Tempting, however, as the comic aspect of Mozart's opera is, we must not lose sight of the fact that the work has a serious purpose. Don Juan, bold and unscrupulous as he is, fails in every attempt, and finally meets with utter discomfiture and destruction. There is something here of the spirit of the old Greek tragedy, which always voiced a deep moral truth. After all, there is a term which fits "Don Juan" and roundly describes it. One of the names given to the lyric drama of Italy, when it was brought forth by Jacopo Peri and his associates, was Tragicomedia. Where is there to-day a nobler specimen of Tragicomedia than the "Don Juan" of Mozart? As for the music of the opera, nothing better has ever been said about it than what Schink wrote in the _Dramaturgische Monate_ in 1790. He says: "How can this music, so full of force, majesty, and grandeur, be expected to please the lovers of ordinary opera, who bring their ears to the theatre with them, but leave their hearts at home?... His music has been profoundly felt and thought out in its relation to the characters, situations, and sentiments of his personages. It is a study in language, treated musically. "He never decks out his songs with unnecessary and meaningless passages. That is the way in which expression is banished from music; expression consisting not in particular words, but in the skilful and natural combination of sounds as a medium of real emotion. Of this method of expression Mozart is a consummate master. Each sound which he produces has its origin in emotion and overflows with it." This last sentence of Schink's is charged with import. One who studies the music of "Don Juan" carefully must be convinced of the truth of the critic's view. If it is true, however, it proclaims the presence of the essential elements of musical romanticism in this truly classic opera. To some extent what we call romanticism has always been present in art music, while it was and is the vital principle of folk tunes. It was when Weber united to the science and culture of musical art the folk lore and folk melody in which were voiced the poetic imaginations of a people that romanticism threw aside the shackles of tradition and became the ruling element in the tone art. Mozart was not an iconoclast. He made no new forms; he destroyed no old ones. But proceeding on the principle subsequently enunciated by Schumann, that "mastery of form leads talent to ever increasing freedom," he absorbed all extant forms. There is a saying that if you wish to become an astronomer you must make mathematics your slave. Mozart seemed to feel that if he wished to become a composer he must make form his slave. As a mere child he made himself a consummate contrapuntal scholar. In a word, he became literally a master of form.