Mozart Haydn And Early Beethoven Daniel Heartz

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For Bruce

Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Mozart, 1781–1785
Return to Vienna
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Dramaturgical Concerns
Clavierland! Salzburg and Vienna
Joseph II and Other Patrons
THE “LINZ” SYMPHONY
BARON VAN SWIETEN
FREEMASONRY
Six String Quartets Dedicated to Haydn
The Piano Concertos of 1784
1785: Leopold’s Visit; More Concertos
2. Mozart, 1786–1788
The Approaches to Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro
Post-Figaro Chamber Music
On the Way to Prague
THE “PRAGUE” SYMPHONY
Figaro IN THE NOSTITZ THEATER

STRING QUINTETS
INTERLUDE
Don Giovanni
1788: Three Late Symphonies
3. Mozart, 1789–1791
Saxony, Prussia; Chamber Music
Così fan tutte
Leopold II: Sacred Music
THE REQUIEM
Die Zauberflöte
La clemenza di Tito
4. Haydn: The 1780s
String Quartets, Opus 33
Sacred Music and Opera
THE SECOND Missa Cellensis
Orlando Paladino
Armida
THE Seven Last Words
Symphonies
SYMPHONIES NOS. 75–81
CONTEXTS FOR THE PARIS SYMPHONIES
THE PARIS SYMPHONIES, NOS. 82–87
SYMPHONIES NOS. 88–92
String Quartets
OPUS 50
MOZART AND HAYDN
OPERA 54–55
OPUS 64
Piano Sonatas and Trios
Departure

5. Haydn in London, 1791–1795
The First Months
Orfeo ed Euridice
Salomon’s 1791 Concerts
SYMPHONIES NOS. 95–96
The London Notebooks
Summer 1791–Winter 1792
Salomon’s 1792 Concerts
SYMPHONIES NOS. 93–94
SYMPHONIES NOS. 97–98
Interim in Vienna
STRING QUARTETS, OPERA 71–74
Salomon’s 1794 Concerts
SYMPHONY NO. 99
SYMPHONIES NOS. 100–101
Other Events of 1794
Piano Trios and Sonatas, 1794–95
The Opera Concerts, 1795
SYMPHONY NO. 102
SYMPHONY NO. 103
SYMPHONY NO. 104
6. Haydn: Late Harvest
Vienna, 1795–96
Die Sieben letzten Worte
Missa Sancti Bernardi de Offida (“Heiligmesse”)
Missa in Tempore Belli
THE TRUMPET CONCERTO
String Quartets, Opus 76
The Creation
Sacred Music, 1798–1800
Missa in Angustiis (“Nelson” Mass)
“Theresienmesse”

Te Deum Laudamus; ADMIRAL NELSON
String Quartets, Opus 77
The Seasons
Valediction
Schöpfungsmesse
Harmoniemesse
Last Years
7. Beethoven in Bonn and in Vienna
Heritage
A Rhine Journey
First Compositions
A FORTNIGHT IN VIENNA
Last Bonn Years
THE JOSEPH AND LEOPOLD CANTATAS
DEPARTURE
First Vienna Years
TRIOS, OPUS 1, AND SONATAS, OPUS 2
A JOURNEY TO BERLIN
1797–1798
At the Turn of the Century
PIANO SONATAS
String Quartets, Opus 18
Symphony No. 1 in C Major
The Creatures of Prometheus
The Year 1802
Symphony No. 2 in D Major
APPENDICES
1. An Irish Tenor in the Burgtheater
2. Sarti Witnesses Haydn’s Armida

List of Works Cited
Credits
Index
ENDPAPERS: Reilly’s 1789 map, “The Environs of Vienna.”

List of Illustrations
ENDPAPERS: Reilly’s 1789 map, “The Environs of Vienna.”
Figures
1.1 Reilly’s 1789 map, “The Environs of Vienna.”
1.2 Playbill for Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
1.3 Detail from Carl Schütz, “The Michaelerplatz” (1783).
1.4 Oil portrait of the Mozart family, 1781, attributed to Della Croce.
1.5 Title page of Die Maurerfreude.
1.6 Title page of the String Quartets dedicated to Haydn.
1.7 Dedication page of “Haydn” Quartets.
2.1 Saint-Aubin’s profile of Beaumarchais, engraved by Cochin.
2.2 Saint-Quentin’s depiction of Le Mariage de Figaro, Act II, scene 4.
Engraving by Halbon.
2.3 The “Figaro House” behind St. Stephan’s Cathedral.
2.4 Floor Plan of Prague’s Nostitz Theater, 1792/1793.
2.5 De Wilde’s portrait of Nancy Storace, 1791.
2.6 No. 135 Währingerstrasse from Daniel Huber’s map of Vienna, ca.
1770.
3.1 Portrait of Mozart by Doris Stock, 1789.
3.2 Così fan tutte. First text page of the printed libretto, 1790.
3.3 Garden scene from Goldoni’s Arcadia in Brenta. Engraved by Zuliani.
3.4 Emperor Leopold II, engraved by Adam after Kreuzinger, 1791.
3.5 Handbill for Die Zauberflöte.
3.6 Ignaz Alberti’s frontispiece for the libretto of Die Zauberflöte.

3.7 La clemenza di Tito: Act I, final scene (“Burning of the Capitol”) from
a 1795 score.
4.1 Detail of Mansfeld’s 1781 portrait of Haydn.
4.2 Travaglia’s stage design for Orlando paladino (“Snowy Mountain”).
4.3 Concert Room of the Société Olympique, Paris.
4.4 Silhouette of a string quartet from the Oettingen-Wallerstein court.
4.5 Title and dedication pages of Niemetschek’s Mozart biography, 1798.
4.6 Detail from Carl Schütz’s “The Kohlmarkt,” showing Artaria’s shop,
1786.
4.7 Title page of the Piano Trio, Hob. XV:l0, published by Artaria.
5.1 Simon McVeigh’s hypothetical seating plan, Hanover Square Rooms.
5.2 Portrait of Haydn painted and engraved by Thomas Hardy, 1792.
5.3 Title page of Ignaz Pleyel’s Symphonie Concertante in F, B. 113.
5.4 Districts where Haydn resided, from a London map by John Rocque.
5.5 Title page of the Piano Trios dedicated to Rebecca Schroeter.
5.6 Charles Gore. Drawing of a ship entering Hamburg harbor, 1792.
6.1 Portrait of Gottfried van Swieten by P. Fendi, engraved by J. Axmann.
6.2 Title page of the Erdödy Quartets, Op. 76, published by Artaria.
6.3 Medals awarded to Haydn. From Carpani, Le Haydine, 1812.
6.4 Leonard Posch. Engraved portrait of Empress Marie Therese.
6.5 Johann Elias Ridinger. Two prints of the stag hunt.
6.6 Carl Schütz. A view of Nicolas Jadot’s New University building, 1790.
7.1 Map of the Rhineland showing the four former electorates.
7.2 Lorenz Janscha. The electoral palace, Bonn.
7.3 Title page of Beethoven’s Piano Trios, Op. 1.
7.4 Interior view of the Burgtheater, ca. 1810/1812.
7.5 Title page of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1.
7.6 Christian Horneman. Miniature portrait of Beethoven, 1802.

Preface
AN INTRODUCTION to this book is furnished by its two predecessors,
Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School, 1740–1780 (1995) and Music in
European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720–1780 (2003). Haydn, Mozart,
as it is abbreviated throughout the present volume, concentrated on music in
Vienna from the mid-century on, then described the careers and works of
both masters up to the turning point of 1780, after which they gradually
emerged as leaders of the Viennese school. Music in European Capitals cast
the net more widely and surveyed the art all over the Continent, beginning
with the Galant Style’s origins in newer streams of Italian opera during the
1720s and 1730s. In the Preface to Haydn, Mozart, I expressed hopes of
being able to finish the third volume that would “wind up the careers of
Haydn and Mozart, describe Beethoven’s first decade in Vienna,
intertwined with the tumultuous times surrounding the French Revolution . .
.” Behold the third (and final) volume. The story of how three books
emerged out of an originally planned one is told in my essay “A Pilgrim’s
Progress Report Concerning ‘Music in the Classic Era,’ ” in Music,
Libraries, and the Academy: Essays in Honor of Lenore Coral, ed. James P.
Cassaro (Madison, WI, 2007).
Completing this volume took less time than anticipated, thanks partly to
habits formed and momentum gathered from writing the first two, also
because the material was more familiar to me. The high classic style in
music that marked the last two decades of the eighteenth century became
manifest in an imposing succession of undisputed masterpieces. During the
1780s Mozart wrote his most famous operas and instrumental pieces.
Haydn followed by producing his greatest symphonies, string quartets,
masses, and oratorios. Young Beethoven started as a pianist-composer in
imitation of Mozart, on whose keyboard sonatas and concertos he patterned

his own. Haydn, as well as Mozart, furnished the models when, about the
year 1800, Beethoven began composing string quartets and symphonies.
The majority of all these great works were old acquaintances of mine. I
have been teaching them in the classroom for half a century.
By the early years of the nineteenth century, “Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven” had become a watchword, a commonplace expression
signifying musical excellence. From Vienna, the fame of these composers
spread rapidly throughout Western civilization. A survey of music journals
in 1804, cited by Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (revised and edited by Elliot
Forbes [Princeton, 1964], p. 361), claimed that critics even then ranked
Beethoven as the only musician worthy to stand beside Haydn and Mozart.
Many music lovers never relinquished their preference for early Beethoven,
although the composer himself moved on to other models and different
quests. Their attitude certainly had to do with an abiding love for the music
of Mozart and Haydn. E. T. A. Hoffmann was one critic whose tastes did
move on, by rejoicing in what was specifically new in nineteenth-century
music of all kinds, yet at the core of his aesthetic values there remained the
same composer-triad: “Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven have evolved a new
art . . .” he wrote in 1814. Ten years later a group of Austrian notables
imploring Beethoven not to desert them went so far as to tout Vienna’s
“holy Trinity” in the persons of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Readers familiar with the first two volumes may notice that this one lacks
color plates, a decision I reached for the following reasons. Of great
paintings that could enhance main points in my text I found none. As for
colored portraits of the main figures, there are hardly any that have not been
reproduced often in other books. The unfinished portrait of Mozart at the
keyboard by his brother-in-law, the actor Joseph Lange, reproduced over
and over in the literature, springs readily to mind. My search for pertinent
and unhackneyed visual material yielded better results among engravings
and other black-and-white originals.
In one case, I struck a bonanza. An engraved, little-known map, “Die
Gegend um Wien” (The Environs of Vienna), serves as Figure 1.1 and as
endpapers. Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly (1766–1820), Austria’s most
eminent cartographer, published it in 1789. The map can be read by
regarding its center, WIEN, the city within the old walls, as the hub of a
wheel, whose spokes radiate out into streets and districts. From the top
descending counterclockwise, Reilly labels these: Leopoldstadt; then across

the Danube canal to Rossau; Waringergasse, where Mozart lived in 1788;
Alstergasse, where Beethoven resided during his first years in Vienna
(1792–95); and so on down to Mariahilf. Just below the last-mentioned is
Gumpendorf, where in 1796 Haydn bought the house in which he died in
1809. Beyond the outer line of fortifications to the west and south of the
city are numerous villages and small towns that were summer havens to city
dwellers. The names of several villages near Vienna are familiar
particularly in connection with Beethoven. Starting at the Danube north-
northwest of the city and moving southwest there are, for example,
Nusdorf, Heiligstadt, Döbling, and all the way south to the town of Mödling
near the map’s bottom. Further south beyond Mödling is the spa town of
Baden, frequented by Mozart and Beethoven. Routes lead out of the city in
all directions. To the east, the Landstras[se] becomes the “Strasse nach
Ungarn” (Hungary); to the north, across the Danube, the route to Silesia and
Poland diverges from that to Bohemia; to the west lies the “Strasse in das
Reich” (Germany); and in the south there are routes to Styria (and Italy) and
to Croatia. Tree-lined royal ways (Alees) lead to Schönbrunn and
Laxenburg palaces. The river Wien (Wien Fl[uss])) in those days was
uncovered except for the many bridges over it.
John Rice acquainted me with Reilly’s 1789 map many years ago when
he was writing his dissertation here. I somehow managed to keep a copy
(among hundreds of other documents) and reminded John of it last year. He
knew not only the map but also the identity of a specialist dealer with
whom he put me in touch, and from whom I purchased the original
engraving reproduced here. As the map leads off the book, so should John
lead the list of those thanked in the acknowledgments that follow. He has
been one of my most frequent correspondents and of great help with all
three books. Another Mozart scholar for whose answers to many queries I
am grateful is Paul Corneilson. My colleague Joseph Kerman has been
generous in aid of the Beethoven chapter, as has William Meredith of the
Beethoven Center at San José State University.
Colin Slim, my near neighbor in Berkeley these last five years, has
helped me in many ways. He read the entire work in draft before it went to
the press and suggested innumerable improvements and emendations. He
has also volunteered to help with the proofs when they arrive. His devoted
friendship has sustained me through occasional bouts of dispiritedness and
kept me focused on the goal.

I have had but one research assistant, Rebekah Ahrendt, who alone
accomplished the feat of putting the entire text on disk over a period of four
years as I was writing it (and often rewriting it), all the while making
valuable suggestions and corrections. She did this so adroitly, with so much
grace and aplomb, as to make the task look easy. I thank her heartily, and
also my music typographer, who once again was Michael Zwiebach. My
friend, the artist Carol Peale, drew the map of the Rhineland (Figure 7.1)
after a rough sketch I made, and together we looked through her vast
collection of art books and catalogues until we found an ideal battle scene
with which to adorn the dust jacket.
From the publisher’s side there was also a major continuity with the first
two volumes. I again benefited from the long experience of the inestimable
Claire Brook as principal reader. If my text gave her even slightly fewer
headaches this time around, I count that as progress—no small thing with
such an exacting taskmistress, one to whom I owe so much.
Bruce Alan Brown was central to my finishing the series. By taking on
some of my projects he allowed me more time. At my request he relieved
me of revising several articles on eighteenth-century music for the second
edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2002). My
association with the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, begun with the Attwood papers
in the 1960s and continued with my edition of Idomeneo (1972), was
scheduled to conclude with a critical report on the same. Thanks to general
editor Wolfgang Rehm, with whom I have enjoyed most cordial relations
over four decades, my requests to transfer responsibility into Bruce’s hands
were worked out. With the meticulous attention to detail Bruce brings to
every scholarly task, his splendid Kritischer Bericht on Idomeneo, after
long hard labor, saw the light of publication in 2005. With profound
gratitude for all his help, not only lately but throughout the planning and
writing of this series, I dedicate this book to Bruce.
Daniel Heartz
Berkeley, California
September 2007

Mozart, Haydn
and
Early Beethoven

1
Mozart, 1781–1785
Return to Vienna
MOZART was reluctant to leave Munich after the performances there of his
Idomeneo in early 1781. He still hoped for an appointment to the Bavarian
court. For Countess Josepha von Paumgarten, mistress of Elector Carl
Theodor, he composed the scena and aria K. 369 dated Munich, 8 March
1781. It was his last attempt at persuading Carl Theodor to hire him. His
only remaining option was to obey the summons from his employer and
liege lord, Hieronymous von Colloredo, prince archbishop of Salzburg,
from whose court he had greatly overstayed his leave, as had his father,
Leopold.
Colloredo was not in Salzburg at the time but in Vienna, where he had
gone to visit his ailing father Prince Rudolf Joseph von Colloredo, vice-
chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. The archbishop and most of his
entourage stayed in Vienna at the palatial House of the Order of the
Teutonic Knights on the Singerstrasse. To this rather grim building, which
incorporated a church that fronted the street, Mozart repaired and was
allotted a room of his own. Arrived on 16 March, he wrote to Leopold in
Salzburg the next day, the first of a series of letters in which he chafed at his
lowly status among the court officials attending the archbishop. Colloredo,
understandably miffed with the Mozarts, treated him coldly. Aside from
complaining of his lowly station at the communal table, Mozart bewailed
his failure to receive extra payment for displaying his talents in the various
houses to which Colloredo sent him to perform.

