Over the weekend, a friend asked me to come up with a piece or two from Antonio Salieri that I felt was particularly representative of his music. I prudently kept to myself the fact that I know far less about Salieri than I would ever be willing to admit publicly, and headed out into YouTube Land to see what I could find.
Salieri almost certainly holds the dubious distinction of being the most unfairly maligned composer of all time. Few know (and fewer, I suspect, would care even if they did know) that Volkmar Braunbehrens, whose book “Mozart In Vienna” provided much of the material for both the play and the film Amadeus, later wrote a book entitled “Maligned Master: The Real Story of Antonio Salieri” because he felt that “Salieri’s reputation had been so unfairly tarnished.” For the vast majority of Americans, he is (and will always be) “the man who killed Mozart.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising. Prior to F. Murray Abraham’s Oscar-winning turn, Salieri was hardly a household name; his music was rarely remembered and even less frequently performed — which is a shame, as the few recordings of his works currently available suggest that he was much more than a “thwarted, second-rate composer.”
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A quick tour through his Requiem in C, his Passione di Nostro Signore Gesu Cristo, or any of the overtures to his more than forty operas reveal him to be a composer undeserving of the complete lack of attention he has received, if perhaps not quite a Mozart. Of course, the category of “worthwhile composers who fell somewhat short of Mozart” which is a long and illustrious list, indeed.
His 26 Variations on La Follia di Spagna reminded me that he died nearly 35 years after Mozart, putting him in close contact with that transitional period between what are traditionally known the Classical to the Romantic periods — contact which appears to have influenced his melodic and orchestral styles significantly towards the end of his life.
He could compose a mean Sinfonia Veneziana, too. I’m not even sure Mozart could claim that.
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