The celebrated Italian musician, Sarti, the master of Cherubini, said of this passage, “Can more be done to put the players out of tune?” and some, even of Mozart’s admirers, after his death, proposed to alter and, as they considered it, rectify the passage. As regards Sarti, there can be no doubt that his word carried great weight at that time, and although his views may now be lightly regarded, Mozart evidently had a high opinion of him, for, in a letter written from Vienna in June 1784, we find him writing, “To-morrow there is to be a concert at Herr Players, at Döbling, in the country. Mdlle. Babette will play my new Concerto, I shall play in the Quintett, and together we shall give the Grand Sonata for two pianos. If the Maestro Sarti had not been obliged to leave for Russia this very day, he would also have come with me. Sarti is a fine fellow, an excellent fellow! I played a great deal with him, and finished with some variations on an air of his own, which gave him great pleasure.” Mozart afterwards dedicated a set of String Quartetts, comprising that cited above and other five, to Haydn, and they remain until now amongst the most renowned works in this style. Mozart (1756-91), who was, of course, contemporary with Haydn (1732-1809), was by nature a musical genius of the very highest order, but, all the same, he was only in a small degree a reformer, for he was guided more by the spontaneous creative powers with which he was naturally endowed than by any mere intellectual or philosophical theorisings concerning art. The quotation from the Quartett given above must, no doubt, have alarmed the average musician of that time, but there is no reason to think that it was written in connection with any scheme for the reform or expansion of musical resources, for Mozart’s works display the utmost transparency of harmony and of style. No doubt he occasionally produces remarkable effects by means of unusual and sudden modulations (for example, the transition from G into E♭, near the close of the finale of the G minor Piano Quartett), but, as a general thing, his works do not furnish very many instances of this kind. [Illustration: Niels W. Gade [signature]] His acceptance of unsatisfactory operatic libretti also points in the same direction, and it has been jokingly said that he could have set beautiful music even to newspaper advertisements.