But Mozart was only one of a crowd who provided
amusement for a gay population; and a gay population, always a
heartless master, holds none in such contempt as the servants who
provide it with amusement. So Mozart got no respect from those he
served, and his Bohemianism lost him the respect of the eminently
respectable. He lived in the eighteenth century equivalent of a "loose
set"; he was miserably poor, and presumably never paid his taxes; we
may doubt whether he often went to church; he composed for the
theatre; and he lacked the self-assertion which enabled Handel,
Beethoven, and Wagner to hold their own. Treated as of no account,
cheated by those he worked for, hardly permitted to earn his bread, he
found life wholly intolerable, and as he grew older he lived more and
more within himself and gave his thoughts only to the composition of
masterpieces. The crowd of mediocrities dimly felt him to be their
master, and the greater the masterpieces he achieved the more
vehemently did Salieri and his attendants protest that he was not a
composer to compare with Salieri. The noise impressed Da Ponte, the
libretto-monger, and he asked Salieri to set his best libretto and
gave Mozart only his second best; and thus by a curious irony stumbled
into his immortality through sheer stupidity, for his second best
libretto was "Don Giovanni"--of all possible subjects precisely that
which a wise man would have given to Mozart.
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