In letters to his father, Mozart painted the situation regarding the
archbishop in increasingly bitter terms. He was preparing Leopold for the
break that he deemed inevitable. At the same time, he was seeking his
father’s permission to make such a move. The financial situation of the
Mozart family was dire. Leopold had a modest salary at Salzburg and his
daughter Nannerl earned no more than a pittance for giving piano lessons
there. Moreover, debts remained from Mozart’s financially unrewarding trip
to Mannheim and Paris two years earlier. He found no appointment at either
place. Leopold was reluctant to lose the small but reliable income from his
son’s position as court organist at Salzburg. In the end Mozart prevailed by
getting himself kicked out of the palace on the Singerstrasse. His letter of
resignation was scorned, meaning he had no formal release from his duties.
Mozart had last lived in Vienna during the summer of 1773. Having
failed to get appointments in Milan and Florence, he and Leopold once
again pinned their hopes on the imperial court. Maria Theresa still ruled.
Her eldest son, Joseph, was subordinate to her as co-ruler of the Habsburg
monarchy since the death of his father, Emperor Francis, in 1765, but
supreme in his lesser and more ceremonial role of Holy Roman Emperor in
succession to Francis. Even reputable historians have been known to
confuse the two roles, and musicologists often get entangled in their
complexities. In the first volume of this series, I took the precaution of
beginning with a map showing how these political entities intersected and
overlapped.
1
It was Maria Theresa, not Joseph, to whom the Mozarts had
recourse in 1773. After a visit to Schönbrunn Leopold wrote his wife in
Salzburg on 12 August 1773, “Her majesty the Empress was very gracious
to us, but that is all.”
2
Maria Theresa died in November 1780 after forty years on the throne of
the Monarchy. Four princes were assigned the honor of escorting her coffin
to entombment in the Church of the Capuchins on the Hoher Markt. Their
names indicate which noble families ranked highest in the court’s protocol:
Charles von Liechtenstein, Charles Joseph de Ligne, Nicholas von
Esterházy, and Georg Adam von Starhemberg. The Prince de Ligne held
extensive territories in the Austrian Netherlands and had distinguished
himself as an author; Liechtenstein and Starhemberg had stellar careers in
the military and diplomatic service respectively; Esterházy, ruler of vast
estates in Hungary, was probably the wealthiest prince of all. He also
maintained the most elaborate musical establishment, led for decades by

Kapellmeister Joseph Haydn. Mozart lacked the temperament that allowed
Haydn to remain a court servant over a long period. Yet he aspired to a
court appointment that would support himself and his family. He set his
sights high, on the new sovereign of the Monarchy, Joseph II.
Soon after arriving in Vienna Mozart made clear his plans to capture, or
recapture, the attention of Joseph II. On 24 March 1781, he wrote to
Leopold.
My chief intention here now is to present myself in a polished manner to the emperor, for I am
absolutely determined that he should get to know me. I should gladly walk him through my opera
[Idomeneo] and play him some good fugues, for that is what he likes. Had I known that I would be
in Vienna through the Lenten season I would have written a little oratorio and given it for my
benefit in the theater, for that is what everyone does here. I could easily have written it ahead of
time because I know all the solo voices. How gladly I would have given a public concert here, as is
the custom, but—I am not allowed to do so.
Writing on 11 April, he excoriated the in-house concerts he was allowed to
give with his fellow court musicians, mainly soprano castrato Francesco
Ceccarelli and violinist Antonio Brunetti. “What brought me to near despair
was that the very evening we had this shitty house concert [scheis-Musick]
I was invited by Countess [Maria Wilhelmina] Thun and who should be
there? the Emperor! [Tenor Valentin] Adamberger and [soprano Anna
Maria] Weigl were there and received fifty ducats apiece! And what an
opportunity!”
Joseph II was aware of Mozart all along, remembering even his first
appearances in Vienna as a child prodigy. He took close interest in affairs at
the court of Munich and doubtless was aware of the sensation caused there
by Idomeneo. By the end of April there was talk of Mozart receiving a
libretto for an opera from Stephanie, poet of Joseph’s German operatic
troupe in the Burgtheater. The idea surely came from the Emperor himself,
who supervised such matters even while appearing to be above them.
Vienna under the sole rule of Joseph II differed from what it had been
under his predecessors, especially as to court ceremonial, much of which he
abolished. Diplomatic receptions had to be continued as before but large,
purely social, gatherings at court became rare. Joseph reduced his
household to a condition more humble than many a family of the high
nobility (or wealthy parvenu—think Faninal of operatic fame). Twice a
widower, and with no surviving children, Joseph led an austere bachelor
existence chez lui, went about the city in the plainest attire in the simplest of

carriages, and depended for entertainment on a select few friends such as
the charming and brilliant Countess Thun.
The time saved from participating in traditional court formalities Joseph
spent in governing, sometimes over-governing, his far-flung estates, and in
issuing minute regulations affecting education, social welfare, and
jurisprudence. His enlightened reforms were often foresighted and achieved
long-lasting advances in medical, hygienic, and legal areas. As often as not
his reforms ran up against entrenched habits reluctantly abandoned by the
very people they were intended to benefit. The law of unintended
consequences manifested itself in other ways too. After censorship of most
publications was reduced or removed, the streets of Vienna were flooded
with pamphlets not worth printing in the first place.
Joseph’s restrictions on elaborate music in churches arose from good
intentions. They were, of course, resisted by the many musicians whose
livelihood, however meager, depended on performing at the numerous
churches of the capital. Arguments were waged in print on the pros and
cons of the restrictions by several authors, notably Johann Pezzl and
Friedrich Nicolai, a visitor from Berlin.
3
The attempt to substitute
something akin to Protestant hymns for congregations to sing did not
succeed. Elaborate church music returned under Joseph’s successors
Leopold II and Francis II.
Even so, reforming efforts by Joseph on the domestic front met with
more success than did his attempts to wield greater power in international
affairs. As his mother’s co-ruler and as emperor he had often been more
belligerent and territorially aggrandizing than prudence warranted. As long
as Maria Theresa held supreme power she reined in her son’s ambitions,
although not in the shameful case of the First Partition of Poland (1772),
when Joseph and their first minister, Chancellor Wenzel Kaunitz, prevailed
over her. The later diplomatic crises he provoked are mentioned below
following the stand he took against Freemasonry in 1785.
One reform Joseph undertook while still co-ruler with his mother earned
him admiration from the populace of Vienna. Close to the city, he opened
two royal preserves to the public, the Prater (1766) and the Augarten
(1775). This allowed common people to stroll, ride horseback or in
carriages through these leafy parks on the island in the Danube directly
across from the central city. Reilly’s 1789 map “Die Gegend um Wien”
(Figure 1.1) shows many locations with important associations for Mozart,

Haydn, and Beethoven that will be discussed throughout this volume. Here
the emphasis is on those features of Reilly’s map that are shown and named
on the large island across from Vienna: the suburb of Leopoldstadt, the only
settled part, linked with the city by a wide bridge over the branch of the
Danube (also called the Danube canal); the Augarten at the northwest end
of the island; and occupying the whole southeastern part, the vast Prater
(Bratter), on the tip of which, at the end of a long tree-lined Allée, is a
“Lusthaus.”
FIGURE 1.1. Reilly’s 1789 map, “The Environs of Vienna.”
The Augarten and Prater both figure in letters Mozart sent his father in
Salzburg. On 25 July 1781, he defended himself against rumors reaching
Leopold as to the unsupervised attentions he was paying to an unmarried
daughter (Constanze) of Frau Weber, in whose apartment near the
Peterskirche he had been renting a room since early May: “We were in the

Prater together a couple of times but her mother was along with us.” One
day in 1783 while in the Augarten he ran into Emperor Joseph, who
questioned him about his age when the Mozarts first visited Vienna in 1762
(letter of 20 February 1784). In his letter of 26 May 1784, Mozart wrote
that he and his wife went to bed at midnight and rose at five or five-thirty
almost every day so that they could go to the Augarten early (their maid had
complained to relatives in Salzburg that their hours prevented her from
getting enough sleep). During the warmer months, if the weather was
clement, the couple spent entire days in the Prater. Mozart’s letter of 3 May
1783 is in fact dated “Vienne im Prater ce 3 de may.”
Mon très cher Pére! I can scarcely bring myself to drive back to the city for the weather is far too
lovely, and being in the Prater today is so delightful. We have taken our lunch in the open air and
shall stay on until eight or nine in the evening. My entire company consists of my little wife, who
is pregnant, and her little husband, who is not pregnant but healthily fat.
Another reason that Mozart went to these civic parks was for the summer
concert series given in them. In his letter of 8 May 1782 he told Leopold of
a series of twelve concerts in the Augarten planned under the aegis of the
entrepreneur Philip Martin, with Mozart’s cooperation. Martin also owned a
restaurant in the Augarten where the composer was welcome. In sum,
Mozart made the most of Vienna’s two central parks and loved being
outdoors in their verdant surroundings.
Further evidence of his rapport with nature, if any were needed, is
furnished by his description of a visit to Count Kobenzl’s hunting lodge in
the hills to the northwest of Vienna, known collectively as the Kahlenberg.
On Reilly’s 1789 map (see Figure 1.1) the count’s particular hill is labeled
“Kobenzl.” Mozart wrote Leopold on 13 July 1781, “The little house is
nothing much, but the countryside!—the forest—in which my host has built
a grotto that looks as if Nature herself had fashioned it. That is magnificent
and very agreeable.” These hills beyond the city provide a background to
Bernardo Bellotto’s splendid panorama of Vienna from the south.
4
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Opera in Vienna had changed greatly since Mozart’s previous visits. These
were in 1762, when at age six he witnessed the first production of Gluck’s

Orfeo ed Euridice; in 1767, when the Burgtheater failed to produce his
comic opera La finta semplice; and in 1773, by which time Antonio Salieri
had come to dominate the scene with his operas for the Italian troupe in
residence. In 1776, Emperor Joseph II founded a National Theater for plays
in German, to which he added a wing for Singspiele two years later. He
dismissed the Italian singers. Works in German thus occupied the stage of
the Burgtheater, where plays in French and operas in Italian had hitherto
held sway.
Joseph II confided overall direction of the German troupe to his advisor
and intimate friend Count Franz Xaver Orsini Rosenberg, the court’s high
chamberlain. Under him was a rotating directorship of five actors. One of
them, Gottlieb Stephanie the Younger, had special responsibility for the
troupe’s Singspiel wing. Stephanie, a prolific playwright, was born in
Breslau and came to Vienna as a prisoner during the Seven Years War.
Luckily, Mozart enjoyed the good graces of both Stephanie and Count
Rosenberg. The latter had invited the Mozarts to visit him in 1770 when
they were in Florence, where he was chief minister to Grand Duke Leopold,
Joseph II’s brother and successor. Stephanie befriended the Mozarts during
their 1773 visit to Vienna. Not long after his return to Vienna in March
1781, Mozart showed Stephanie his nearly completed Singspiel Zaide, K.
344, written in Salzburg but intended for Vienna. Stephanie rejected it as
too serious for the Viennese and promised to find the composer a new
libretto to set that would be more to their liking (letter to Leopold Mozart of
18 April 1781). Meanwhile, Mozart introduced Count Rosenberg to
Idomeneo, which he performed on the fortepiano of Countess Thun (letter
of 26 May 1781). On 30 July, Stephanie gave Mozart a libretto with a
Turkish subject, by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner, Belmont und Constanze,
oder, Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The music had been composed by
Johann André and was first performed in Berlin only two months earlier.
5
Idomeneo eased the birth of Die Entführung, not only by impressing
Count Rosenberg, but also by providing Mozart with an enhanced sense of
tonal planning and of expressive possibilities far beyond those in his earlier
operas. Some of the most moving passages in Idomeneo inspired the music
with which Mozart clothed the pair of noble lovers, Belmonte and
Konstanze.
6
He emphasized their seriousness by contrasting them with their
servants, Blonde and Pedrillo, and with his Turkish style, assigned
particularly to the figure of Osmin. Mozart plays off the brightness these

characters bring to the opera, mostly on the sharp side of the tonal spectrum
or in neutral C major, against the more subdued and languorous love music
of the noble Spanish couple, characteristically set to music on the flat side.
Osmin, the surly overseer of Pasha Selim’s country estate, is one of
Mozart’s greatest dramatic creations, not because the text set this up but
because Mozart demanded changes in the libretto. It was the opera’s good
fortune to have for this role a great bass singer, Johann Ludwig Fischer,
who came to Vienna in 1780 after having sung in the German operas for
Elector Carl Theodore at Mannheim and Munich. Born in Mainz in 1745,
Fischer was trained by the famous tenor Anton Raaff at Mannheim, who
created the title role of Idomeneo.
In order to exploit Fischer’s wonderfully deep voice to the full, Mozart
had entire scenes rewritten so as to expand the role, with the result that
there is no dramatic exposition at the beginning of the opera. Not until
scene four of the first act is it made clear who the characters are and how
they got to this exotic locale. Konstanze and Blonde, along with Pedrillo,
were captured by pirates and then bought by Pasha Selim and taken to his
country house. We learn further, from what Pedrillo tells Belmonte, that the
Pasha is not a born Turk but a renegade Christian, one who is too delicate to
compel any of his wives to love him. His passions are buildings and
gardens. Thus, Pedrillo will introduce Belmonte as an architect.
Mozart ordinarily wrote out the overtures to his operas at the last minute,
because they were not rehearsed until then, if at all. In this case, he took a
different course. Besides its importance in creating a Turkish ambience, the
overture has a middle section that foreshadows the first sung number. It was
Mozart’s idea to have Belmonte, sung by Valentin Adamberger, begin by
singing a short song (No. 1, which he calls a “kleine Ariette” in his letter of
26 September 1781). In it, Belmonte expresses his relief at reaching the
place where he hoped to find his beloved (material present in Bretzner only
as spoken text). He sings this to simple music in the key of C that had
served, though in c, as the overture’s short middle section (Example 1.1).
The forte corresponds to the word “Konstanze!” in the sung version.
Hearing what was in the minor repeated in the major can only brighten the
mood of the audience and urge it to think, “Yes, you will find your beloved
Konstanze!”

EXAMPLE 1.1. Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Overture: middle section
The exotic tonal coloring of the overture returns as soon as Osmin begins
his strophic Lied in g (No. 2). From the end of No. 1, the bass moves one
whole tone down from C to B, the song’s first chord being a first inversion
of its tonic chord. This conjunction of B and C occurs many times in the
opera, as we shall see. The Lied could as well have been called a Romance,
for it has an unusual tonal complexion, hovering mainly between i and v,
giving it the archaic character favored for Romances. The text narrates a
parable (with self-reference implied), that is sung as conscious song,
features also characteristic of the Romance. The tune’s several repeated
tones, its 6/8 meter, and suggestions of plucked accompaniment (pizzicato
strings for the third strophe) all give a foretaste of Pedrillo’s delightful
equivalent in Act III, No. 18. Mozart saved the term “Romance” for that
climactic moment.
Aside from the frequent passing back and forth between C and B, the
opera often passes from tonic minor to major within and between numbers,
which accounts in part for the cheerily optimistic mood it projects overall.
Otherwise, Mozart chose to move by intervals of a third or fourth, up or
down, in almost all cases, so that successive sections or numbers have a
common tone between them. In Act I, he favored several moves up a third.
The move of a major second into and out of the penultimate number
comes as something of a surprise, scarcely mitigated by the brief spoken
dialogue that separates the end of the brilliant Janissary Chorus in C (No. 6)
from the onset of soothing B in No. 7. In opera with recitative such a tonal
motion would almost certainly have been prepared with modulation. That
the surprise is part of Mozart’s overall tonal strategy is evident from his
placing a big number in B in the penultimate spot in each of the three acts.
7
Mozart gave a revealing account of how he made tonal choices in a long
letter about the opera to his father dated 26 September 1781. He explains
the importance of a particular singer to the project as well.
Since we assigned the part of Osmin to Herr Fischer, who certainly has an outstanding bass voice
(notwithstanding that the Archbishop told me that he sang too low—I assured him that he would
sing higher next time). We must take advantage of such a man, especially as he has the entire
public here on his side. In the original book, Osmin has only this one little song to sing, and apart

from that, he has nothing, except the trio and the finale. Thus, I gave him an aria to sing in Act I
and will give him one in Act II as well. I have indicated how the aria will go to Stephanie, and the
main portion of the music was finished before he knew a word about it. You have only the
beginning of it and the ending, which must have a good effect, for Osmin’s rage is made comical
by introducing the Turkish music. In working out this aria, I made Fischer’s beautiful deep tones
shine forth (in spite of that Salzburger Midas). The passage “By the beard of the Prophet” is in the
same tempo as before but with quick notes, and as his anger increases more and more, just when
the aria seems to be over the Allegro assai arrives in a different tempo and different key, which
must produce an excellent effect. For a man in a towering rage oversteps all order, measure, and
boundary. He does not know himself and so the music must no longer know itself. But since the
passions, be they powerful or not, must never be expressed to the point of disgust, and music, even
in the most horrifying situation, must never offend the ear, but must actually please, in other words
must remain music, I have chosen a key foreign to F (the key of the aria) but a key allied to it, yet
not its nearest relative, D minor, but rather its more distant one, A minor.
Rare is a statement like this, specifying the degree of difference Mozart
heard between iii and vi in the context of coming from I. The lesson can be
applied to many of the tonal moves in his music. It applies, for instance, to
his frequent pairing of E (I) with g (iii). The I-iii pairing also occurs
frequently in earlier eighteenth-century music.
.8
There is spoken dialogue following No. 3, but it goes by quickly, as do
most spoken passages. Thus the emphatic impression of the key of a minor,
made shrill by the jangling Turkish music and obsessive repetitions of the
first five tones of that key’s scale in the orchestra (eleven times in all!)
during a gradual crescendo, lingers in the ear when the next tonal move
takes place. The angry a minor gives way to a soothing A major.
Belmonte’s aria is preceded by an A-major triad played softly by the
strings, just as happens in the opening of the third act of Idomeneo, coming
after storms and calamity there and after Osmin’s stormy exit here. Alone
for a soliloquy, Belmonte contemplates the joy of seeing his sweetheart
once again: “Konstanze! Konstanze! dich wieder zu sehen!” His recitative
over sustained string chords, with solo oboe echoing his tones, mirrors the
harmonic progression of Ilia’s recitative opening Act III but is condensed to
nearly half the length. A sudden rinforzato brings it to an end with a
dominant chord that resolves directly into the aria “O wie ängstlich, o wie
feurig klopft mein liebevolles Herz!” (How my loveladen heart beats with
fire and anxiety). Mozart explained to his father in the same letter of 26
September how he expressed the throbbing heart, as well as the sighs and
whispering that Belmonte imagined hearing from the lips of his beloved.
The aria is not long, only 113 measures of Andante in 2/4 time, but it
conjures up the world of the smitten young nobleman just as does another

