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ial part of Mozart's music; and whose absence from that music made us feel as if, despite the greatest musical perfection, Mozart's idea were not completely given to us. Yet, in reality, this psychological combination called Cherubino does not exist in the work of Mozart. It exists only by the side of it. We speak of the "Marriage of Figaro" as Mozart's work; we are accustomed to think of the Countess, of Figaro, of Susanna, of Cherubino as belonging to Mozart; but in reality only one half of the thing we call the "Marriage of Figaro" belongs to Mozart--that half which consists in melodies and harmonies; and as it happens, it is not in that, but in the other half belonging to Beaumarchais and D'Aponte, the half consisting of words and their suggestions of character, of expression and of movement, that really exists, either the Countess, or Figaro, or Susanna, or Cherubino. Those notes, which alone are Mozart's and which are nothing more than notes, have been heard by us in the mouths of many women dressed and acting as Beaumarchais's characters; they have been heard by us associated to the words of Beaumarchais; they have been heard delivered with the dramatic inflections suggested not by themselves but by those words; and thus, by mere force of association, of slovenly thought and active fancy, we are accustomed to consider all these characters as existing in the music of Mozart, as being part and parcel of Mozart's conception; and when we are presented with those notes, which, to the musician Mozart, were merely notes without those dramatic inflections suggested solely by Beaumarchais's words, when we hear in "Voi che sapete" only Mozart's half of the work, we are disappointed and indignant, and cry out that the composer's idea has been imperfectly rendered. Cherubino, we say, is not in Mozart's half of the work; he is in the words, not in the music. Is this a fault or a merit? is it impotence in the art or indifference in the artist? Could Mozart have given us Cherubino? and if able, ought he to have given him? The question is double; a question of artistic dynamics, and a question of artistic ethics: the question what can art do; and the question what art ought to do. The first has been answered by the scientific investigations of our own scientific times; the second has been answered by the artistic practice of the truly artistic days of music. The questions are strangely linked together, and yet strangely separate
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