracks and snaps from end to end.  Involuntarily, I took up the thread at Don Juan’s midnight feast, when Donna Elvira has just departed and the ghost enters in response to the invitation.  Listen!”

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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.