The Requiem was not yet finished and to this work Mozart now turned.  But the strain and excitement he had undergone for the past few months had done their work:  a succession of fainting spells overcame him, and the marvelous powers which had always been his seemed no longer at his command.  He feared he would not live to complete the work.  “It is for myself I am writing the Requiem,” he said sadly to Constanza, one day.

On the evening of December 4, friends who had gathered at his bedside, handed him, at his desire, the score of the Requiem, and, propped up by pillows he tried to sing one of the passages.  The effort was too great; the manuscript slipped from his nerveless hand and he fell back speechless with emotion.  A few hours later, on the morning of December 5, 1791, this great master of whom it was prophesied that he would cause all others to be forgotten, passed from the scene of his many struggles and greater triumphs.

VII

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

The Shakespeare of the realm of music, as he has been called, first saw the light on December 16, 1770, in the little University town of Bonn, on the Rhine.  His father, Johann Beethoven, belonged to the court band of the Elector of Cologne.  The family were extremely poor.  The little room, where the future great master was born, was so low, that a good-sized man could barely stand upright in it.  Very small it was too, and not very light either, as it was at the back of the building and looked out on a walled garden.

The fame of young Mozart, who was acclaimed everywhere as a marvelous prodigy, had naturally reached the father’s ears.  He decided to train the little Ludwig as a pianist, so that he should also be hailed as a prodigy and win fame and best of all money for the poverty-stricken family.  So the tiny child was made to practice scales and finger exercises for hours together.  He was a musically gifted child, but how he hated those everlasting tasks of finger technic, when he longed to join his little companions, who could run and play in the sunshine.  If he stopped his practice to rest and dream a bit, the stern face of his father would appear at the doorway, and a harsh voice would call out, “Ludwig! what are you doing?  Go on with your exercises at once.  There will be no soup for you till they are finished.”

The father, though harsh and stern, wished his boy to have as thorough a knowledge of music as his means would permit.  The boy was also sent to the public school, where he picked up reading and writing, but did not make friends very quickly with the other children.  The fact was the child seemed wholly absorbed in music; of music he dreamed constantly; in the companionship of music he never could be lonely.