Talk:Antonio Salieri

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Contents

[edit] Mozart and Salieri

This section states in the that Mozart "appointed" Salieri to be his son Franz Xavier's music teacher. Is this so? Franz Xavier was 5 months old when Mozart died.

It was Wolfgang's widow, Constanza W. Mozart, who asked Salieri to teach her son. The relationship between Frau Mozart and Signore Salieri in Amadeus is totally fictitious and baseless. Das Baz 15:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ==============

Given the serious presentation of the movie Amadeus and that many people think that it's such a great movie and accept its portrayals of Salieri, I think that it's important to sort out the truth from the slanderous dramatic license in the public perception of Salieri. Hopefully I have helped in this regard while maintaining the article NPOV. The Movie Amadeus is worng. Salieri didn't kill Mozart.

Nevertheless, I am compelled in this effort by a POV: I enjoy Salieri's music more than Mozart's. Salieri's music has none of the saccharine sweetness of Mozart, instead it has a strength and forthrightfulness that points forward to Beethoven. I hope that Salieri becomes fully exonerated in public perceptionss so that the public may come to enjoy his music. - Del arte

I have nothing against Naxos or Salieri (just in case :). I think an enclyclopedia does not need to quote a label. (User:Pfortuny???)
Thanks for clarifying the paragraph. However, I do think it's important to show that Salieri's music is worth recording and that it has been recorded. To that end, I plan to make a Salieri discography page and put it on a Geocities website, then link to it from here in an External Links section.
You might as well include a "Links!" section at the bottom like
Salieri's discography at Naxos (and the corresponding link), Deutsche Gramophonn, etc...
Or similar. (Just an idea). Pfortuny 17:13, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Saccharine sweetness?! Remember -- to paraphrase what is said about Shakespeare -- that it's not you that judge Mozart, but Mozart that judges you!

The Mozart/Salieri rivarly/fiction should definately not be what defines Salieri. Precious little is said about him that isn't referring indirectly to Mozart.

I agree. Unfortunately, Salieri's reputation is bad in pop culture (e.g., the episode of Family Guy when Stewie is teething, he exclaims to an incompetent piano student, "E-flat, Salieri!"). Not much you can do to change pop culture, but there's a lot you can do to improve this article. Del arte 19:46, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mozart the Plagiarist Claim

This sentence was recently added to the last paragraph:

Some are even daring to suggest Mozart was the plagiarist.[1]

This is a tantalizing claim. However, the external reference given, a very long webpage, has only one paragraph mentioning Salieri, but nothing about Mozart plagiarizing Salieri. Perhaps the sentence above needs to clarify from whom Mozart is accused of plagiarizing: "Michael Haydn (younger brother of Franz Josef Haydn), K.F. Abel, Johann Neubauer, Joseph Myslivecek, Joseph Schuster, François Devienne, Henri Casadesus, Ernst Eberlin, Franz Novotny, F.X. Süssmayr (his pupil), and, most significantly, his father, Leopold Mozart." Del arte 18:54, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] This page needs serious fixing

I think there is much in this article that is misleading and perhaps outright wrong, in particular the section on "Allegations by Mozart". For example, I've yet to find any evidence that Mozart accused Salieri of poisoning him. In fact, a Google search turned up articles [2] that suggest the rumors of Salieri poisoning Mozart only happened after Mozart's death. Not to mention that it is also indicated that the rumors and maligning of Salieri began very soon after Mozart died, not in the "following decades" like the current section reads.

A BBC article [3] credits Callisto Bassi with originating the rumor that Salieri killed Mozart.

As to whether this is true (and whether Salieri confessed, and if so, if it was valid), it seems to be still quite a controversy, so to pick one side, as this Wikipedia article does, is quite POV.

- In serious musicology there is no doubt that the poisoning of Mozart is a myth. First, the wikipedia article on Salieri should inform readers about the person and his importance in musical history. The chapter "Salieri and Mozart" sticks to the facts we have from independent 18th century sources and not to allegations made long after Mozart´s death by romantic souls. If Salieri would have killed Mozart, Constanze surely wouldn´t have sent her son Franz Xaver to Salieri´s composition lessons. If there had been any proof during Salieri´s lifetime, his social life would have ended. The court couldn´t give his highest musical post to an alleged murderer.

There is also another POV issue, since there seems to be quite a bit evidence that Salieri worked actively as Mozart's rival, using his influence in court.

- The accusation derives from Leopold for whom all other musicians in Vienna were enimies of his son. As we know from several letters, Mozart himself was quite active in creating cabals and judging unfairly about other very accomplished composers.

For these reasons, I'm going to put up an disputed tag and list it as needing attention.

For those interested in this, some modifications to Mozart would seem necessary. --C S 02:17, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

There is a Beethoven conversation book that seems to indicate that Beethoven heard the rumor, knew it to be false, but was saddened by it nonetheless. This is in the Thayer biography of Salieri, if I remember correctly. Del arte 20:27, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I admit I've done little research on this, but I don't think the conversation book (or anything else) gives an explicit piece of evidence that says Beethoven didn't believe Salieri poisoned Mozart. Rather, based on facts like Beethoven and Salieri remaining friends, many historians have concluded that Beethoven must not have believed the rumors.
As for that Thayer book, I grow more concerned about it. First, the book was written in the 19th century. Not to say old books are generally unreliable, but I believe that with Mozart and Salieri in particular, there's been much more research done since then.
Either the book is inaccurate in some spots or your recollection of it is incorrect. For example, you state that the opera in 1898 "started a tradition of dramatic license crossing into slander" but Pushkin wrote about this in Mozart and Salieri in 1830. In fact, I believe the opera was based on Pushkin's work.
If you still have the book, I ask that you take a closer look at it and determine if your recollections are correct. We may also need to check if Thayer's book is regarded highly by modern scholars. The key thing I am interested in is whether Mozart accused Salieri of trying to murder him. What evidence does Thayer give for this? I just found this paper [4] which says they were normal rivals but the rivalry was not anymore serious than usual. It cites Thayer as a source. Presumably with alleged accusations of murder, this would be an inconsistent statement.