outpouring by a young lover in the same key, Ferrando’s “Un’ aura
amorosa,” No. 17 in Così fan tutte. Belmonte’s cadential phrase, repeated
once, takes the voice up to high A over a chord (Example 1.2). It
anticipates nearly note for note Ferrando’s cadence (mm. 63–67). Like
Idomeneo, Die Entführung contains a fund of riches from which Mozart
drew repeatedly during his final decade.
EXAMPLE 1.2. Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Aria No. 4
In the penultimate number of Act I, we meet Konstanze in person. She
remembers her lost days of love and happiness with Belmonte. Mozart
introduces her aria with an Adagio in common time of nine measures that
could be heard as a slow introduction. Unlike an ordinary slow introduction,
its words and music both return in the faster second tempo at the reprise. At
the words “Doch wie schnell schwand meine Freude” (how quickly my joy
vanished), Mozart switched to Allegro in common time. The aria was
another piece that he wrote in the first flash of inspiration. At the time,
before much thought was given to anything beyond the first act, he may
have considered this the only opportunity for the singer portraying
Konstanze to show off her coloratura singing, as expected by her partisans.
She was the twenty-year-old Caterina Cavalieri, a Viennese-born soprano
whose native language was German. Mozart was not altogether satisfied
with the text of this aria, nor with his setting of it. To display the heroine’s
voice he wrote a melisma up to high D on the first syllable of “meinem”
thereby violating an Italian ideal, which preferred soft vowels for this
purpose. In a letter (26 September) he explained to his father in a kind of
apology, “I sacrificed Konstanze’s aria somewhat to the agile throat of Mlle
Cavalieri . . . I tried to be as expressive as an Italian aria di bravura will
permit.”
A few words are in order concerning the clarinets that figure importantly
in Konstanze’s aria (No. 6) and throughout the opera. They were played by

the brothers Anton and Johann Stadler, Austrian-born artists whose names
first appeared in the theatrical accounts in 1779 and who became regular
members of the orchestra in 1781.
9
Anton would later win fame and give
his own concerts in the Burgtheater. For him Mozart wrote the Clarinet
Quintet, K. 581, and Clarinet Concerto, K. 622, as well as the solos for
clarinet and basset horn in La clemenza di Tito, K. 621. Clarinets figured in
Idomeneo and had long been included in the famous Mannheim-Munich
orchestra for which that opera was composed. They are even more
prominent in Die Entführung.
Act I ends with a trio of conflict between Osmin and the two Spanish
interlopers, Belmonte and Pedrillo. A trio for three men at this time was
quite a rarity (excluding cases where one or more of the men sang soprano
or contralto). Mozart did not have another chance to write deep-voiced male
trios in opera until the beginning numbers of Così fan tutte. This piece, like
the previous one, is in two tempos. A vigorous first part in c built on a
rising triad theme, Allegro in 2/4 time, gives way to an Allegro assai as the
key changes to C major. There is contrapuntal action between the voice
parts, enough so that one of the singers went astray and threw the others off
at the second performance, as Mozart reported in his letter of 20 July 1782.
The ending, he wrote, is “very noisy—and that is what is needed to end an
act—the noisier and the shorter the better, so the audience will not have
time to cool off in its applause” (letter of 26 September 1781).
Act II is opened by the only character as yet unheard, Blonde. She speaks
a few lines, saying that a European lady like herself cannot be treated as
Osmin, into whose care she has been placed, attempts to treat her—that is,
as a slave. Strings alone sound a sweetly consonant Andante grazioso in 2/4
time and in the key of A that demonstrates the way she insists on being
treated, “with tenderness, flattery, pleasantness, and good humor.” The
phrases are short and simple, providing no competition for Belmonte’s
sentimental aria, No. 4, in the same key. The absence of winds also marks
her lower social status. Yet, Blonde manifests a competitive streak when
Mozart gives her coloratura up to high E, one tone higher than her mistress
Konstanze in Nos. 6 and 10. Mimicry or not, the feat could not but startle
Osmin. Teresa Teyber, the first Blonde, also possessed an agile throat. Her
aria is a simple rondo of 102 mm., in which Mozart made a big cut (mm.
38–59). It was the aria that he reported having finished along with the
drinking duet, No. 14, before the act was set aside for major text revisions

(same letter of 26 September). Blonde’s No. 8 is no mere aria di sorbetto
(as is Arbace’s aria at the equivalent spot in Idomeneo) but a piece of fine
charaterization.
Blonde’s plucky independence of spirit becomes the matter of the
following dialogue and duet with Osmin, No. 9. She is more than a match
for her elderly overseer. She mimics his descent to the lowest tones of his
voice with one of her own. It is revealed that she is an Englishwoman,
giving Osmin opportunities to rail against the English for allowing women
such impertinences. The duet is lively and comical, an Allegro in 6/8 time
which becomes Allegro assai for the last part. Its key of E, usually reserved
for more solemn numbers, makes its first appearance in the opera here and
its choice may have been partly a matter of taking advantage of Fischer’s
robust low tones, including a sustained low E. The duet, along with the
drinking duet, was encored at the first performance, according to the
composer’s letter of 20 July 1782.
After only a few words spoken by Blonde noting the approach of her
melancholy mistress, the key of E sounds again, with all traces of the
comedic gone. Konstanze receives an obbligato recitative of eighteen
measures, very expansive compared to the four measures preceding
Belmonte’s No. 4, though the plaintive melodic sighs are common to both.
In No. 10, the bass moves up slowly by half steps from E to A, which
resolves to D, and then to g for the beginning of the Aria, Andante con moto
in 2/4 time. Before Konstanze sings the first word, “Traurigkeit” (sadness),
its melody and harmony are heard from a wind choir of paired flutes, oboes,
bassoons, and basset horns. The serious tone of this music, recitative and
aria alike, would sound quite at home in Zaide, K. 344, or in Idomeneo,
especially in the role of the love-smitten Ilia. Moreover, there are audible
resemblances to the two earlier works. The second subject of No. 10 begins
with winds alone and matches the wind ritornello that opens the quartet,
No. 15, in Zaide, to which the second subject for solo winds in Ilia’s aria,
No. 11, bears strong resemblance.
10
In Ilia’s case, the winds evoked a
transformation of that opera’s main recurring motif, what I call the
“Idamante motif” (Example 1.3). It was never far from Mozart’s mind
during the years before and after his Munich opera of 1781. In
“Traurigkeit,” the carryover only confirms that Mozart considers Ilia and
Konstanze alike as being overwhelmed by love. The winds seem to plead
for them both.

EXAMPLE 1.3. Mozart, Idomeneo, Aria No. 1, Idamante motif
Some other features drawing the two ladies together are hidden in their
music. The technique with which Mozart introduces the reprise in
Konstanze’s aria, a rising chromatic line in the treble, A B B C C D,
which is like the bass rise leading into the aria, has a parallel in Ilia’s first
aria, “Padre, germani, addio!” Ilia’s chromatic rise into the reprise is
breathlessly short and concentrated, taking only three measures and a tone
(mm. 55–58). Konstanze received a more deliberate treatment (mm. 61–66).
Mozart trusted the veteran singer of Ilia’s part, soprano Dorothea Wendling,
to execute a formal subtlety by anticipating the initial words “Padre,
germani” while still modulating, then elide into the first theme at its third
measure. He made no such demands on young Cavalieri. Looked at another
way, Ilia’s elision is something for connoisseurs to savor, while Konstanze’s
well-demarcated transition and ensuing reprise make the process more clear
to those at not quite so high a level of understanding. Not that the public at
the Burgtheater was any different for Singspiel than for the Italian opera
that preceded and followed its short reign. In the music of Belmonte and
Konstanze, Mozart showed that he would surrender none of the advances he
had made in Italian serious opera.
Mozart ended his long letter of 26 September 1781 on the opera saying
that he could go no further with Act II than one aria (No. 8) and the
drinking duet already composed because the whole story was about to be
reworked. The opera then was set aside for reasons that had nothing to do
with him. Its original purpose was the hasty creation of a work to perform
before the visiting crown prince of Russia during the fall season. The court
decided instead to revive three operas by Gluck, which fully occupied the
troupe in the Burgtheater.
The break in composing the opera is confirmed by studies of the paper,
showing that Blonde’s aria, No. 8, and the drinking duet, No. 14, were
written on paper types used in Act I while the rest of the opera used
different types of paper.
11
Exactly when Mozart resumed composition is not
clear. On 30 January 1782, he wrote his father that the opera had not gone

to sleep entirely but was only postponed because of Gluck’s operas and
“many very necessary alterations to the poetry.” He was expecting it to be
produced after Easter, which fell on 20 April. Not until 8 May did he play
all of Act II to Countess Thun and on 30 May he played Act III for her.
Rehearsal began on 3 June and lasted for six weeks until the opera was
ready for its premiere on 16 July 1782. On the playbill there is no mention
of Stephanie (Figure 1.2).
It was Mozart’s intention, as we have seen, to give Osmin an aria in Act
II, but he received none. He sings only in the two duets, Nos. 9 and 14. The
composer also decided to give Konstanze not only “Traurigkeit” but also its
successor, “Martern aller Arten.” The latter turned out to be so long and
demanding it put all other bravura arias in the shade, including her No. 6 in
Act I. It required a new text to serve as provocation for the aria
(“motivation” would hardly be correct in this case) for which there is not a
hint in Bretzner. Two difficult arias in a row for the same singer was an
anomaly in operas of any pretension and Stephanie himself advised against
it in the set of rules he proposed in 1792 for writing Singspiel texts.
12
Blonde, who remained on stage during “Traurigkeit,” exits after a few
words with her mistress and at the sight of the approaching Pasha Selim.
When Konstanze rejects his verbal advances, he raises the possibility of
forcing her to his will. He goes so far as to end his words with the threat of
“Martern von aller Arten” (tortures of all kinds). These key words set off
the torrent that follows for full orchestra, which launches into the aria, No.
11, in C as if it were the first movement of a full-fledged sinfonia
concertante. After a complete exposition, including a second theme in the
tonic, Konstanze begins a second exposition by singing “Martern aller
Arten.”
Spoken dialogue is at best a poor device to motivate an aria, but an aria
of such dimensions and weight as this can only seem incongruous, based on
the provocation of a few spoken words. Even the words spoken are likely to
be forgotten in the blaze of such a long introduction, sixty measures of
Allegro in common time. An outburst of this scope deserves at least a
dramatic and fiery obbligato recitative to load the charge. Mozart’s reasons
for writing the aria invite speculation. Possibly, he wanted to anchor the
keynote C in our ears midway through the work, just as he did in Idomeneo
(with a great bravura aria in D for the title role). A sage critic argues that

without the aria “Constanze’s courage in the final confrontation with death
would carry less conviction.”
13
FIGURE 1.2. Playbill for Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
There is also the specific background of Singspiel in Vienna to be
considered, and Cavalieri’s place within this genre new to the court theater.
Ignaz Umlauf’s Die Bergknappen inaugurated it at the Burgtheater in 1778.
Umlauf played first viola in the theater orchestra and was in charge of
music for the German troupe’s Singspiel wing. Squarely in the middle of his
inaugural opera, as the tenth of twenty numbers was a big showpiece for La
Cavalieri as heroine—a long coloratura aria in Allegro moderato, common
time, and in the key of C major—an outburst in which she sang roulades up
to high D, exactly as in “Martern.” Mozart mentions Umlauf and his music
several times in letters to his father, and always with condescension, but
Umlauf was nevertheless a serious rival, one who managed to get his

successful Die Irrlicht (text by Stephanie, adapted from Bretzner)
performed ahead of Die Entführung. “Martern aller Arten” is a challenge to
Umlauf in a kind of duel as to who could best display Cavalieri’s “agile
throat.” The aria remains a challenge to sopranos to this day, as well as a
nightmare to stage directors.
Konstanze exits after her great show of virtù. At least this rule of
traditional opera was followed. The best Selim can muster in response
sounds necessarily lame: “Is this a dream? Where did she get the idea to
vex me so?”—a remark on a par with the one that had to serve as
provocation. He exits.
Blonde enters, followed by Pedrillo, who tells her of Belmonte’s arrival
and their imminent rescue. He remains while she sings a gleeful aria, No.
13, “Welche Wonne, welche Lust” (What bliss, what joy!), the theme of
which Mozart took from the finale of his Oboe Concerto in C (reused in his
Flute Concerto in D). This popular, dance-like piece is more like a Lied
than an aria and it could furnish no greater contrast to Konstanze’s
preceding extravaganza. Its folksong style inheres in the repeated tones of
the opening and in the simple rhythmic structure of a gay contredanse,
Allegro in 2/4 time, to which the key of G contributes its popular,
Papageno-like verve. After contrasting material, Mozart brings back the
first theme, then he embarks on what sounds like a coda in music that also
anticipates the giddy Finale Presto at the end of the Piano Concerto No. 17
in G, K. 453 (Example 1.4ab). In the aria, Mozart continues on in a
leisurely fashion but then made two substantial cuts in order to bring the
piece to a speedier end with the return of the initial theme.
EXAMPLE 1.4.
a. Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Aria No. 12 (Blonde)
b. Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 17, K.453, III

There is one line of Blonde’s second aria that seems to contradict our
understanding of her mistress: “Without delay I’ll jump and bring the news
at once with laughter and jests to her weak and timid heart” (ihrem
schwachen, feigen Herzen). How can we believe that Konstanze has a weak
and timid heart after “Martern aller Arten” demonstrates the opposite?
Stephanie unwisely chose to repeat the adjective “feiger” in Pedrillo’s
pseudo-heroic aria, No. 13, in D, “Frisch zum Kampfe! Frisch zum Streite!
Nur ein feiger Tropf versagt” (Into the fray! On to the battle! Only a
cowardly dolt loses heart). Very few spoken words occur before the
orchestra, with trumpets and drums blazing away forte, strikes up an
Allegro con spirito in common time, to introduce the bellicose first theme.
The pompous rising triad at the beginning reminds us of its use with truly
heroic flair in Konstanze’s great aria. Here the military panoply of dotted
march rhythm and the treble climbing up to high D are quickly undercut by
a soft, indeed timid, continuation. The more Pedrillo tries to gird up his
courage in the piece the more the timid phrase takes over; it is even
sounded without the words, by the orchestra. The whole aria vacillates
between braggadocio and the nagging doubts of this comic servant, whose
fears are inherited from such traditional comic characters as Harlequin. The
original Pedrillo, Johann Dauer, must have been a fine actor as well as a
gifted tenor. Mozart asks him to sing an arpeggio up to high B near the end
of this aria.
The spoken dialogue leading up to the drinking duet, No. 14 in C, is truly
comic, as Pedrillo cleverly persuades Osmin to imbibe some wine (which
has been drugged) despite the strictures of his Muslim faith, which forbids
it. Hardly a heroic action this! “Vivat Bacchus! Bacchus lebe! Bacchus war
ein braver Man!” is a triumph of both text (Bretzner’s) and music, one of
the opera’s immediately successful pieces. The Allegro in 2/4 time begins
softly as the piccolo, two flutes, and first violins introduce the saucy main
theme. Eventually the full complement of the alla Turca band will join in
this romp, so that the intoxication overcoming Osmin seems to be growing
with the orchestral tumult. Osmin becomes inarticulate. Pedrillo helps him
into his house and returns to meet Belmonte. Konstanze appears and the
lovers embrace. Pedrillo warns them to be brief because of the danger they
are all in. Anyone familiar with opera seria lovers like this pair knew that
brevity was out of the question. Their love had to be expressed at length and
with appropriately sentimental music. It comes in the form of an aria in B

for Belmonte that begins with an Adagio in cut time. The orchestra,
including clarinets in B, intones an eight-measure phrase of the gavotte
tendre type, with two staccato upbeats. Eight measures are stretched to nine
when the winds echo the cadence in the strings. Stephanie concocted a text
based on one line from Bretzner and this may well be another case where
Mozart gave him the melody first. The opening quatrain sounds almost
Wagnerian in its alliteration.
Wenn der Freude Tränen Fliessen,
lächelt Liebe dem Geliebten hold!
Von den Wangen sie zu küssen
ist der Liebe schönster, grösster Sold.
When tears flow from joy
Love smiles on the kind lover!
To kiss them from her cheeks
Is Love’s sweetest, greatest reward.
At this slow tempo, Belmonte has ample time to mime this very action.
Mozart took great trouble in polishing the piece, as can be seen from the
autograph’s corrections. Adamberger’s rendition of it pleased the public so
from the very first performances that it too had to be repeated, according to
Mozart’s letter of 20 July 1782, where he refers to it as “Belmonte’s
rondeau.”
No. 15 is indeed a fine example of the two-tempo rondò then so
fashionable in opera, which typically required octosyllabic quatrains as
here. The first was very often set to a slow gavotte theme with a repeated
initial tone as it is in this melody (for another example, see the Romance of
Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525). After repetition of the slow theme
following a contrast (second quatrain), there was eventually a faster part
(third quatrain), here an Allegretto in 3/4 time. This theme sounds like a
free variation of the slow one, which is also typical of the form. Its
chromatic descent into the word “Schmerz” (pain) corresponds to the
chromatic descent in the Adagio to depict tears trickling down. Mozart
wrote the aria on the long side and then made cuts. The little postlude of the
jubilant orchestra anticipates the longer orchestral outpouring to close the
sentimental tenor aria in Così fan tutte (No. 17). Belmonte’s vocal coda, on
the other hand, corresponds closely to its equivalent in the love duet of
Idomeneo (No. 23a).
The ending of Act II required major surgery from Stephanie. Mozart
demanded and got an elaborate finale such as had matured in opera buffa by
Italian poets and composers, a genre adroitly employed by Mozart himself
in La finta giardiniera for Munich in 1775. A finale of this type required a
little plot of its own and a succession of various poetic meters delimiting

each section, set to music accordingly. Stephanie obliged with a fine
example of the genre by elaborating on the squabble into which the men got
with their lovers, only hinted at in a few lines from Bretzner. It allowed
Mozart to pass by stages from serene confidence and celebration at their
reunion, to doubts plaguing the men, female solidarity against them, pleas
for forgiveness from the men, gradual granting of it to them, then a return to
the initial theme of serene confidence, along with a return to the initial key
of D. Once can easily hear in this dazzling sequence of pieces a foretaste of
the still greater buffo finales to come, beginning with those in Le nozze di
Figaro.
And yet, the whole finale of Act II marks nothing but a big pause in the
dramatic action, making a mockery of Pedrillo’s urgings of haste. It
represents the triumph of musical needs over those of the drama and one
must enter into a state of suspended disbelief—call it Operaland—to accept
this glorious music on its own terms and forget about the urgency and
danger of the lovers’ situation. The finale does help to delineate character
still further, particularly of the two women. Konstanze reacts to Belmonte’s
doubts by a fit of weeping, Blonde to Pedrillo’s by boxing his ears. When
the men ask forgiveness in an Allegretto in cut time and in the key of A, the
return to the initial D tonic seems near, but Blonde complicates the texture
by adopting her own 12/8 meter running along simultaneously and refusing
to accept apologies, another very effective means of expressing her
independence.
14
Act III gets to the core of the story: the attempted abduction, its failure,
and aftermath. But it does not get there directly. Adamberger as Belmonte
had to be served with another aria first. He sang coloratura as well as
Cavalieri did, was nearly twice her age, and outranked her in salary by
nearly two to one. It was his right to have parity with her in the matter of
arias. No place for the aria that was his due could be found except at the
beginning of the last act. But what could possibly motivate an aria in this
place? Very little, it turns out. Pedrillo again urges speed and at the same
time tells Belmonte to sing a song, as he himself was accustomed to do at
midnight so that the Janissary guards would think all was normal.
Meanwhile he would scout the palace. As motivation, this is at about the
same level as the spoken dialogue before Konstanze’s big bravura aria at
the opera’s center.

