a little passe now.  Is it indeed so?  Well, Mozart lived in the last days of the old world, and the old world and the thoughts and sentiments of the old world are certainly a little passes now.  But if you examine “Don Giovanni” you must admit that the Fifth and Ninth symphonies, “Fidelio,” “Lohengrin,” the “Ring,” “Tristan,” and “Parsifal” have done nothing to eclipse its glories, that while fresh masterpieces have come forth, “Don Giovanni” remains a masterpiece amongst masterpieces, that in a sense it is a masterpiece towards which all other masterpieces stand in the relation of commentaries to text.  And though this, perhaps, is only to call it a link in a chain, yet it is curious to note how very closely other composers have followed Mozart, and how greatly they are indebted to him.  Page upon page of the early Beethoven is written in the phraseology of the later Mozart; in nearly every bar of “Faust,” not to mention “Romeo and Juliette,” avowedly the fruit of a long study of “Don Giovanni,” a faint echo of Mozart’s voice comes to us with the voice of Gounod; Anna’s cries, “Quel sangue, quella piaga, quel volto,” with the creeping chromatic chords of the wood-wind, have the very accent of Isolda’s ’"Tis I, belov’d,” and the solemn phrase that follows, in Tristan’s death-scene.  Apart from its influence on later composers, there is surely no more passionate, powerful, and moving drama in the world than “Don Giovanni.”  Despite the triviality of Da Ponte’s book, the impetus of the music carries along the action at a tremendous speed; the moments of relief occur just when relief is necessary, and never retard the motion; the climaxes are piled up with incredible strength and mastery, and have an emotional effect as powerful as anything in “Fidelio” and equal to anything in Wagner’s music-dramas; and most stupendous of all is the finale, with its tragic blending of the grotesque and the terrible.  Or, if one considers detail, in no other opera do the characters depict themselves in every phrase they utter as they do in “Don Giovanni.”  The songs stamp Mozart as the greatest song-writer who has lived, with the exception of Handel, whose opera songs are immeasurably beyond all others save Mozart’s, and a little beyond them.  The mere musicianship is as consummate as Bach’s, for, like Bach, Mozart possessed that facility which is fatal to many men, but combined with it a high sincerity, a greedy thirst for the beautiful, and an emotional force that prevented it being fatal to him.  For delicacy, subtlety, due brilliancy, and strength, the orchestral colouring cannot be matched.  And no music is more exclusively its own composer’s, has less in it of other composers’.  Beethoven is Beethoven plus Mozart, Wagner is Wagner plus Weber and Beethoven; but from every page of Mozart’s scores Mozart alone looks at you, with sad laughter in his eyes, and unspeakable tenderness, the tenderness of the giants, of Handel, Bach, and Beethoven, though perhaps Mozart is tenderest of them