--C S 22:47, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

I edited this article last year after I returned the Thayer book to the library. It's my impression (a POV, if you will) that Thayer is a respected biographer of Beethoven. The New Grove quotes Henry Krehbiel calling Thayer's Beethoven book "the greatest and its history the most extraordinary." Thayer also contributed significantly to articles on Beethoven and Salieri in an older Grove. Del arte 19:43, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I realize Thayer was a respectable historian, but whether his particular work under discussion is still considered good is another matter. Also, I must keep on this one point of whether Mozart accused Salieri because I haven't found any evidence of any kind that this is so. So if Thayer is the only one that says this, this is highly suspect. I'd also like to know whether he explictly says there's a hearsay account of this or whether it's in a historical document.
I'm kind of surprised that you don't remember what reason he gives for his belief that Mozart accused Salieri. That's a key point. I'd like to hear if perhaps you confused the accusations after Mozart's death with stuff Mozart said. There seems to be miscommunication here; you've not yet mentioned or answered my queries regarding your reasons for the "Mozart accusing Salieri" belief of yours. Did Thayer explictly say this (alleged) fact in his book? --C S 20:48, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

I recently had occassion to listen to Salieri's Piano Concerto in C Major, which I believe was written in 1773. It was startling to hear how similar it was to Beethoven's music, far more so than anything by Haydn. And one passage also reminded me of Liszt as well. That is quite remarkable given that Beethoven was 3 years old when the piece was composed (and Liszt would not be born for another 28 years). I am not a musicologist but I wonder if anyone has ever considered that Beethoven's music could be considered as a student's expansion and further development of his teacher Salieri's ideas? Certainly Salieri was a far greater influence on the development of classical music than Mozart.

I too have noticed a similarity in Salieri's music to that of Beethoven, with the overture to Cesare in Farmacusa being perhaps the best example. Del arte 19:43, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Concurrence here. I have never heard of any composer upon whom Mozart was the primary influence, but Beethoven seems to have learned something from Salieri. Beethoven's a better composer than Antonio Salieri, but he could not have been Beethoven without his influence. Mozart used his skill to disguise whatever influences he was learning from - they rarely leaked through. 68.104.201.53 06:10, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, this page has much improved since the last time (more than a year ago) I looked at it! Anyway, it seems my concerns have been more than adequately addressed. Kudos to everyone who has worked on this page. --C S (Talk) 13:24, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Huge list of works.

Is there any chance to relocate the huge list of Salieris work? Or maybe cut down on the number of works and incooperate the "major" pieces instead. This current list takes up like 75% of the total space of this article. Not even Beethovens article has such a long list.

Fred26 18:06, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Since there´s no complete list of Salieri´s works available at present (the biographies of Angermueller and Braunbehrens miss lots of works in their listings and the thematic identifier by Elena Biggi-Parodi isn´t published yet), I think it´s quite important to show this list of works at wikipedia so that it is available for everyone.

I don't necessarily agree that artists must have a 100% complete list of their works in the main article, but as it is I suppose the list wont detract from the contents as to warrant a removal.
Fred26 09:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
If Salieri's music was better known, it would be easy to boil the list down to his "greatest hits." But since that's not the case, then perhaps we should focus instead on a representative cross-section of his work. Del arte 21:14, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
The paragraph, "During his time in Vienna..." seems to do an OK job of summarizing his works. Let's make that paragraph head up a section, ==Works==, and link there to List of compositions by Antonio Salieri. I think the giant list has to go... somewhere... -- Rmrfstar 12:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Amadeus the Movie

An anonymous editor (User:68.233.231.138) is being quite persistent in inserting his/her personal analysis of the movie Amadeus, particularly the characterizations of Mozart and Salieri, in the articles on those composers. That movie is a fictionalized account of the lives of those two composers, and information about the movie does not belong in the articles on the composers. If made suitably NPOV and given proper references, that information can be placed in the article on the movie, and should go nowhere else. Antandrus (talk) 19:24, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Salieri and Liszt

When Salieri attempted suicide (as shown so dramatically in Amadeus), Mozart had been gone from the world a third of a century already, but Franz Liszt had just very recently departed on his European musical tour. So which of the two is the more likely to have pushed poor old Antonio over the edge? He was very fond of Franz, who was 12 at the time, and Salieri's favorite pupil. Das Baz 17:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Salieri's suicide attempt is 100% fiction. It never happened and is only part of the movie "Amadeus".--131.130.135.193 17:26, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I read once that he did attempt suicide, though certainly not as dramatically as in the movie. Of course, that may be an error or misunderstanding. However, it is clear that he was hospitalized in a mental asylum after Liszt's departure. Das Baz 15:54, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

In the movie, Salieri cuts his own throat spectacularly. In historical reality, he held a knife too close to his throat and the orderlies removed it before he could do himself any harm. Das Baz 17:59, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

It is also possible, on further reflection, that Salieri had no intention to harm himself and the orderlies were over-reacting. Das Baz 15:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It was actually Franz Schubert that was Salieri's favorite pupil. --72.39.204.249 22:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added Modern References

I added a modern references section. While many of them refer to the image of Salieri portrayed in the film Amadeus, I still believe it is worthwhile to have a section noting them.

[edit] Removed "Humorous" reference

Someone's vandalised the page - "where he studied breasts with Giovanni Battista Pescetti" I've taken out the breasts bit.NBeddoe 13:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)