Belmonte is anxious and fearful. He puts all his hope and trust in the
power of love. Ergo Mozart gave him another aria d’affetto about love,
with coloratura extensions. It is a leisurely Andante in cut time and in the
potent key of E, with clarinets in B. The piece is strangely lacking in
Mozart’s usual melodic charm and inspiration although it must be granted
that the wind writing is beautiful. Its plodding bass has a strangely old-
fashioned ring to it, so much so that it sounds like a throwback to a much
earlier Mozart. Just as the transition to the second key begins, there is a
melodic outburst that foretells Tamino’s “Picture Aria” in Die Zauberflöte
(another piece in E). Yet this fine moment is followed immediately by the
infelicity of a doubled A leading tone in the outer voice parts, the bass
having resumed its plodding motion (the temptation is strong to speed this
moment up by combining mm. 37–38 into a single measure).
Belmonte’s No. 17 is often omitted in modern performances. It should be
if the lead tenor cannot match Adamberger’s technical prowess,
demonstrated by the elaborate passagework Mozart gives him. Without the
aria, on the other hand, the third act would be too short—it has only five
numbers as opposed to seven in Act I and nine in Act II. Act III without No.
17 would also be at a disadvantage by having to begin with a number as
slight as Pedrillo’s strophic Romance. In tonal terms, it could be argued that
E, one of the three universal keys like C and D, needs to make another
appearance in the opera, not the flighty E of the comic duet No. 9, but the
serious E that begins Konstanze’s No. 10 and is prominent in the overture’s
middle section. Mozart may have also welcomed the third relationship
between E and the opera’s final destination of C. A good substitute for
Belmonte’s aria, if necessary, would be the Romance in E from the
Serenade for thirteen winds, K. 361, which could be played with the curtain
down, or with a representation of dusk becoming deep, starry night. The
opera needs an intermezzo here as much as it needs E.
Pedrillo’s Romance, No. 18, has Bretzner to thank for a fine poem, “In
Mohrenland gefangen war ein Mädel hübsch und fein” (A fine fair maiden
was imprisoned in Moorish lands). It belongs to a specific type of Romance
that had begun in opéra comique (and was copied in Singspiels), one that
encapsulated an entire plot in the guise of an archaic strophic poem sung on
stage as conscious song.
15
Johann André had made little of this piece,
setting it in his usual nondescript tonal and melodic style. Mozart, who had
witnessed the flowering of opéra comique in Paris from his visits there in

the early 1760s and in 1778, was infinitely more resourceful. But he would
not necessarily have had to visit Paris to know and prize opéra comique, for
it had spread all over Europe before 1780. He always used the French
spelling “Romance,” and not Bretzner’s German equivalent, “Romanze,”
even in his many instrumental examples of the genre. For Pedrillo he
invented a simple modal song that vacillates between major and minor,
capturing some of the flavor of exotic Eastern climes; the orchestra imitates
the sound of the mandolin with which Pedrillo mimics accompanying
himself, by using only plucked strings. The 6/8 meter and singsong nature
of the melody, with several repeated tones, have an almost hypnotic effect
and belie the sophistication of the unusual turns taken by the harmony. In
his last verse, Pedrillo switches from tale-telling to the dramatic situation at
hand, by asking the ladies to open their windows. The result is a thrilling,
highly theatrical moment that should have audiences on the edge of their
seats.
Belmonte descends the ladder with Konstanze. They resume their billings
and cooings. Pedrillo cautions them one last time: “Be quick! No gabbing!
Else with sighs and long consultations we’ll be caught.” The watch
apprehends both couples in the act of fleeing, which affords Osmin his
moment of triumph. The couples are taken away under guard, leaving the
stage to Osmin for his aria “O, wie will ich triumphieren,” Allegro vivace in
D and in 2/4 time. Mozart again makes the most of Fischer’s vocal range of
over two octaves. Majestic D major here has none of the trepidation and
holding back of Pedrillo’s pseudo-heroic aria No. 13 in the same key. There
are also some Turkish touches, abetted by the piccolo on high, such as the
streams of sixteenth notes and the repeated appoggiatura G - A
emphasizing the tritone. At one point Fischer must sustain his low D for a
full eight measures. Out of this splendid piece Mozart took ideas for his
“Haffner” Symphony, No. 35 in D, K. 385 (see Example 1.5ab).

The scene changes to a room in Selim’s palace. Osmin ushers the noble
lovers into the presence of the Pasha. Only at this point do we learn the full
identity of Don Belmonte Lostados, scion of an ancient Spanish family and
son of the commandant of Oran. Stephanie departs from Bretzner here by
making him the only son of Selim’s greatest enemy, the person who robbed
Selim of everything worth living for. “What,” Selim asks, “would your
father have done were he in my place?” Abjectly, Belmonte admits that his
fate would be lamentable. Selim leaves and bids Osmin follow him, saying
he will give orders as to torturing the captives. This sets up the magnificent
obbligato recitative and duet for the lovers, No. 20, once again a
penultimate piece in B.
Idomeneo looms large in this sublime moment, with death threatening
both lovers. The strings begin with an Adagio in common time and in F,
with a bass moving chromatically beneath little outbursts in the first violins
and syncopated accompaniment in the seconds and violas. Belmonte enters
first, expresses his anguish, and takes all blame on himself, pushing the key
to the sharp side, punctuated by diminished-seventh-chord interjections,
forte. Konstanze enters calmly over a deceptive cadence and says that death
is but a transition to eternal rest. The harmony pushes back to the flat side,
settling on a cadence in E at her last word (just as it did to paint the word
“morte” in the elaborate orchestral recitative with which Ilia begins
Idomeneo). The strings conclude their discourse by reverting to their
opening music and tonally preparing the arrival of the duet proper, which
begins with an Andante in B and in 3/4 time.
Belmonte commences the duet with a leap of a descending sixth in dotted
rhythm from F to A recovered by half-step up to B for the arrival of the
tonic (note for note the same as Idamante’s “Non ho colpa” beginning his
first aria, No. 2, in Idomeneo). There is a resonance with a later opera as
Belmonte leads the music quickly to the dominant, F, while holding an F
pedal against the tremolo upper strings and the bass moving up by step into
the cadence, namely the moment in the Trial by Fire and Water of Die
Zauberflöte when Tamino defies the gates of death (mm. 243–47 of the
second finale). Belmonte, in despair, sings the words “Ich bereite dir den
Tod!” (I brought you to death’s door!). Konstanze turns F into f at her
entrance, blaming herself for drawing Belmonte into a deathtrap. She then
elaborates on the passage so predictive of Tamino’s. The music returns to F
and the lovers first sing together in response to a wind passage in thirds

reminiscent of the second theme of Konstanze’s No. 11. The Andante
proceeds with brief imitations between tenor and soprano. After the wind
theme returns, the Andante comes to a halt on F as V
7
of B.
16
An Allegro in common time comprises the second big section of the duet
and the return to B. Its jaunty theme is related to the woodwind theme in
Konstanze’s “Traurigkeit,” No. 10. The lovers embrace the idea of dying for
and with each other. Everything portends a happy love-death. Toward the
end, they exchange long-held tones, a climactic device traditional in Italian
love duets, including Mozart’s. All told, the piece extends to an ample 208
measures and is preceded by the opera’s longest recitative.
Selim reappears. Belmonte says, “Take your revenge, I expect the worst
and blame you not.” The Pasha counters, “Your people must indulge in
many injustices since you take them so much for granted. You deceive
yourself. I detest your father too much to follow in his footsteps. Take your
freedom. Take Konstanze. Sail home.” Stephanie thus adopted as a solution
the magnanimous Turk topos, one of the trademarks of European dramas of
an enlightened stripe, and particularly identified with Voltaire. It makes a
much better ending than Bretzner’s trite one of having Selim recognize in
Belmonte his long-lost son.
To sing the praises of such magnanimity the opera’s creators dipped
again into the reservoir of opéra comique and brought forth a vaudeville
with verses for each singer and a refrain sung by all. It moves along at a
pleasant walking gait in the key of F, Andante in cut time. Blonde, once
again, goes her own way by departing from the praises of Selim in order to
berate Osmin, who then overlaps her cadence and cancels the refrain by his
still greater departure, in which he excoriates the freed couples and drops
from the vaudeville tune halfway through it. He then relapses into the key
of a and returns to the angry concluding section of his first aria, No. 3. He
storms out. The four Europeans, stunned at first, return the key to F while
singing the moral maxim: “Nothing is so hateful as revenge” (anticipating
the many sung morals in Die Zauberflöte). They end by returning one more
time to the vaudeville’s refrain, initiated by Konstanze, and joined by the
others for an enhanced repetition of the final measures. Without a pause,
Turkish music in C bursts forth just as they sing their last word. The
vaudeville in F thus serves to provide the opera’s end with an enormous
plagal cadence. The Janissary chorus sings the praises of their bassa (pasha)

and wish him a long life while extending “lange” (long) to four full
measures of Allegro vivace in 2/4 time (see Example 1.6a).
It has been a remarkably coherent tonal arc from the overture in C to this
final chorus, achieved in spite of the limitations imposed on the genre by
spoken dialogue. One comes away with the impression of the garish
Turkish music in C interacting continuously with the softer and suaver love
music, mostly in B. The break in composition of several months is most
evident in Act II, where the previously composed pieces in A and C were
followed by pieces in E and D.
No doubt, Mozart would have preferred to write an Italian opera. He said
as much in his letter to his father of 4 February 1778. In Vienna during the
early 1780s, he had no choice but German Singspiel if he wished to write
for the National Theater, which he most emphatically did. Yet too much has
been made of this opera’s disunities of style.
17
Not enough credit is given to
the steps Mozart took to overcome the disparate French, German, and
Italian layers of style and impress his personality on the whole. He turned
the public’s liking for simple, tuneful ditties to superb account and created
complex, unforgettable characters in the persons of Blonde, Osmin, and
Pedrillo. But his heart was as much or even more involved in creating his
noble lovers, Belmonte and Konstanze. It could scarcely have been
otherwise. He was still steeped in the shattering experience of Idomeneo,
and as he was creating the new opera became involved in his own romantic
crisis (with Constanze Weber).
Die Entführung quickly won performances elsewhere throughout
German-speaking Europe. Scarcely a city or court that cultivated Singspiel
failed to produce the opera. Arrangements of its music reached still wider
audiences. More than any other work during the 1780s, it was the one that
introduced music lovers to Mozart.
Dramaturgical Concerns
The letters Mozart wrote to his father between 1780 and 1782 concerning
the creation of Idomeneo and Die Entführung are so extensive and detailed
that they come close to being a treatise on opera, although this was not their
intent. With the earlier opera, Leopold was a go-between who
communicated his son’s wishes and demands to the librettist, Abbé

Gianbattista Varesco of Salzburg Cathedral. Leopold had no such active
role in the second opera, but its long genesis, stretching to nearly a year,
meant that there was time for Mozart to describe the many changes in the
libretto upon which he insisted, and to describe some of the music in detail,
as well as the opera’s reception at the first performances.
An ultimate lesson from the overly long opera for Munich, which
underwent drastic cuts during the final rehearsal, is summed up in Mozart’s
resigned quotation of a simple adage: “One must make a virtue of
necessity” (man muss aus der Noth eine Tugend machen) in his letter of 18
January 1781. Earlier, in a letter of 29 November 1780, he denounced
Varesco’s long-winded speech for Neptune’s Oracle in Act III. “Imagine the
theater before your eyes. The Voice must be terrifying and it must penetrate.
People must believe that it is real [man muss glauben es sey wirklich so].
How can this work if the speech is too long? . . . If the Ghost’s speech in
Hamlet were not so long it would be more effective.” Unlike many
composers, Mozart constantly envisioned the look of the stage action and
its effect on his audience. He strove for the illusion of representing things as
they really were. Does that make him a realist in the modern sense?
Perhaps. In any case, timing was of the essence for him and was not
separable from the visual aspect.
In his letter of 16 June 1781, Mozart made a remark about the importance
of the libretto to the success of his promised opera for the Burgtheater:
“About difficulties I worry not at all provided that the text is good” (wegen
incontrieren sorge ich gar nicht, wenn nur das Buch gut ist). Three days
earlier on 13 June, Mozart wrote that Count Rosenberg had commissioned
the renowned actor and playwright Friedrich Ludwig Schröder to search out
an appropriate libretto that Mozart could set to music. A libretto was soon
found, one in four acts that Stephanie rejected because he doubted it would
please the count. No more was heard of this libretto and it has never been
identified. Mozart, the seasoned dramatist, refused even to look at it. The
experience of Zaide had taught him not to spend his efforts on something
before it had won official approval. He faced this situation again in 1785
when Anton Klein of Mannheim sent him a German play on Emperor
Rudolf von Hapsburg for consideration.
At the end of July 1781, Stephanie brought Mozart the libretto of
Bretzner’s Belmont und Constanze. “The libretto is very good,” reported
Mozart to his father on 1 August, “and the subject is Turkish . . . I am going

to clothe the overture, the first-act chorus, and the final chorus with Turkish
music.”
18
Mozart then relayed the names of the singers who would be cast
and that of the actor who would take the speaking role of Selim. He was
afire with enthusiasm to compose the work. In two days, he finished two
arias and the trio in Act I (this does not necessarily mean written down,
much less orchestrated). On 8 August, Mozart reported that Adamberger,
Cavalieri, and Fischer were satisfied with their arias and that he had just
finished the Janissary chorus (all these in Act I). He played the pieces for
Countess Thun, who said she would wager her life on their ultimate
success, “but I do not accept praise or criticism from anyone in this matter,
not until people have heard and seen everything in its entirety; as of now I
am simply following my feelings.” The test of an opera according to this
statement is seeing as well as hearing it as a whole. This sounds like a
simple enough proposition, but it is one that had perhaps never been
articulated before. And how was Mozart working toward that goal while
proceeding piece by piece? By trusting his intuition as to how it would all
cohere. It worked well for him in Act I, less well in the other two acts.
On 12 September, Mozart reported that any hopes for staging an opera of
his for the visit of the Russians were dashed, because the singers had to
learn two serious operas by Gluck, Iphigénie in Tauride in a new German
translation by Johann Baptist von Alxinger, and Alceste in the original
Italian. The opera he hoped they would sing, according to this letter, was
not Die Entführung but Idomeneo, which he would gladly have put in the
hands of Alxinger for a German translation, while at the same time revising
it so as to accommodate a bass (Fischer) in the title role and making other
changes: “The man who translated Iphigénie is a superb poet.”
19
From this
remark, it is again apparent how much importance Mozart attached to the
quality of a libretto.
On 19 September, Mozart wrote his sister Nannerl in Salzburg, “You
know that I am composing an opera here. What has been written so far has
won extraordinary approval, for I know this place, and hope it will come
out well, and if it succeeds then I shall be loved here as much for opera as
for keyboard music.” In his two letters of 26 September and 13 October to
his father, he explained how massive changes were being made in the
libretto at his request. He made small changes in the wording as well, for
instance in Konstanze’s first aria, from Bretzner’s “Doch wie hui schwand
meine Freude” to “Doch wie schnell . . .” (How quickly my joy vanished).

