"We observed" he continues, "how natural objects seemed to suggest
music to him. There was in my sister Honora's garden a pretty creeping
plant, new at that time, covered with little trumpet-like flowers. He
was struck with it, and played for her the music which (he said) the
fairies might play on those trumpets. When he wrote out the piece he
drew a little branch of that flower all up the margin of the paper."
In another piece, inspired by the sight of carnations, they found that
Mendelssohn intended certain arpeggio passages "as a reminder of the
sweet scent of the flower rising up."
Mozart, as many witnesses have testified, was especially attuned to
composition by the sight of beautiful scenery. Rochlitz relates that
when he travelled with his wife through picturesque regions he gazed
attentively and in silence at the surrounding sights; his features,
which usually had a reserved and gloomy, rather than a cheerful
expression, gradually brightened, and then he began to sing, or rather
to hum, till suddenly he exclaimed: "If I only had that theme on
paper." He always preferred to live in the country, and wrote the
greater part of his two best operas, "Don Juan," and "The Magic
Flute," in one of those picturesque little garden houses which are so
often seen in Austria and Germany.
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