Further than that , she had no wit but a little wholesome common sense .sx This last quality , it may be added , was just exactly what she did not possess , to any degree whatsoever ; for she had even less sense of money than Wolfgang himself .sx They were married without obtaining Leopold's consent .sx Needless to say , he soon forgave them ; but the marriage broke the close affection of father and son , and they were no longer incessantly in each other's company .sx On the other hand , this very separation , for the father remained at Salzburg while the son went to live in Vienna , was the reason for a further immense correspondence between them , though , as has been described , all Leopold's share in these letters was destroyed after Mozart's death .sx Gradually the situation became one of extreme pathos , for the father grew as hopeless as the son .sx Indeed , Leopold's last visit to Vienna , in 1785 , must have been a time of the most poignant sadness .sx Leopold knew , by this date , that it was no use , that Wolfgang would never be treated as he deserved .sx He describes how he listened with tears in his eyes to his son's concerts , and we may well believe it .sx When he died , not long afterwards , one of the most touching of human relationships had come to an end .sx The prevailing note in the remainder of Mozart's letters is of an anguished appeal for loans from rich friends , coupled with an agonized pretence at happiness and optimism so that Constanze , who was by now an apparently permanent invalid , should not be worried .sx ` You must be pleased to have me back and not worry about money,' were his words , in a letter to Constanze , just after he had written the clarinet concerto , one of his most lovely minor works .sx That is typical of his attitude ; but the dark side of the correspondence is in his letters to Michael Puchberg .sx They abound with such phrases as ` Dearest friend , if you can help with the present pressing expenses , oh , do so !sx I have just been obliged to part with my quartet ( that difficult work ) for a mere song , so as to get ready money .sx I am now working at some clavier-sonatas for the same reason ' ; or ` Picture my situation ill and full of care .sx Could you not assist me with a trifle ?sx ' Other quotations of the same nature read , ` If you could and would lend me one hundred florins till the twentieth of next month , I should be .sx very much obliged to you .sx I throw myself on your goodness,' and , ` O God !sx here am I with fresh entreaties instead of with thanks !sx with new demands instead of with payments .sx .. since you did me that great and friendly service I have lived in such misery that , not only have I not been able to go out , but I could not write for very grief .sx .. I am , at the moment , so utterly penniless that I have to beg you , dearest friend , by all that is sacred , to help me with whatever you can spare .sx ' At the time he was writing these desperate letters he was engaged in a frantic attempt to calm down Constanze and make her think the position less hopeless than it was .sx His affectionate nature comes out in the strongest colours .sx ` You would never believe how long the time seems to me since I left you .sx When I think how merry together we were in Baden , like children .sx .. I hope to hold you in my arms on Saturday , perhaps sooner .sx .. Tears rained upon the paper as I wrote the foregoing page , but now let us cheer up !sx Catch !sx An astonishing number of kisses are flying about .sx I see a whole crowd of them , too !sx Ha !sx Ha !sx I have just grabbed three they are delicious !sx ' .sx An extraordinary personal atmosphere emanates from his letters , and , to close ouraccount of them , we will quote the famous letter to a certain Baron in which he gives precious indications as to his method of work .sx ` When I am as it were completely myself , entirely alone , and of good cheer say , travelling in a carriage , or walking after a good meal , or during the night when I cannot sleep ; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly .sx Whence and how they come , I know not ; nor can I force them .sx Those ideas that please me I retain in memory , and am accustomed , as I have been told , to hum them to myself .sx If I continue in this way , it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account , so as to make a good dish of it , that is to say agreeably to the rules of counterpoint , to the peculiarities of the various instruments , etc. .sx ` All this fires my soul , and , provided I am not disturbed , my subject enlarges itself , becomes methodized and defined , and the whole , though it be long , stands almost complete and finished in my mind , so that I can survey it , like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance .sx Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively , but I hear them , as it were , all at once .sx What a delight this is I cannot tell !sx All this inventing , this .sx producing , takes place in a pleasing lively dream .sx Still , the actual hearing of the tout ensemble is , after all , the best .sx What has been thus produced I do not easily forget , and this is , perhaps , the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank for .sx ` When I proceed to write down my ideas , I take out of my bag of memory , if I may use that phrase , what has been previously collected into it in the way I have mentioned .sx For this reason the committing to paper is done quickly enough , for everything is , as I said before , already finished ; and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination .sx At this occupation I can , therefore , suffer myself to be disturbed ; for whatever may be going on around me , I write , and even talk , but only of fowls and geese , or of Gretel or Barbel , or some such matters .sx But why my productions take from