Life of Mozart

114 " LE NOZZE DI FIGARO.The leaf on which its continuation and the return to thepresto was sketched is torn out, and the portion between viand de crossed through.^^ It is plain that Mozart altered hismind when he came to the instrumentation of the overture,which he had sketched in the usual way. Perhaps a middlemovement beginning like a Siciliana did not please him ; inany case, he thought it better not to disturb the cheerfulexpression of his opera by the introduction of any foreignelement. And in very truth the merry, lively movementpursues its uninterrupted course from the first eager murmurof the violins to the final flourish of trumpets. One bright,cheerful melody succeeds another, running and dancing forvery lightness of heart, like a clear mountain stream ripplingover the pebbles in the sunshine. A sudden stroke here andthere electrifies the motion ; and once, when a gentle melancholyshines forth, the merriment is as it were transfiguredinto the intensest happiness and content. A piece of musiccan hardly be more lightly and loosely put together thanthis ; there is an entire want of study or elaboration. Justas the impulses of a highly wrought poetic mood existunobserved, and pass from one to the other, so here onemotif grows out of the other, till the whole stands before us,we scarce know how.A not less important office is undertaken by the orchestrain assisting the psychological characterisation, not only bygiving light and shade and colouring through changes oftone-colouring and similar devices unattainable by the voices,but by taking a positive part in the rendering of emotion.No emotion is so simple as to be capable of a single decidedand comprehensive expression. To the voices is intrustedthe task of depicting the main features, while the orchestraundertakes to express the secondary and even the contradictoryimpulses of the mind, from the conflict of which ariseemotions capable of being expressed in music alone of allthe arts. We can scarcely wonder that Mozart's contemnsA writer in the Deutsch. Mus. Ztg., 1862, p. 253, conjectures that anorchestral piece in D minor (loi, Anh., K.) included among Mozart's remains,but unfortunately lost, may have been this middle movement.