“I do not really know what our German poets are thinking of; if they
understand nothing about the theater, particularly opera, at least they should
not make people talk as if they were herding swine—hui Sau.” Unlike the
Leipzig businessman Bretzner, Stephanie was a man of the theater through
and through, for which Mozart gave him credit. As an actor and as a
playwright he was very experienced. His ability as a poet is another matter.
Leopold’s answers to Mozart’s letters from this particular time are
missing, but their content can often be deduced from his son’s replies. The
revised text of Act I, as well as samples of its music, was in Leopold’s
hands by September, and he must have complained about some of
Stephanie’s verses for Osmin, as Mozart’s letter of 13 October shows.
Now to the text of the opera. As for Stephanie’s work, you are quite right. Yet the verse is
altogether matched to the character of Osmin, who is stupid, coarse, and malicious. I know well
that the verse used here is not of the best kind, but it agrees so completely with the musical ideas in
my head, even before I had seen the text, that it necessarily pleased me. And I am willing to bet
that when it is performed, nothing will be found lacking.
In other words, for a libretto to be good, it did not require the highest class
of poetry, but rather, it needed poetry that was easily wedded to music, or in
this case born out of preexistent music. This is not the first or last time that
Mozart admitted to arriving at his musical ideas of how a piece should go
before a precise text was at hand. He had done something similar to prompt
the revised text of Ilia’s concertante aria in Act II of Idomeneo.
Mozart’s letter of 13 October 1781 went on to make a few favorable
comments on Bretzner’s libretto. “As far as the poetry of the original play is
concerned, I cannot say anything against it. Belmonte’s aria ‘O wie
ängstlich’ could almost not have been written any better for the music. The
aria for Konstanze is not bad either, especially the first part, except for the
hui and Kummer ruht in meinem schoos [sorrow rests in my lap], for sorrow
cannot rest.” In the end, Mozart let this line pass. What comes next is an
oft-quoted passage, mostly cited in isolation from its context. “I am not
certain, but it seems to me that in opera the poetry must always be the
obedient daughter of the music. Why do Italian comic operas please
everywhere? This in spite of their defective texts. Even in Paris they have
success, as I witnessed myself.” The reference is to the season of opera
buffa put on at the Paris Opéra under the direction of Niccolò Piccinni in
1778 when several of the best Italian composers were represented: Paisiello,
Sacchini, Traetta, and Piccinni himself.
20
Not all their librettos were as

defective as Mozart says, yet he decried this Italian company (which
included the fine tenor Giacomo Caribaldi) as a “wretched comic opera”
(miserable opera buffa) in his letter to his father dated Paris, 11 September
1778. Back then, he was inclined to denounce Italian comedies as a way of
annoying his host, Melchior Grimm, who was staunchly pro-Piccinni. Three
years later he admits that opera buffa of the Italians was always successful,
even in Paris, despite the poor texts, and asks why. He answers his own
question: “Because music reigns supreme in them, which makes one forget
everything else.”
The value of rhymes in poetry for opera is Mozart’s next consideration in
the letter. “An opera must please all the more if the plan of its story is well
worked out, words written suitable for music, rather than to attain some
miserable rhyme here or there.” At this point, he begins to seethe with
irritation on the subject. “Rhymes, by God, contribute nothing, whatever
they are worth, to the success of a theatrical performance; rather, they can
work to its detriment, words, I mean, or whole stanzas that spoil the
composer’s entire concept” (die des komponisten seine ganze idèe
verderben). Whether opera texts look like good poetry on the printed page
is beside the point when it comes to performance in the theater, says
Mozart. His notion of the composer’s idea taking precedence over text is
nothing short of breathtaking.
That the composer had an overall concept of the work to which the poet
was subordinate went against all operatic aesthetics since the beginning of
the genre. While it is true that some strong musical dramatists before
Mozart had made poets do their bidding, rarely had any composer claimed
as much in a statement. Even Gluck allowed his poet Calzabigi to take the
credit for overall conceptions, whether it was true or not.
21
Mozart finished
off this remarkable passage by retreating somewhat from such a radical
idea. “Verses are probably the most indispensable element for music, but
rhymes solely for the sake of creating rhymes are the most detrimental.
Those gentlemen who work in such a pedantic fashion will always fail,
together with their music.”
To crown his bold ideas Mozart described what he imagined to be an
ideal collaboration.
The best thing of all is when a good composer, who understands the stage and is savvy enough to
make suggestions, meets an able poet, that true phoenix. Then one need not fear the response even
of the uninitiated. Poets almost always remind me of the trumpeters with their professional tricks

[Possen]. If we composers were always so bound by our own rules (which were good at a time
when no one knew any better), it follows that we would create music as worthless as their librettos.
At this point Mozart dismisses his whole discussion as nothing more than
idle chatter, which shows us how much he valued theorizing. Why did he
invoke trumpeters? They belonged to guilds of long standing that strictly
regulated their number and where, even what, they could perform. They
were thus representative of the old rules of a time when no one knew any
better. He could also have had in mind the legerdemain by which
performers made the impossible seem possible on natural instruments.
Mention of rules by an eighteenth-century composer, and especially of
rules that were good for an earlier and less knowledgeable time, also
suggests the dichotomy then prevalent between the strict or learned style
and the more modern galant style.
22
In the former, rules dictated how
dissonances were prepared, suspended, and resolved. The latter gave
dissonances more freedom and allowed them to behave more or less as the
composer pleased. Mozart took advantage of free dissonance treatment in
most of his music. He even took unusual liberties when writing in the strict
style, a good example of which is the Fugue for two pianos in c minor, K.
426.
A phoenix Stephanie certainly was not, and Abbé Varesco even less so.
Die Entführung might have been a stronger, tighter drama had Stephanie
stood his ground and followed his own precepts, such as not allowing two
arias in a row to the same singer (long and difficult arias in this case).
Mozart was too indulgent to his singers but he saw this as the way to
captivate the Viennese public on the first try. With a little more effort and
imagination, Stephanie might have contrived a credible motivation for
Belmonte to sing a bravura aria late in the opera. He could at least have
suppressed some of Pedrillo’s warning to make haste.
Die Entführung was performed for the fourteenth and last time on 10
December 1782, always to full houses and to great acclaim, according to
Mozart’s letter to his father of 21 December. “Count Rosenberg spoke to me
in person at [Prince] Gallizin’s and said I really ought to write an Italian
opera” (Graf Rosenberg hat mich beym Gallizin selbst angeredt, ich möchte
doch eine welsche opera schreiben). This suggestion has been wrongly
interpreted as a request or even as a commission to write an Italian opera. “I
have already placed orders for the latest librettos of opera buffa from Italy
so that I can make a choice but none have yet arrived . . . at Easter a number

of Italian male and female singers are arriving here.” The remainder of this
letter is devoted to a withering critique of one of the Singspiel troupe’s last
premieres, which says still more about the importance of a good text to an
opera’s success.
A new opera or rather a comedy with ariettes by Umlauf was recently produced, entitled Welch ist
die beste Nation? It is a worthless piece that I was asked to set and I refused, saying whoever
composes this without having the text completely revised risked being whistled out of the theater.
And had it not been Umlauf this would have happened. It is no wonder, for even with the finest
music one would barely be able to stand it. But the music was so poor in this case, that I am
uncertain who wins the booby prize, the poet or the composer. To its disgrace it was given a
second time, but I believe this will be the Punctum Satis.
There was indeed no third performance.
23
In his letter to Leopold of 5 February 1783, Mozart was not hopeful
about the future of opera in German on the stage of the Burgtheater. He
derided the poor specimens of it then in production, composed by the long-
deceased Florian Gassmann, Johann Mederitsch, and Umlauf.
It really seems as if they wished to kill off prematurely the German opera, which in any case shall
end after Easter; and Germans themselves are doing this—shame upon them! . . . I do not believe
that the Italian opera will keep going for long, and besides, I hold with the Germans. I prefer
German opera even though it means more trouble for me. Every nation has its own opera, and why
not Germany? Is not German as singable as French or English? And more so than Russian?
German opera was more trouble for Mozart partly because good poets were
scarce and the norms of the genre were just being established, whereas
opera in Italian had behind it several generations of verbal and musical
experience. The situation makes one wish that Mozart could have
collaborated with Alxinger, the German poet he so admired. As it was he
had no better plan for his next German opera than to have a certain Baron
Binder translate for him Goldoni’s play Il servitore di due padroni.
Joseph II bowed to the wishes of the Viennese public and restored opera
buffa to the Burgtheater in early 1783. Singspiel was eliminated but spoken
plays in German, representing the core of his National Theater, continued as
before. Mozart remained an outsider with no court appointment. His
strongest credit with the theater direction was having written a successful
Singspiel, which now seemed beside the point. After he had finally
managed to get a foot inside the door of the Burgtheater, that door was
closed and the lock changed. He had no recent successes in opera buffa to
offer the new Italian company. Once he experienced how good the troupe

was he gave up his plan to compose another German opera and set about
trying to get an Italian libretto. In an engraving of 1783, Carl Schütz
conveys the Italian troupe’s allure by depicting a couple who consult the
billboard on the Burgtheater’s facade (Figure 1.3).
Antonio Salieri was still in imperial service and took over the direction of
the Italian opera. The return to opera buffa could only benefit him as a
composer, since he had several successes in the genre, even in Italy. He
chose, not surprisingly, to inaugurate the new company with one of his
greatest successes, La scuola de’ gelosi on a libretto by Caterino Mazzolà,
first performed at Venice in 1778 and revived many times there and
elsewhere. The choice could also be seen as a compliment to the new prima
donna, Nancy Storace, who had sung the seria role of the Countess in this
opera during the previous season in Venice and now repeated it in Vienna,
her role enhanced by a fine two-tempo rondò crafted in the latest fashion by
Vienna’s new poet for the Italian theater, Lorenzo da Ponte, and beautifully
set to music by Salieri.
24
La scuola de’ gelosi established the tone for what followed, and Mozart
took careful note of its ingredients. Besides Storace, whose Countess was
plagued by a philandering Count of a husband, played by the Francesco
Bussani, the main new singer was the bass Francesco Benucci, who sang
the principal male role of Blasio, the bourgeois grain dealer with a
flirtatious wife, Ernestina, sung by La Cavalieri. Other German singers
added to the Italian troupe besides Cavalieri included Adamberger and
Teyber. The remaining roles in Salieri’s opera were the chambermaid
Carlotte (Teyber), her swain Lunacca, sung by Michael Kelly, and the
Lieutenant, sung by the tenor Pugnetti, who makes all things end happily by
having the afflicted spouses cause a little jealousy themselves. In all, there
were seven roles, four male and three female, ranging from seria and mezzo
carattere to buffa.

FIGURE 1.3. Detail from Carl Schütz, “The Michaelerplatz” (1783).
The Easter season opened to critical acclaim on 22 April 1783.
Performances of La scuola followed on 25 and 28 April, along with many
others over the next three years. Count Karl Zinzendorf, who kept a diary
with frequent mentions of his theater-going and musical experiences,

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“I suppose you’re lookin’ fer yer kid again,” he said sourly.
“That’s what I am, Steve,” Regan returned, diplomatically
dispensing with the other’s nickname.
“Well, he ain’t here,” Grumpy announced, returning to his checks.
“I’ve just been through the shops, an’ I’d seen him if he was.”
The engineer’s face clouded. “He must be somewhere about,
Steve. John said he saw him come over here, and the wife was
down to the roundhouse looking for him, so he didn’t go home. Let’s
go through the shops and see if we can’t find him.”
“I don’t get no overtime fer chasin’ lost kids,” growled Grumpy.
Nevertheless, he got up and walked through the door leading into
the forge-shop, which Regan held open for him. The place was
gloomy and deserted. Here and there a forge-fire, dying, still glowed
dully. At the end of the room the men stopped, and Grumpy, noting
Regan’s growing anxiety, gave surly comfort.
“Wouldn’t likely be here, anyhow,” he said. “Fitting-shop fer him;
but we’ll try the machine-shop first on the way through.”
The two men went forward, prying behind planers, drills, shapers,
and lathes. The machines took grotesque shapes in the deepening
twilight, and in the silence, so incongruous with the usual noisy
clang and clash of his surroundings, Regan’s nervousness increased.
He hurried forward to the fitting-shop. Engines on every hand
were standing over their respective pits in all stages of demolition,
some on wheels, some blocked high toward the rafters, some
stripped to the bare boiler-shell. Regan climbed in and out of the
cabs, while Grumpy peered into the pits.
“Aw! he ain’t here,” said Grumpy in disgust, wiping his hands on a
piece of waste. “I told you he wasn’t. He’s home, mabbe, by now.”
Regan shook his head. “Bunty! Ho, Bunt-ee” he called. And again:
“Bun-tee!”

There was no answer, and he turned to retrace his steps when
Grumpy caught him by the shoulder. The big iron door of the engine
before them swung slowly back on its hinges, and from the front end
there emerged a diminutive pair of shoes, topped by little short
socks that had once been white, but now hung in grimy folds over
the tops of the boots. A pair of sturdy, but very dirty, bare legs came
gradually into view as their owner propelled himself forward on his
stomach. They dangled for a moment, seeking footing on the plate
beneath; then a very small boy, aged four, in an erstwhile
immaculate linen sailor suit, stood upright on the foot-plate. The
yellow curls were tangled with engine grease and cemented with
cinders and soot. Here and there in spots upon his face the skin still
retained its natural color.
Bunty paused for a moment after his exertions to regain his
breath, then, still gripping a hammer in his small fist, he straddled
the draw-bar, and slid down the pilot to the floor.
Grumpy burst into a guffaw.
Bunty blinked at him reprovingly, and turned to his father.
“I’s been fixin’ the ‘iger-’ed,” he announced gravely.
Regan surveyed his son grimly. “Fixing what?” he demanded.
“The ‘iger-’ed,” Bunty repeated. Then reproachfully: “Don’t know
w’at a ‘iger-’ed is?”
“Oh,” said Regan, “the nigger-head, eh? Well, I guess there’s
another nigger-head will get some fixing when your mother sees
you, son.”
He picked the lad up in his arms, and Bunty nestled confidingly,
with one arm around his father’s neck. His tired little head sank
down on the paternal shoulder, and before they had reached the
gates Bunty was sound asleep.
In the days that followed, Bunty found it no easy matter to elude
his mother’s vigilance; but that was only the beginning of his
troubles. The shop gates were always shut, and the latch was

beyond his reach. Once he had found them open, and had marched
boldly through, to find his way barred by the only man of whom he
stood in awe. Grumpy had curtly ordered him away, and Bunty had
taken to his heels and run until his small body was breathless.
The roundhouse was no better. Old John would have none of him,
and Bunty marveled at the change.
He was a railroad man, and the shops were his heritage. His soul
protested vigorously at the outrage that was being heaped upon
him.
It took him some time to solve the problem, but at last he found
the way. Each afternoon Bunty would trudge sturdily along the track
for a quarter of a mile to the upper end of the shops, where the big,
wide engine doors were always open. Here four spur-tracks ran into
the erecting-shop, and Bunty found no difficulty in gaining
admittance. Once safe among the fitting-gang, the little Super, as
the men called him, would strut around with important air,
inspecting the work with critical eyes.
One lesson Bunty learned. Remembering his last interview with his
mother, he took good care not to be locked in the shops again. So
each night when the whistle blew he fell into line with the men, and,
secure in their protection, would file with them past Grumpy as they
handed in their time-checks. And Grumpy, unmindful of the spur-
tracks, wondered how he got there, and scowled savagely.
When Bunty was six, his father was holding down the swivel-chair
in the Master Mechanic’s office of the Hill Division, and Bunty’s
allegiance to the shops wavered. Not from any sense of disloyalty;
but with his father’s promotion a new world opened to Bunty, and
fascinated him. It was now the yard-shunter and headquarters that
engaged his attention. The years, too, brought other changes to
Bunty. The curls had disappeared, and his hair was cut now like his
father’s. Long stockings had replaced the socks, and he wore real
trousers; short ones, it is true, but real trousers none the less, with
pockets in them.

When school was over, he would fly up and down the yard on the
stubby little engine, and Healy, doing the shunting then and
forgetting past grievances, would let Bunty sit on the driver’s seat.
In time Bunty learned to pull the throttle, but the reversing-lever
was too much for his small stature, and the intricacies of the “air”
were still a little beyond him. But Healy swore he’d make a driver of
him—and he did.
The evenings at the office Bunty loved fully as well. Headquarters
were not much to boast about in those days. That was before
competition forced a doubletrack system, and the train-dispatcher,
with his tissue sheets, still held undisputed sway. They called them
“offices” at Big Cloud out of courtesy—just the attic floor over the
station, with one room to it. The floor space each man’s desk
occupied was his office.
Here Bunty would sit curled up in his father’s chair and listen to
the men as they talked. If it was anything about a locomotive, he
understood; if it was traffic or bridges or road-bed or dispatching, he
would pucker his brows perplexedly and ask innumerable questions.
But most of all he held Spence, the chief dispatcher, in deep
reverence.
Once, to his huge delight, Spence, holding his hand, had let him
tap out an order. It is true that with the O. K. came back an inquiry
as to the brand the dispatcher had been indulging in; but the
sarcasm was lost on Bunty, for when Spence with a chuckle read off
the reply, Bunty gravely asked if there was any answer. Spence
shook his head and laughed. “No, son; I guess not,” he said. “We’ve
got to maintain our dignity, you know.”
That winter, on top of the regular traffic, and that was not light,
they began to push supplies from the East over the Hill Division,
preparing to double track the road from the western side of the
foothills as soon as spring opened up. And while the thermometer
crept steadily to zero, the Hill Division sweltered.