my hand that particular form and style that makes them Mozartish , and different from the works of other composers , is probably owing to the same cause which renders my nose so large or so aquiline , or , in short , makes it Mozart's , and different from those of other people .sx For I really do not study or aim at any originality .sx ' It will be conceded that this is a unique account , in his own words , of a great artist at work , and it answers precisely those questions that are most puzzling , such as , for instance , how he managed to compose while people were playing games , or talking on every side of him .sx This is , necessarily , one of the most interesting of all his letters , but the whole correspondence , for too long kept back from complete translation into our language by an excessive critical prudery , has a real literary value of its own , apart from the fact that it was Mozart who wrote the letters .sx In fact , he comes out of this correspondence as one of the great letter-writers of the world .sx After these evidences , by quotation , of how the truth about his character can be discerned in the words that he wrote , there is just space left to complete the picture of him that we left unfinished at an earlier page of this book .sx The good looks of his childhood left him in early youth ; his eyes lacked the lustre of genius and were dim , save when he played ; and his nose , as he himself suggests in the letter just quoted , became more aquiline as he grew older , through the greater emaciation and thinness of his face .sx He died through the excessive strain he imposed upon his nerves and upon his creative power .sx An improvement in .sx fortune had practically reached him at the moment of his death .sx It is almost certain that he would have visited , and perhaps lived for some years , in England ; but the temptation to prolong his life in the imagination until , say , the year of Beethoven's death , 1827 , when Mozart would have only reached his seventy-first year , is dismissed summarily every time we look at his portrait .sx It is not the physique of a long-lived man .sx Such a man would be delicate now ; and , in his day , people died at so much younger an age .sx Perhaps he might have lived as long as Chopin , until he was forty , that is to say , and have died some time just before 1800 .sx His life would have been short enough had he lived till then , but the marvels of this final period of his life might well have surpassed all the rest of his achievement .sx XI .sx POSTERITY OF MOZART .sx ` Play Mozart in memory of me and I will hear you .sx ' THESE were the last words of Chopin , and perhaps a hypothetical argument of mutual admiration might be advanced from this , for if Chopin loved Mozart , there is , equally , no doubt whatever that Mozart would have preferred the music of Chopin to that of any other composer of the succeeding generation .sx Chopin will have admired the ease and polish , the graces and the aristocratic refinements of the clavier sonatas ; but it would be absurd to look for any traces of their influence in Chopin .sx Within their limited scope their form was too perfected ; the Mozart sonata was incapable of further improvement , and so its fate was to degenerate in inferior hands .sx The composer Hummel was a typical instance of this .sx He had been taken to live in Mozart's household , as a pupil , at the tender age of seven .sx He never wrote any work of originality , but he was .sx a beautiful player , and preserved , it may be supposed , Mozart's style of playing , if nothing more than that .sx If we turn from this to chamber-music we find Beethoven imitating Mozart in his early quartets and very quickly emerging from that into his own true stature .sx That Mozart may have been his model , and the object of his unqualified admiration , did not prevent Beethoven from taking this musical form and making it strictly his own .sx The six Haydn quartets of Mozart remain , therefore , as a supreme achievement of musical thought , and the Rasumoffsky group , or Beethoven's posthumous quartets , in no sense contradict their eminence , if they equal , or surpass it , in other ways .sx But there is a still greater divergence in the symphonies of these two composers , because Beethoven , after a first and a second Mozartian essay , brought a strain of personal suffering and a background of optimistic and unconvincing philosophy into music .sx His consummate skill has left these embedded there , but they were alien to Mozart .sx Not a trace of reading is ever to be found in Mozart's music .sx He was no more learned in that than in the niceties of connoisseurship .sx Almost the only reference he makes in his letters to anything of the kindis when he writes from Nancy , 'I should like to live here , for the town is indeed charmante fine houses , fine broad streets , and superb squares .sx ' Except for that , there is but little evidence that he read , or that he ever used his eyes to educate his mind .sx Except for his Masonic leanings he was completely uninterested in philosophy .sx He had , therefore , no extraneous optimism , and since only thoughts of a musical texture played through his mind , there is a purity in his music to which Beethoven seldom attained .sx And it was won with no effort :sx he had but few pains to arrive at it .sx If we turn now to Schubert and try to compare him melodically with Mozart , we come at once into a world of most interesting differences .sx Schubert , as Liszt so truly said , is the most poetical of all composers that have ever lived .sx The atmosphere became tainted with poetry whenever the genius of Schubert moved him to write music .sx It was almost as if poetry were a sweet of some kind , some confection of sugar or Turkish delight that Schubert held in his mouth all the time his inspiration worked .sx It drugged him .sx