Happy birthday, Antonio Salieri! I hope you’ll join me in celebrating 270 years of “mediocrity.”
Salieri lives on in the popular imagination, of course, as the envious rival of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But was he really?
Rumors of Salieri’s involvement in Mozart’s death were seized upon by Alexander Pushkin as early as 1831, when he came to write the tragedy “Mozart and Salieri,” which appeared only few years after Salieri himself had passed. This was later set as an opera, in 1898, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Of course, the slander has been kept alive and given even broader currency thanks to Peter Schaffer’s play, “Amadeus,” and the even more widely seen film, directed by Milos Forman. While I have no objection to dramatic license (Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare without it), it is too bad that such a generous figure – and a fine composer to boot – should live on, for the most part, in infamy.
Salieri was a generous teacher, who fostered Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, and even the son of the genius he was rumored to have poisoned. Franz Xaver Mozart was born four months after his father’s alleged murder.
Salieri’s first act, when he was appointed Austrian Imperial Kapellmeister in 1788, was to revive Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” He was responsible for arranging first performances of his alleged nemesis’ Piano Concerto No. 22, the Clarinet Quintet, and the Symphony No. 40, and he had nothing but praise for “The Magic Flute.”
Sadly, he found no one to return the favor. Already during his later years, his own enormous compositional output (37 operas, in addition to orchestral works, concertos, chamber music, and sacred pieces) gradually faded from public memory. Ironically, it is the scandalmongers who kept his name alive.
But, as the saying goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity. In a way, “Amadeus” was the best thing to happen to Salieri in nearly 200 years. How many people remember Mozart’s string quartet partners (with Haydn), Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Jan Křtitel Vaňhal, both also talented and prolific composers? I’m sure they would agree – with apologies to Wilde – that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Happy birthday, Patron Saint of Mediocrity!
Russian film version of Rimsky’s “Mozart and Salieri” (without subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilw7oIkrDj4
In English, if a bit fuzzy:
Salieri’s Concerto for Flute, Oboe and Orchestra:
A Mozart and Salieri collaborative effort, the cantata “Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia,” only recently rediscovered:
“I absolve you.”