Everybody and everything got it, the shops and the road-beds, the
train crews and the rolling-stock. What little sleep Carleton, the
super, got, he spent in formulating dream plans to handle the
business. Those that seemed good to him when he awoke were
promptly vetoed by the barons of the General Office in the far-off
East.
Regan got no sleep. He raced from one end of the division to the
other, and he did his best. Engine crews had to tinker anything less
than a major injury for themselves: there was no room in the shops
for them.
But the men on the keys got it most of all. As the days wore into
months, Spence’s face grew careworn and haggard; and the
irritability from overwork of the men about him added to his
discomfort. Human nature needs a safety-valve, and one night near
the end of January when Regan and Carleton and Spence were
gathered at the office, with Bunty in his accustomed place in his
father’s chair, the master mechanic cut loose.
“It’s up to you, Spence,” he cried savagely, bringing his fist down
with a crash on the desk. “There ain’t a pair of wheels on the
division fit to pull a hand-car. Every engine’s a cripple, and getting
lamer every day. The engine ain’t built, nor never will be, that’ll
stand the schedule you’re putting them on through the hills,
especially through the Gap. That’s a three per cent, with the bed like
an S. You can’t make time there; you’ve got to crawl. You’re pulling
the stay-bolts out of my engines, that’s what you’re doing.”
Carleton, being in no angelic mood, and glad to vent his feelings,
growled assent.
Spence raised his head from the keys, a red tinge of resentment
on his cheeks. He picked up his pipe, packing it slowly as he looked
at Regan and the super. “I’m taking all they’re sending,” he said
quietly. He reached over for the train-sheet and handed it to the
super. “You and Regan here are growling about the schedule. It’s
your division, Carleton; but I’m not sure you know just what we’re

handling every twenty-four hours. It’s push them through on top of
each other somehow, or tell them down-East we can’t handle them.
Do you want to do that?”
“No,” said Carleton, “I don’t; and what’s more, I won’t.”
Spence nodded. “I rather figured that was your idea. Well, we’ve
about all we can do without nagging one another. I’m near in now,
and so are you and Regan here, both of you. I’ve got to make time,
Gap or no Gap. There’s so much moving there isn’t siding enough to
cross them.”
“You’re right,” said Carleton; “we can’t afford to jump each other.
We’re all doing our best, and each of us knows it. How’s Number
One and Two tonight?”
Spence studied for a moment before he answered: “Number One
is forty minutes off, and Number Two’s an hour to the bad.”
Carleton groaned. The Imperial Limited West and East, officially
known on the train-sheets as One and Two, carried both the
transcontinental mail and the de-luxe passengers. Of late the East
had been making pertinent suggestions to the Division
Superintendent that it would be as well if those trains ran off the Hill
Division with a little more regard for their established schedule. So
Carleton groaned. He got up and put on his hat and coat preparatory
to going home. “Look here,” he said from the doorway, “they’ll stand
for ‘most anything if we don’t misuse One and Two. They’re getting
mighty savage about that, and they’ll drop hard before long. You
fellows have got to take care of those trains, if nothing else on the
division moves. That’s orders. I’ll shoulder all kicks coming on the
rest of the traffic. Good-night.”
When Bunty left the office that night and walked home with his
father, he had learned that there was another side to railroading
besides the building and repairing of engines, and the delivery of
magic tissue sheets to train crews that told them when and where to
stop, and how to thread their way through hills and plains on a
single-track road, with heaps of other trains, some going one way,

some another. He understood vaguely and in a hazy kind of way that
somewhere, many, many miles away, were men who sat in judgment
on the doings of his father and Spence and Carleton; that these men
were to be obeyed, that their word was law, and that their names
were President and Directors.
So Bunty, trotting beside his father, pondered these things. Being
too weighty for him, he appealed: “Daddy, what’s president and
directors?”
Regan’s temper being still ruffled, he answered shortly: “Fools,
mostly.”
Bunty nodded gravely, and his education as a railroad man was
almost complete. The rest came quickly, and the Gap did it.
The Gap! There was not a man on the division, from track-walker
to superintendent, who would not jump like a nervous colt if you
said “Gap!” to them offhand and short-like. A peaceful stretch of
track it looked, a little crooked, as Regan said, hugging the side of
the mountain at the highest point of the division. The surroundings
were undeniably grand. A sheer drop of eighteen-hundred feet to
the canon below, with the surrounding mountains rearing their
snow-capped peaks skyward, completed a picture of which the road
had electrotypes and which it used in their magazine-advertising.
What the picture did not show was the two-mile drop, where the
road-bed took a straight three per cent and sometimes better, to the
lower levels. So when Carleton or Spence or Regan, reading their
magazines, saw the picture, they shuddered, and, remembering past
history and fearful of the future, turned the page hurriedly.
But to Bunty the Gap possessed the fascination of the unknown.
He was wakened early the next morning by his father’s voice talking
excitedly over the special wire with headquarters about the Gap and
a wreck. He sat bolt upright, and listened with all his might; then he
crawled noiselessly out of bed, and began to dress hastily. He heard
his father speaking to his mother, and presently the front door

banged. Bunty was dressed by that time and he crept downstairs
and opened the door softly.
It was just turning daylight as he started on a run for the yard. It
was not far to the office,—a hundred yards or so,—and Bunty
reached there in record time. Across the tracks by the roundhouse
they were coupling on to the wrecker; and answering hasty
summons, men, running from all directions, were quickly gathering.
Bunty hesitated a minute on the platform, then he entered the
station and tiptoed softly up the stairs. The office door was open,
and from the top stair Bunty could see into the room. The night
lamp was still burning on the dispatcher’s desk, and Spence was
sitting there, working with frantic haste to clear the line. In the
center of the room, the super, his father, and Flannagan, the
wrecking boss, were standing.
“It’s a freight smash,” Carleton was saying to Flannagan—“east
edge of the Gap. You’ll have rights through, and no limit on your
permit. Tell Emmons if he doesn’t make it in better than ninety
minutes he’ll talk to me afterward. By the time you get there,
Number Two will be crawling up the grade. She’s pulling the Old
Man’s car, and that means get her through somehow if you have to
drop the wreck, over the cliff. You can back down to Riley’s to let her
pass. We’ll do the patching up afterward. Understand?”
Flannagan nodded, and glanced impatiently at Spence.
The super opened and shut his watch. “Ready, Spence?” he asked
shortly.
“Just a minute,” Spence answered quietly.
Bunty waited to hear no more. He turned and ran down the stairs
and across the tracks as fast as his legs would carry him. He
scrambled breathlessly up the steps of the tool-car and edged his
way in among the men grouped near the door. He was fairly inside
before they noticed him.

“Hello,” cried Allan, Bunty’s bosom friend of the fitting-gang days,
“here’s the little Super! What you doin’ here, kid?”
“I’m going up to the wreck,” Bunty announced sturdily.
The men laughed.
“Well, I guess not much, you’re not,” said Allan. “What do you
think your father would say?”
“Nothing,” said Bunty, airily. “I just comed from the office,” he
added artfully, “and I’ll tell you about the wreck if you like.”
The men grouped around him in a circle.
“It’s at the Gap,” Bunty began, sparring for time as through the
window he saw Flannagan coming from the office at a run. “And it’s
a freight train, and—and it’s all smashed up, and——”
The train started with a jerk that nearly took the men off their
feet. At the same time Flannagan’s face appeared at the car door.
“All here, boys?” he called. Then he announced cheerfully: “The
devil’s to pay up the line!”
Meanwhile, Bunty, taking advantage of the interruption, had
squirmed his way through the men to the far end of the car, and the
train had bumped over the switches on to the main line before they
remembered him. Then it was too late. They hauled him out from
behind a rampart of tools, where he had intrenched himself, and
Flannagan shook his fist, half-angrily, half-playfully, in Bunty’s face.
“You little devil, what are you doing here, eh?” he demanded.
And Bunty answered as before: “I’m going up to the wreck.”
“Humph!” said Flannagan, with a grin. “Well, I guess you are, and
I guess you’ll be sorry, too, when you get back and your dad gets
hold of you.”
But Bunty was safe now, and he only laughed.
Breakfastless, he shared the men’s grub and listened wide-eyed as
they talked of wrecks in times gone by; but most of all he listened to

the story of how his father, when he was pulling Number One, had
saved the Limited by sticking to his post almost in the face of certain
death. Bunty’s father was his hero, and his small soul glowed with
happiness at the tale. He begged so hard for the story over again
that Allan told it, and when he had finished, he slapped Bunty on the
back. “And I guess you’re a chip of the old block,” he said.
And Bunty was very proud, squaring his shoulders, and planting
his feet firmly to swing with the motion of the car.
The speed of the train slackened as they struck the grade leading
up the eastern side of the Gap. Flannagan set the men busily at
work overhauling the kit. He paused an instant before Bunty. “Look
here, kid,” he said, shaking a warning finger, “you keep out of the
way, and don’t get into trouble.”
It would have taken more than words from Flanna-gan to have
curbed Bunty’s eagerness; so when the train came to a stop and the
men tumbled out of the car with a rush, he followed. What he saw
caused him to purse his lips and cry excitedly, “Gee!”
Right in front of him a big mogul had turned turtle. Ditched by a
spread rail, she had pulled three boxcars with her, and piled them
up, mostly in splinters, on the tender. They had taken fire, and were
burning furiously. Behind these were eight or ten cars still on the
road-bed, but badly demolished from bumping over the ties when
they had left the rails. Still farther down the track in the rear were
the rest of the string, apparently uninjured. The snow was knee-
deep at the side of the track, but Bunty plowed manfully through it,
climbing up the embankment to a place of vantage.
His eyes blazed with excitement as he watched the scene before
him and listened to the hoarse shouts of the men, the crash of pick
and ax, and, above it all, the sharp crackle of the fire as the flames,
growing in volume, bit deeper and deeper into the wreck. Fiercely as
the men fought, the fire, with its long start, kept them from making
any headway against it. Already it had reached some of the cars
standing on the track.

From where Bunty stood he could see the track dipping away in a
long grade to the valley below. They called that grade the Devil’s
Slide, and the wreck was on the edge of it, with the caboose and
some half-dozen cars still resting on the incline. As he looked, far
below him he saw a trail of smoke. It was Number Two climbing the
grade. By this time the excitement of his surroundings had worn off
a little, and the arrival of the Limited offered a new attraction.
He clambered down from his perch and began to pick his way past
the wreck. Flannagan, begrimed and dirty, was talking to Emmons.
“I don’t like to do it,” Bunty heard Flannagan say, “but we’ll have to
blow up that box-car if we can’t stop the fire any other way, or we’ll
have a blaze down the whole line. The train crew says there’s
turpentine—two cars of it—next the flat there, and if that catches—
Hi, there, kid,” he broke off to yell, as he caught sight of Bunty, “you
get back to the tool-car, and stay there!”
And Bunty ran—in the other direction. He knew Number Two
would stop a little the other side of the wreck, and that there would
be a great big ten-wheeler pulling her, all as bright as a new dollar
and glistening in paint and gold-leaf. When he pulled up breathless
and happy by the side of Number Two, Masters, the engineer, was
giving Engine 901 an oil round, touching the journals critically with
the back of his hand as he moved along.
At sight of Bunty, the engineer laid his oil-can on the slide-bars
and grinned as he extended his hand. “How are you, Bunty?” he
asked.
And Bunty, accepting the proffered hand, replied gravely: “I’m
pretty well, Mr. Masters, thank you.”
“Glad to hear it, Bunty. How did you get here?”
“I comed up with the wrecker-train. It’s a’ awful smash.”
“Is it, now! Think they’ll have the line cleared soon?”
“Oh, no,” Bunty replied, eyeing the cab of the big engine wistfully.
“Not for ever and ever so long.”

Masters’ eyes followed Bunty’s glance. “Want to get up in the cab,
Bunty?”
“Oh, please!” Bunty cried breathlessly.
“All right,” said Masters, boosting the lad through the gangway.
Then warningly: “Don’t touch anything.”
And Bunty promised.
It was only four hundred yards up to the wreck; but that was
enough. Masters and his firemen left their train and went to get a
view at close quarters. When it was all over, it was up to the
wrecking boss and the engine crew of Number Two. Flannagan
swore he blocked the trucks of the cars on the incline; but
Flannagan lied, and he got clear. Masters and his mate had no
chance to lie, for they broke rules, and they got their time.
Be that as it may, Bunty sat on the driver’s seat of the Imperial
Limited and watched the engineer and fireman start up the track. He
lost sight of the men long before they reached the wreck. They were
still in view, but he was very busy: he was playing “pretend.”
Bunty’s imagination was vivid enough to make the game a
fascinating one whenever he indulged in it, and that was often. But
now it was almost reality, and his fancy was little taxed to supply
what was lacking. He was engineer of the Limited, and they had just
stopped at a station. He leaned out of the cab window to get the
“go-ahead” signal. Then his hand went through the motion of
throwing over the reversing-lever and opening the throttle. And now
he was off; faster and faster. He rocked his body to and fro to supply
the motion of the cab. He sat very grim and determined, peering
straight ahead. He was booming along now at full speed. They were
coming to a crossing. “Too-oo-o, toot, toot!” cried Bunty at the top
of his shrill treble, for the rules said you must whistle at every
crossing, and Bunty knew the rules. Now they were coming to the
next station, and he began to slow up. “Ding-dong, ding—”
BANG!

Bunty nearly fell from his seat with fright. Ahead of him, up the
track, there was a column of smoke as a mass of wreckage rose in
the air, and then a crash. Flannagan had blown up a car. Bunty
stared, fascinated, not at the explosion, but at the rear end of the
wreck on the grade. He rubbed his eyes in bewilderment, then he
scrambled over the side of the seat. He paused half-way off, looking
again through the front window to make sure. There was no doubt
of it: the cars were beginning to roll down the track toward him. He
waited for no more, but rushed to the gangway to jump off. Then he
stopped as the story Allan had told about his father came back to
him. Bunty’s heart thumped wildly as he turned white-faced and
determined. No truly engineer would leave his train; his father had
not, and Bunty did not.
The reversing-lever was in the back notch where Masters had left
it when he stopped the train. It was Bunty’s task to reach and open
the throttle. He climbed up on the seat and stood on tiptoe. Leaning
over, he grasped the lever with both hands and pulled it open. What
little science of engine-driving Bunty possessed, was lost in the
terror that gripped him. The runaway cars were only a couple of
hundred yards away now, and, gaining speed with every rail they
traveled, spelt death and’ destruction to the Imperial Limited, if they
ever reached her. The men at the top of the grade were yelling their
lungs out and waving their arms in frantic warning.
The train started with a jolt that threw Bunty back on the seat. For
an instant the big drivers raced like pin-wheels, then they bit into the
rails, and aided by the grade, Number Two began to back slowly
down the hill.
Bunty picked himself up, his little frame shaking with dry sobs.
The freight-cars had gained on him in the last minute, and had
nearly reached him. Again he leaned over for the throttle, and
hanging grimly to it, pulled it open another notch, and then another,
and then wide open. 901 took it like a frightened thoroughbred.
Rearing herself from the track under her two hundred and ten
pounds of steam, she jumped into the cars behind her for a starter

with a shock that played havoc with the passengers’ nerves. Then
she settled down to travel. The Devil’s Slide is two miles long, and
some pretty fair running has been made on it in times of stress; but
Bunty holds the record,—it’s good yet,—and Bunty was only an
amateur!
It was neck and neck for a while, and there was almost a pile-up
on the nose of 901’s pilot before she began to hold her own.
Gradually she began to pull away, and by the time they were half-
way down the hill the distance between her and the truant freight-
cars was widening. The speed was terrific.
Pale and terror-stricken, Bunty now crouched on the driver’s seat.
Time and again the engineer’s whistle in the cab over his head
signaled, now entreatingly, now with frantic insistence. But Bunty
gave it no heed; his only thought was for those cars in front of him
that were always there. He cried to himself with little moans.
There was a sickening slur as they flew round a curve. 901 heeled
to the tangent, one set of drivers fairly lifted from the track. When
she found her wheel base again, Bunty, shaken from his hold, was
clinging to the reversing-lever. He shut his eyes as he pulled himself
back to his seat. When he looked again, he saw the freight-cars hit
the curve above him, then slew as they jumped the track and, with a
crash that reached him above the roar and rattle of the train, the
booming whir of the great drivers beneath him, go pitching headlong
down the embankment.
Bunty rose to his knees, and for the first time looked out of the
side window, to find a new terror there as the rocks and trees and
poles flashed dizzily by him. He turned and looked behind. A man
was clinging to the hand-rail of the mail-car, and another, lying flat,
was crawling over the coal heaped high on the tender. Bunty dashed
the tears from his eyes; he was no “fraidy” kid. He stood up, and
holding on to the frame of the window, staggered toward the
throttle. As he reached for it, 901 lurched madly, and Bunty lost his
balance and fell headlong upon the iron floor plate of the cab. Then
it was all dark.

N
umber Two pulled into Big Cloud that night ten hours late,
and it brought Bunty. His father and Carleton and Spence and
the shop-hands were on the platform. From the private car,
which carried the tail-lights, an elderly gentleman got off with Bunty
in his arms. The men cheered, and while the master mechanic
rushed forward to take his son, the super and Spence drew back
respectfully.
“Mr. Regan,” said the old gentleman, with tears in his eyes, “you
ought to be pretty proud of this little lad.”
Regan tried to speak, but the words choked somehow.
The old gentleman swung himself back upon the car. “Good-by,
Bunty!” he called.
And Bunty, from the depths of the blanket they had wrapped
around him, called back, “Good-by, sir!” When Bunty was propped
up in bed, his father told him how the express messenger had
stopped the train and carried him back into the Pullmans.
Bunty listened gravely. “Yes,” he said, nodding his head; “they was
awful good to me, and the man that tooked me off the train told me
stories, and then I told him some, too.”
“What did you tell him?” Regan asked.
“Oh, ’bout trains and shops and presidents and directors and—and
lots of things.”
“Presidents and directors!” said Regan, in surprise. “What did you
tell him about them?”
“I told him what you said—that they was fools, and you knew,
’cause you’d seen them.”

Regan whistled softly.
“And,” continued Bunty, “he laughed, and when I asked him what
he was laughing at, he gived me a piece of paper and told me to
give it to you, and you’d tell me.”
Regan groaned. “Guess it’s my time all right,” he muttered.
“Where’s the paper, Bunty?”
“He putted it in my pocket.”
Regan drew the chair with Bunty’s clothing on it toward him, and
began a hurried search. He fished out a narrow slip of paper and
unfolded it on his knee. It was a check for one thousand dollars
payable to Master Bunty Regan, and signed by the President of the
road.

E
III—“IF A MAN DIE”
ast and West now, the Transcontinental is doubletracked, all
except the Hill Division—and that, in the nature of things,
probably never will be. If you know the mountains, you know
the Hill Division. From the divisional point, Big Cloud, that snuggles
at the eastern foothills, the right of way, like the trail of a great
sinewy serpent, twists and curves through the mountains, through
the Rockies, through the Sierras, and finally emerges to link its steel
with a sister division, that stretches onward to the great blue of the
Pacific Ocean.
It is a stupendous piece of track. It has cost fabulous sums, and
the lives of many men; it has made the fame of some, and been the
graveyard of more. The history of the world, in big things, in little
things, in battles, in strife, in suddenf death, in peace, in progress,
and in achievement, has its counterpart, in miniature, in the history
of the Hill Division. There is a page in that history that belongs to
“Angel” Breen. This is Breen’s story.
It has been written much, and said oftener, that men in every walk
of life, save one, may make mistakes and live them down, but that
the dispatcher who falls once is damned forever. And it is true. I am
a dispatcher. I know.
Where he got the nickname “Angel” from, is more than I can tell
you, and I’ve wondered at it often enough myself. Contrast, I guess
it was. Contrast with the boisterous, rough and ready men around
him, for this happened back in the early days when men were what
a life of hardship and no comfort made them. No, Breen wasn’t soft
—far from it. He was just quiet and mild-mannered. It must have
been that—contrast. Anyway, he was “Angel” when I first knew him,
and you can draw your own conclusions as to what he is now—I’m
not saying anything at all about that.

Where did he come from? What was he before he came here? I
don’t know. I don’t believe anybody knew, or ever gave the matter a
thought. That sort of question was never asked—it was too delicate
and pointed in the majority of cases. A man was what he was out
here, not what he had been; he made good, or he didn’t. Not that I
mean to imply that there was anything crooked or anything wrong
with Breen’s past, I’m sure there wasn’t for that matter, but I’m just
trying to make you understand that when I say Breen had the night
trick in the dispatcher’s office here in Big Cloud, I’m beginning at the
beginning.
Breen wasn’t popular. He wasn’t a good enough mixer for that.
Personally, it isn’t anything I’d hold up against him, or any other
man. Popularity is too often cheap, and being a “good fellow” isn’t
always a license for a man to puff out his chest—though most of
them do it, and that’s the high sign that what I say is right. No, I’m
not moralizing, I’m telling a story, you’ll see what I mean before I
get through. I say Breen wasn’t popular. He got the reputation of
thinking himself a little above the rank and file of those around him,
stuck-up, to put it in cold English, and that’s where they did him an
injustice. It was the man’s nature, unobtrusive, retiring—different
from theirs, if you get my point, and they couldn’t understand just
because it was different. The limitations weren’t all up to Breen.
If they had known, or taken the trouble to know, as much about
him as they could have known before passing judgment on him,
perhaps things might have been a little different; perhaps not, I
won’t say, for it’s pretty generally accepted in railroad law that a
dispatcher’s slip is a capital offense, and there’s no court of appeal,
no stay of execution, no anything, and to all intents and purposes
he’s dead from the moment that slip is made. There have been lots
of cases like that, lots of them, and there’s no class of men I pity
more—a slip, and damned for the rest of their lives! I don’t say that
because I’m a dispatcher myself. We’re only human, aren’t we?
Mistakes like that, God knows, aren’t made intentionally. Sometimes
a man is overworked, sometimes queer brain kinks happen to him
just as they do to every other man. We’re ranked as human in

everything but our work. I’m not saying it’s not right. In the last
analysis I suppose it has to be that way. It’s part of the game, and
we know the rules when we “sit in.” We’ve no reason to complain,
only I get a shiver every time I read a newspaper headline that I
know, besides being a death-warrant, is tearing the heart out of
some poor devil. You’ve seen the kind I mean, read scores of them
—“Dispatcher’s Blunder Costs Many Lives”—or something to the
same effect. Maybe you’ll think it queer, but for days afterward I
can’t handle an order book or a train sheet when I’m on duty
without my heart being in my mouth half the time.
What’s this got to do with Breen? Well, in one way, it hasn’t
anything to do with him; and, then again, in another way, it has. I
want you to know that a blunder means something to a dispatcher
besides the loss of his job. Do you think they’re a coldblooded,
calloused lot? I want you to know that they care. Oh, yes, they’re
human. They’ve got a heart and they’ve got a soul; the one to
break, the other to sear. My God! think of it—a slip. That’s the
ghastly horror of it all—a slip! don’t you think they can feel? don’t
you think their own agony of mind is punishment enough without
the added reproach, and worse, of their fellows? But let it go, it’s the
Law of the Game.
I said they didn’t know much about Breen out here then except
that he was a pretty good dispatcher, but as far as that goes it didn’t
help him any, rather the reverse, when the smash came. The better
the man the harder the fall, what? It’s generally that way, isn’t it?
Perhaps you’re wondering what I know about him. I’ll tell you. If any
one knew Breen, I knew him. I was only a kid then, I’m a man now.
I hadn’t even a coat—Breen gave me one. I’m a dispatcher—Breen
taught me, and no better man on the “key” than Breen ever lived, a
better man than I could ever hope to be, yet he slipped. Do you
wonder I shiver when I read those things? I’m not a religious man,
but I’ve asked God on my bended knees, over and over again, to
keep me from the horror, the suffering, the blasted life that came to
Breen and many another man—through a slip. Yes, if any one knew

Breen, I did. All I know, all I’ve got, everything in this whole wide
world, I owe to Breen—“Angel” Breen.
You probably read of the Elktail wreck at the time it happened, but
you’ve forgotten about it by now. Those things don’t live long in the
mind unless they come pretty close home to you; there’s too many
other things happening every hour in this big pulsing world to make
it anything more than the sensation of the moment. But out here the
details have cause enough to be fixed in the minds of most of us,
not only of the wreck itself, but of what happened afterward as well
—and I don’t know which of the two was the worse. You can judge
for yourself I’m not going into technicalities. You’ll understand better
if I don’t. You’ll remember I said that the Hill Division is only single-
tracked. That means, I don’t need to tell you, that it’s up to the
dispatcher every second, and all that stands between the trains and
eternity is the bit of tissue tucked in the engineer’s blouse and its
duplicate crammed in the conductor’s side pocket. Orders, meeting
points, single track, you understand? The dispatcher holds them all,
every last one of them, for life or death, men, women and children,
train crews and company property, all—and Breen slipped!
No one knows to this day how it happened. I daresay some
eminent authority on psychology might explain it, but the
explanation would be too high-browed and too far over my head to
understand it even if he did. I only know the facts and the result.
Breen sent out a lap order on Number One, the Imperial Limited,
westbound, and Number Eighty-Two, a fast freight, perishable,
streaking east. Both were off schedule, and he was nursing them
along for every second he could squeeze. Back through the
mountains, both ways, all through the night, he’d given them the
best of everything—the Imperial clear rights, and Eighty-Two pretty
nearly, if not quite, as good. Then he fixed the meeting point for the
two trains.
I read a story once where the dispatcher sent out a lap order on
two trains and his mistake was staring at him all the time from his
order book. I guess that was a slip of the pen, and he never noticed

it. That was queer enough, but what Breen did was queerer still. His
order book showed straight as a string. The freight was to hold at
Muddy Lake, ten miles west of Elktail, for Number One. Number
One, of course, as I told you, running free. Somehow, I don’t know
how, it’s one of those things you can’t explain, a subconscious break
between the mind and the mechanical, physical action, you’ve
noticed it in little things you’ve done yourself, Breen wired the word
“Elktail” instead of “Muddy Lake”—and never knew it—never had a
hint that anything was wrong—never caught it on the repeat, and
gave back his O. K. The order, the written order in the book, was
exactly as it should be. It read Muddy Lake—that was right, Muddy
Lake. You see what happened? There wasn’t time for the freight to
make Elktail, but she got within three miles of it—and that’s as far as
she ever got! In a nasty piece of track, full of trestles and gorges,
where the right of way bends worse than the letter S, they met, the
two of them, head on—Number One and Number Eighty-Two!
And Breen didn’t know what he had done even after the details
began to pour in. How could he know? What was Eighty-Two doing
east of Muddy Lake? She should have been waiting there for Number
One to pass her. The order book showed that plain enough. And all
through the rest of that night, while he worked like a madman
clearing the line, getting up hospital relief, and wrecking trains—with
Carle-ton, he was super then, gray-faced and haggard, like the
master of a storm-tossed liner on his bridge giving orders, pacing
the room, cursing at times at his own impotency—Breen didn’t know,
neither of them knew, where the blame lay. But the horror of the
thing had Breen in its grip even then. I was there that night, and I
can see him now bent over under the green-shaded lamp—I can see
Carleton’s face, and it wasn’t a pleasant face to see. One thing I
remember Breen said. Once, as the sounder pitilessly clicked a
message more ghastly than any that had gone before, adding to the
number of those whose lives had gone out forever, adding to the
tale of the wounded, to the wild, mad story of chaos and ruin, Breen
lifted his head from the key for a moment, pushed his hair out of his

eyes with a nervous, shaky sweep of his hand, and looked at
Carleton.
“It’s horrible, horrible,” he whispered; “but think of the man who
did it. Death would be easy compared to what he must feel. It
makes me as weak as a kitten to think of it, Carleton. My God, man,
don’t you see! I, or any other dispatcher, might do this same thing
to-morrow, the next day, or the day after. Tell me again, Carleton,
tell me again, that order’s straight.”
“Don’t lose your nerve,” Carleton answered sharply. “Whoever has
blundered, it’s not you.”
Irony? No. It’s beyond all that, isn’t it? It’s getting about as near
to the tragedy of a man’s life as you can get. It’s getting as deep
and tapping as near bed-rock as we’ll ever do this side of the Great
Divide. Think of it! Think of Breen that night—it’s too big to get, isn’t
it? God pity him! Those words of his have rung in my ears all these
years, and that scene I can see over again in every detail every time
I close my eyes.
In the few hours left before dawn that morning, there wasn’t time
to give much attention to the cause. There was enough else to think
of, enough to give every last man on the division from car tink to
superintendent all, and more, than they could handle—the
investigation could come later. But it never came.
There was no need for one. How did they find out? It came like
the crack of doom, and Breen got it—got it—and it seemed to burst
the floodgates of his memory open, seemed to touch that dormant
chord, and he knew, knew as he knew that he had a God, what he
had done.
They found the order that made the meeting point Elktail tucked
in Mooney’s jumper when, after they got the crane at work, they
hauled him out from under his engine. Who was Mooney? Engineer
of the freight. They found him before they did any of his train crew,
or his fireman either, for that matter. Dead? Yes. I’m a dispatcher,
look at it from the other side if you want to, it’s only fair. That bit of

tissue cleared Mooney, of course—but it sent him to his death. Yes, I
know, good God, don’t you think I know what it means—to slip?
It was just before Davis, Breen’s relief, came on for the morning
trick, in fact Davis was in the room, when Breen got the report. He
scribbled it on a pad, word by word as it came in, for Carleton to
see. For a minute it didn’t seem to mean anything to him, and then,
as I say, he got it. I never saw such a look on a man’s face before,
and I pray God I never may again. He seemed to wither up, blasted
as the oak is blasted by a lightning stroke. The horror, the despair,
the agony in his eyes are beyond any words of mine to describe, and
you wouldn’t want to hear it if I could tell you. He held out his arms
pitifully like a pleading child. His lips moved, but he had to try over
and over again before any sound came from them. There was no
thought of throwing the blame on anybody else. Breen wasn’t that
kind. Oh, yes, he could have done it. He could have put the blunder
on the night man at the Gap where Mooney received his Elktail
holding order, and Breen’s order book would have left it an open
question as to which of the two had made the mistake—would
probably have let him out and damned the other. You say from the
way he acted he didn’t think of that and therefore the temptation
didn’t come to him. Yes, I know what you mean. Not so much to
Breen’s credit, what? Well, I don’t know, it depends on the way you
look at it. I’d rather believe the thought didn’t come because the
man’s soul was too clean. It was clean them—no matter what he did
afterward.
There have been death scenes of dispatchers before, many of
them—there will be others in the days to come, many of them. So
long as there are railroads and so long as men are frail as men,
lacking the infallibility of a higher power, just so long will they be
inevitable. But no death scene of a dispatcher’s career was ever as
this one was. Breen was his own judge, his own jury, his own
executioner. Do you think I could ever forget his words? He pointed
his hand toward the window that faced the western stretch of track,
toward the foothills, toward the mighty peaks of the Rockies that
towered beyond them, and the life, the being of the man was in his

voice. They came slowly, those words, wrenched from a broken
heart, torn from a shuddering soul.
“I wish to God that it were me in their stead. Christ be merciful! I
did it, Carleton. I don’t know how. I did it.”
No one answered him. No one spoke. For a moment that seemed
like all eternity there was silence, then Breen, his arms still held out
before him, walked across the room as a blind man walks in his own
utter darkness, walked to the door and passed out—alone. Those
few steps across the room—alone! I’ve thought of that pretty often
since—they seemed so horribly, grimly, significantly in keeping with
what there was of life left for the stricken man—alone. It’s a pretty
hard word, that, sometimes, and sometimes it brings the tears.
I don’t know how I let him go like that. I was too stunned to move
I guess, but I reached him at the foot of the stairs as he stepped out
onto the platform. There wasn’t anything I could say, was there?
What would you have said?
No man knew better than Breen himself what this would mean to
him. He was wrecked, wrecked worse than that other wreck, for his
was a living death. There weren’t any grand jurys or things of that
kind out here then, not that it would have made any difference to
Breen if there had been. You can’t put any more water in a pail
when it’s already full, can you? You can’t add to the maximum, can
you? don’t you think Breen’s punishment was beyond the reach of
man or men to add to, or, for that matter, to abate by so much as
the smallest fraction? It was, God knows it was—all except one final
twinge, that I believe now settled him, though I’ll say here that
whatever it did to Breen it’s not for me to judge her. Who am I, that
I should? It is between her and her Maker. I’ll come to that in a
minute.
Yes, Breen knew well enough what it meant to him, but his
thoughts that morning as we walked up the street weren’t, I know
right well, on himself—he was thinking of those others. And I, well, I
was thinking of Breen. Wouldn’t you? I told you I owed Breen

everything I had in the world. Neither of us said a word all the way
up to his boarding-house. It was almost as though I wasn’t with him
for all the attention he paid to me. But he knew I was there just the
same. I like to think of that. I wasn’t very old then—I’m not offering
that as an excuse, for I’m not ashamed to admit that I was near to
tears—if I’d been older perhaps I could have said or done something
to help. As it was, all I could do was to turn that one black thought
over and over and over again in my mind. Breen’s living death,
death, death, death. That’s the way it hit me, the way it caught me,
and the word clung and repeated itself as I kept step beside him.
He was dead, dead to hope, ambition, future, everything, as dead
as though he lay outstretched before me in his coffin. It seemed as
if I could see him that way. And then, don’t ask me why, I don’t
know, I only know such things happen, come upon you
unconsciously, suddenly, there flashed into my mind that bit of verse
from the Bible, you know it—“if a man die, shall he live again?” I
must have said it out loud without knowing it, for he whirled upon
me quick as lightning, placed his two hands upon my shoulders, and
stared with a startled gaze into my eyes. I say startled. It was, but
there was more. There seemed for a second a gleam of hope
awakened, hungry, oh, how hungry, pitiful in its yearning, and then
the uselessness, the futility of that hope crushed it back, stamped it
out, and the light in his eyes grew dull and died away.
We had halted at the door of his boarding-house and I made as
though to go upstairs with him to his room, but he stopped me.
“Not now, Charlie, boy,” he said, shaking his head and trying to
smile; “not now. I want to be alone.”
And so I left him.
Alone! He wanted to be alone. Were ever words more full of cruel
mockery! It seems hard to understand sometimes, doesn’t it? And
we get to questioning things we’d far better leave alone. I know at
first I used to wonder why Almighty God ever let Breen make that
slip. He could have stopped it, couldn’t He? But that’s riot right.

We’re running on train orders from the Great Dispatcher, and the
finite can’t span the infinite.
Maybe you’ll think it queer that I left Breen like that, let him go to
his room alone. You’re thinking that in his condition he might do
himself harm—end it all, to put it bluntly. Well, that thought didn’t
come to me then, it did afterward, but not then. Why? It must have
been just the innate consciousness that he wouldn’t do that sort of
thing. Some men face things one way, some face them another. It’s
a question of individuality and temperament. I don’t think Breen
could have done anything like that, I know he seemed so far apart
from it in my mind that, as I say, the thought didn’t come to me. He
was too big a man, big enough to have faced what was before him,
faced conditions, faced the men, though God knows they treated
him like skulking coyote, if it had not been for her. I want to stand
right on this. Breen would never have done what he did if she had
$cted differently. That much I know. But, I want to say it again, I’ve
no right to judge her.
Perhaps you’ve read that story of Kipling’s about the Black Tyrone
Regiment that saw their dead? Well, Breen, as I told you, at the
beginning, wasn’t popular, and the boys had seen their dead. Do you
understand? Pariah, outcast, what you like, they made him, all
except pity they gave him, and I say he would have taken it all,
accepted it all, only there are some things too heavy for a man to
bear, aren’t there? Load limit, the engineers call it when they build
their bridge. Well, there’s a load limit on the heart and brain and
soul of a man just as there is on a bridge; and while one, strained
beyond the breaking point, goes crashing in a horrid mass of twisted
wreckage to the bottom of the canon, to the bottom of the gorge,
into the rushing, boiling waters of the river beneath, the other
crashes, a damned soul, to the bottom of hell. Kitty Mooney had
seen her dead. Kitty Mooney, the engineer’s sister! And Breen loved
her, was going to marry her. That’s all.
How do I know? How do you know? Perhaps it was grief, perhaps
it was hysteria, perhaps it was according to the light God gave her

and she couldn’t understand, perhaps it was only wild, unreasoning,
frantic passion. I don’t know. I only know she called him—a
murderer. She couldn’t have loved him, you say. Perhaps no,
perhaps yes. Does it make any difference? Breen thought she did,
and Breen loved her. I don’t know. I only know that where he looked
for a ray of mercy, her mercy, to light the blackened depths, for the
touch, her touch, that would have held him back from the brink, for
the word of comfort, her word, that would have bid him stand like a
gallant soldier facing untold odds, he received, instead, a
condemnation more terrible than any that had gone before, and a
bleeding heart dried bitter as gall, a patient, grief-stricken man
became a vicious snapping wolf, and “Angel” Breen—a devil.
Would I have been a stronger man than Breen? Would you? Would
I have done differently than Kitty Mooney did if I had been in her
place? Would you? We don’t know, do we? No one knows. God keep
us from ever knowing. The poor devil in the gutters, the wretched,
ruined lives of women who have lost their grip and drunk the dregs,
the human, stranded, battered wrecks we see around us, were once
like you and me. We don’t know, do we? God pity them! God keep
us from the sneer! Our strength has never been measured. It may
be no greater than theirs. To-morrow it may be you or I.
It was pretty lawless out here in those days. We had the riff-raff of
the East, and worse; and there was nothing to restrain them,
nothing much to keep them in check, and they did about as they
liked. They brought the touch into the picture of the West that the
West hasn’t lived down yet, and I’m not sure ever will. The brawling,
gambling, gun-handling type, the thief, the desperado, the bad man,
rotten bad, bad to the core. They’ve been stamped out now most of
them, but it was different then. They didn’t turn a cold shoulder to
Breen. Why should they? They were outcasts and pariahs, too,
weren’t they? And Breen, well, I guess you understand as well as I
do, and you know as I know that when a man like that goes he goes
the limit. There’s no middle course for some men, they’re not made
that way.

Whatever holds them for good, or whatever holds them for bad, it
holds them all, either way, all, body, mind and spirit, all. And that is
true in spite of the fact that, often enough, there’s some one thing,
it may be a little thing, it may be a big thing, but some one thing
that the worst of us balk at, can’t do. It’s not morality, it’s not
conscience, a man gets way beyond all that; it’s a memory of the
past perhaps, a something bred in him from babyhood. I don’t know.
You can’t treat human nature like a specimen on the glass slide
under a microscope. There is no specimen. As there are millions of
people, so is each one in some way different from the other. You
can’t classify, you can’t tabulate the different kinks into a list and
learn it by heart, can you? The man who says he knows human
nature says he is as wise as the God who made him, and that man is
a poor fool. That’s right, isn’t it? And so I say that, strange as it may
seem, in the worst of us, fall as low as we will, there’s generally
some one thing our soul, what’s left of it, revolts at doing. Breen was
a railroad man. Railroading was in his blood. I want you to get that.
It was part of him. Any man that’s worth his salt in this business is
that way. It’s in the blood or it isn’t; you’re a railroad man or you’re
not.
Breen disappeared from Big Cloud and I didn’t see him from the
day Kitty Mooney turned him from her door until the night—but I’m
coming to that—that’s the end. There’s a word or two that goes
before—so that you’ll understand. He disappeared from Big Cloud,
but he didn’t leave the mountains. Maybe back of it all, an almost
impossible theory if you like, but I can understand it, a something in
him wouldn’t let him run away. He did run away, you say. Yes, but
there’s the queer brain kink again. Perhaps he temporized. You
temporize. I temporize. We try to fool and delude sometimes, snatch
at loopholes, snatch at straws, to bolster up our self-respect, don’t
we? That’s what I mean when I say it’s possible he couldn’t run
away. He clung to the straw, the loophole, that running away was
measured in miles. I don’t say that was it, for I don’t know. It’s
possible. We heard of him from time to time as the months went by,
and the things we heard weren’t pleasant things to hear. He drifted

from bad to worse, until that something that he couldn’t do brought
him to a halt—brought the end.
Don’t ask me when Breen threw in his lot with Black Dempsey and
the band of fiends that called him leader—the ugliest, soul-
blackened set of fiends that ever polluted the West, and that’s using
pretty strong language. Don’t ask me how Breen got to Big Cloud
that night away from the others waiting to begin their hellish work.
Don’t ask me. I don’t know. Why he did it—is different. That, I can
tell you. What they wanted him to do, to have a part in, was that
one thing I was speaking about, the one thing he couldn’t do. Breen
was a railroad man, railroading was in his blood, that’s all—but it’s
everything—railroading was in his blood. As for the rest, maybe he
didn’t know what they were really up to until the last moment, and
then stole away from them. Maybe they found it out, suspected him,
and some of them followed him, tried to stop him, tried to keep him
from reaching here. But what’s the use of speculating? I never knew,
I never will know. Breen can’t tell me, can he? And all that I can tell
you is what I saw and heard that night.
I had the night trick then—Breen’s job—they gave me Breen’s job.
It seemed somehow at first like sacrilege to take it—as though I was
robbing him of it, taking it away from him, wronging, stripping,
impoverishing the man to whom I owed even the knowledge that
made me fit, that made it possible, to hold down a key—his key. Of
course, that was only sensitiveness, but you understand, don’t you?
It caught me hard when I first “sat in,” but gradually the feeling
wore off; not that I ever forgot, I haven’t yet for that matter, only
time blunts the sharp edges, and routine, habit, and custom do the
rest. I don’t need to tell you that I remember that night. Remember
it!
That was before this station was built, and in those days we had
an old wooden shack here that did duty for freight house, station,
division headquarters, and everything else all rolled into one. The
dispatcher’s room was upstairs.

Things were moving slick as a whistle that night. No extra traffic,
no road troubles, in—out, in—out, all along the line the trains were
running like clockwork from one end of the division to the other. If
there was anything on my mind at all it was the Limited, Number
Two, eastbound. We were handling a good deal of gold in those
days, there was a lot of it being shipped East then—is still, from the
Klondyke now, you know—and we were getting a fair share of the
business away from the southern competition. We hadn’t had any
trouble, weren’t looking for any, but it was pretty generally
understood that all shipments of that kind were to get special
attention. Number Two was carrying an extra express car with a
consignment for the mint that night, so, naturally, I had kept my eye
on her more closely than usual all the way through the mountains
from the time I got her from the Pacific Division. At the time I’m
speaking about, four o’clock in the morning, I was almost clear of
her, for she wasn’t much west of Coyote Bend, fifteen miles from
here, and she had rights all the way in. Half an hour more at the
most, and she would be off my hands and up to the dispatchers of
the Prairie Division. She had held her schedule to the tick every foot
of the way, and all I was waiting for was the call from Coyote Bend
that would report her in and out again into the clear for Big Cloud.
Coyote Bend is the first station west of here, you understand?
There’s nothing between. She was due at Coyote at 4.05, and I want
you to remember this—I said it before, but I want to repeat it. I
want you to get it hard—she had run to the second all through the
night.
My watch was open on the table before me, and I watched the
minute hand creep round the dial. 4.03, 4.04, 4.05, 4.06, 4.07, 4.08.
I was alone in the office. The night caller had gone out perhaps ten
minutes before to call the train crew of the five o’clock local. There
wasn’t anything to be nervous about. I don’t put it down to that.
Three minutes wasn’t anything. Perhaps it was just impatience,
fretfulness. You know how it is when you’re waiting for something to
happen, and I was expecting the sounder to break every second
with that report from Coyote Bend, Anyway, put it down to what you

like, though I didn’t want a drink particularly I pushed back my chair,
got up, and walked over to the water cooler. The dispatcher’s table
was on the east side of the room, the door opened on the south
side, and the water cooler was over in the opposite corner. I’m
explaining this so that you’ll understand that the door was between
the water cooler and the table. That old shack was rough and ready,
and I’ve wondered more than once what ever kept it from falling to
pieces. It didn’t take more than a breath of wind to set every
window-sash in the outfit rattling like a corps of snare drums. That’s
why, I guess, I didn’t hear any one coming up the stairs. It was
blowing pretty hard that night. But I heard the door open. I thought
it was the caller back again, and I wondered how he’d made his
rounds in such quick time. With the tumbler half up to my lips I
turned around—then the glass slipped from my fingers and crashed
into slivers on the floor. My mouth went dry, my heart seemed to
stop. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. It was Breen—“Angel” Breen!
I saw him start at the noise of the splintering glass, but he didn’t
look at me. He clung swaying to the door jamb for an instant, his
face chalky white, then he reeled across the room—and dropped into
his old chair. I saw him glance at my watch and his face seemed to
go whiter than before, then he snatched at the train sheet and a
smile—no, it wasn’t exactly a smile, you couldn’t call it that, his
whole face seemed to change, light up, and his lips moved—I know
now in a prayer of gratitude. You understand, don’t you? He knew
the time-card, knew that Number Two, after he had seen my watch,
should have been out of Coyote Bend four, perhaps five, minutes
before, but the train sheet showed her: still unreported. His fingers
closed on the key and he began to make the Coyote Bend call. Over
and over, quick, sharp, clear, incisive, with all the old masterful touch
of his sending Breen was rattling the call—cc,cx—cc,cx—cc,cx—cc,cx.
And then I found my voice.
“God in Heaven, Breen!” I stammered, and started toward him.
“You! What———”

The sounder broke. Coyote Bend answered. And on the instant
Breen flashed this order over the wire.
“Hold Number Two. Hold Number Two”—twice the sender spelled
out the words.
Then Coyote Bend repeated the order, and Breen gave back the O.
K.
“Breen!” I shouted. “What are you doing? Are you crazy! What are
you doing here? Speak, man, what——”
He had straightened in his chair, and a sort of low, catchy gasp
came from his lips. It seemed as though it took all his power, all his
strength, to lift his eyes to mine. I sprang for the key, but he jerked
himself suddenly forward and pushed me desperately away. And
then he called me by the old name, not much above a whisper, I
could hardly catch the words, and I didn’t understand, didn’t know,
that the man before me was a wounded, dying man. My brain was
whirling, full of that other night, full of the days and months that
had followed. I couldn’t think. I——
“Charlie—boy, it’s all right. Black Dempsey in the Cut. I was afraid
I was too late—too late. They shot—me—here”—he was tearing with
his fingers at his waistcoat.
And then I understood—too late. As I reached for him, he swayed
forward and toppled over, a huddled heap, over the key, over the
order book, over the train sheet that once had taken his life and now
had given it back to him—dead.
What is there to say? Whatever he may have done, however far
he may have fallen, back of it all, through it all, bigger than himself,
stronger than any other bond was the railroading that was in his
blood. Breen was a railroad man.
I don’t know why, do I? You don’t know why, after Number Two
had run to schedule all that night, it happened just when it did. It
might have happened at some other time—but it didn’t. Luck or
chance if you like, more than that if you’d rather think of it in

another way, but just a few miles west of Coyote Bend something
went wrong in the cab of Number Two. Nothing much, I don’t
remember now what it was, don’t know that I ever knew, nothing
much. Just enough to hold her back a few minutes, the few minutes
that let Breen sit in again on the night dispatcher’s trick, sit in again
at the key, hold down his old job once more before he quit
railroading forever with the order that he gave his life to send, to
keep Number Two from rushing to death and destruction against the
rocks and boulders Black Dempsey and his gang had piled across the
track in the Cut five miles east of Coyote Bend.
I don’t know. “If a man die, shall he live again?” I leave it to you. I
only know that they think a lot of him out here, think a lot of Breen,
“Angel” Breen—now.

S
IV—SPITZER
pitzer was just naturally born diffident. Sometimes that sort of
thing wears off as one grows older, sometimes it doesn’t.
When it doesn’t, it is worse than the most virulent disease—it
had been virulent with Spitzer for all of his twenty-two years.
Spitzer wasn’t much to look at, neither was he of much account
on the Hill Division. Some men rise to occasions, others don’t; as for
Spitzer—well, he was a snubby-nosed, peaked-faced, touzled-haired
little fellow with washed-out blue eyes that always seemed to carry
around an apology in their depths that their owner existed, and this
idea was backed up a good bit by Spitzer’s voice. Spitzer had a weak
voice and that militated against him. The ordinary voice of the
ordinary man on the Hill Division was not weak—it was assertive.
Spitzer suffered thereby because everybody crawled over him.
Nobody thought anything of Spitzer. They all knew him, of course,
that is, those whose duties brought them within the zone of Spitzer’s
orbit, which was restricted to Big Cloud or, rather, to the roundhouse
at Big Cloud. Nobody ever gave him credit for courage enough to
call his soul his own. Even when it came to pay day he took his
check as though it was a mistake and that it really wasn’t meant for
him. He just dubbed along, doing his work day after day like a
faithful dog, only he was a hanged sight less obtrusive. Summed up
in a word, Spitzer ranked as a nonentity, physically, mentally,
professionally.
Of course he never got ahead. He just kept on sweeping out the
roundhouse and puttering around playing bell-boy to every Tom,
Dick and Harry that lifted a finger at him. Year in, year out, he swept
and wiped in the roundhouse. As far as seniority went he was it, but
when it came to promotion he wasn’t. Promotion and Spitzer were
so obviously, so ostentatiously at variance with each other that no

one ever thought of such a thing. When there was a vacancy others
got it. Spitzer saw them move along, firing, driving spare, up to full-
fledged regulars on the right-hand side of the cabs, men that had
started after he did; but Spitzer still wiped and swept out the
roundhouse.
Carleton, the super, called him a landmark, and that hit the bull’s-
eye. Summer, winter, fall, spring, good weather, bad weather, five-
foot-five-with-his-boots-on Spitzer, lugging a little tin dinner-pail,
trudged down Main Street in Big Cloud as regular as clockwork, and
reported at the roundhouse at precisely the same hour every
morning—five minutes of seven. Never a miss, never a slip—five
minutes of seven. The train crews got to setting their watches by
him, and the dispatchers wired the meteorological observatory every
time their chronometors didn’t tally—that is, tally with Spitzer—and
the meteorological crowd put Spitzer first across the tape every shot.
It was just the same at night, only then Spitzer went by the six
o’clock whistle. Ten hours a day, Sundays off—sometimes—wiping,
sweeping, sweeping, wiping, from his boarding-house to the
roundhouse in the morning, from the roundhouse to his boarding-
house at night—that was Spitzer, self-effaced, self-obliterated,
innocuous, modest Spitzer.
Night times? Spitzer didn’t exist, there was no Spitzer—it wasn’t
expected of him! If any one had been asked they would have looked
their amazement, but then no one ever was asked—or asked, which
is the same thing the other way. Spitzer was like a tool laid away
after the day’s work and forgotten absolutely and profoundly until
the following morning. No one knew anything about Spitzer after the
six o’clock whistle blew, no one knew and cared less—that is, none
of the railroad crowd knew, and they, when all is said and done,
were Big Cloud, they owned it, ran it, absorbed it, and properly so,
since Big Cloud was the divisional point on the Hill Division.
In the ineffable perversity of things is the spice and variety of life.
Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, was a man not easily jolted,
not easily disturbed. He was very short, very broad, with little black

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Mozart Haydn And Early Beethoven Daniel Heartz

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