PART II Court Influence: How 18th-Century Vienna Fueled One of Classical Music's Greatest Rivalries7/9/2017 The previous post featured the first part from one of my earlier journal publications on the nature of Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's rivalry and the conditions that bred such an environment. Previously I focused on context and history; today, the conclusion will delve further into analysis on the true nature of their relationship and their contributions to the greater history of Classical music. In the land of musicians, “the composer of a king had to be politically adroit to retain his position at court,” [i] and Salieri was more than adept. Securing prestigious teaching positions among Vienna’s nobility ensured continued financial security in addition to guaranteeing future patronage. In late 1781, the Duke of Württemberg arrived in Vienna with his daughter the princess Elisabeth Wilhelmine. She was betrothed to Joseph II’s nephew and heir, Franz. Joseph II sought a worthy piano teacher to educate Elisabeth for her future status. [ii] At this time, Salieri was already a well-respected instructor and knew the value of such a position. Although Mozart was aware of the tremendous opportunity such a role would bestow, he was inept in the court politics necessary to land the role of the Princess of Württemberg’s musical instructor. His carefree disposition often led to crass or inappropriate public comments about his peers or the Viennese nobility. While still vying for the instructor position, Mozart was quoted as calling the princess an “eighteen-year-old lout, a regular calf.” [iii] This impropriety cost him the job and favor among the courts. Salieri was awarded the role of piano instructor to the princess. By landing the coveted position, Salieri reasserted himself within the royal courts through aligning himself with the wife of the future Holy Roman Emperor.
was not of interest to Salieri, nor did he consider himself competent in the language. [v] Although Mozart’s opera was the only true success of the Nationaltheater experiment, it came all too late. The public’s interest in a national opera was waning. “The Emperor, knowing the restless curiosity of his Viennese subjects, again gave them…an Italian Opera [house].” [vi] With the closing of the Nationaltheater and reopening of the Burgtheatre, all opera was once again to be conducted in Italian. Fortunately for Mozart, he was fluent in Italian in addition to German, French, and Latin. [vii] Once only a peripheral menace to Salieri’s courtly clout and public popularity, Mozart was now an ever present threat with this sudden artistic shift. Competition for supremacy of court favor took a heightened turn. Upon the switch back to Italian opera, Salieri was named director and Kapellmeister. [viii] He was in an evermore influential role, capable of manipulating particular outcomes within his favor. History has not been favorable to Salieri; Academics continue to speculate on the numerous ways he hindered Mozart’s career and prevented him from attaining patrons or financial success. While this has been grossly exaggerated, Salieri did indeed use his cunning and authority to produce particular desired outcomes. When Mozart started writing Le nozze di Figaro, Salieri was involved with numerous clandestine attempts to cease production. The opera spanned over four hours, requiring a great deal of effort from its cast, crew, as well as audience. Salieri utilized the length as he tried to turn Mozart’s cast and royal spectators against him. Mozart and his father grew outraged at the attempts ranging from complaints on arias, to apparent royal prohibitions found within the opera. Mozart’s father, Leopold, complained in a letter to peers and patrons, “The cowardly alliance of undeserving people devoted its entire energy to hating, denigrating and disparaging the art of this immortal artist.” [ix] Nonetheless, Figaro took the stage in October 1785 and was relatively successful showing nine times until the September of the following year. His masterpiece was overshadowed, however, by Salieri’s more popular Grotta di Trofonio, showing an illustrious seventeen times during the same year as Mozart’s Figaro. [x] Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute were to meet similar unfavorable outcomes. Despite his genius, Mozart did not play to the royal Viennese tastes, nor was he given adequate support by Salieri and the aristocratic Italians in his operatic productions. While Mozart’s operas are considered masterpieces today, they were relative failures compared to the more popular contemporary works of Salieri. Mozart’s style was unrivaled, it was daring, and it was unconventional. Yet, there was not a strong enough audience in eighteenth-century Vienna to see the value of operas like Figaro or Don Giovanni. With an audience filled primarily by the royalty and its courts, an opera’s value lie in how closely it aligned with their traditional Italianophile tastes and Mozart’s work never catered to the conventional. Furthermore, it was commonly stated that Mozart’s work was simply “too much” for an audience-- royal or civilian--to absorb. They did not have the time or musical ear to fully grasp the rich beauty of his operas. [xi] The 1984 film, Amadeus, discusses this notion in greater detail, that both the royal and civilian audience were simply not ready for Mozart’s musical innovation. Although Amadeus is a historical dramatization of the encounters between the two men, it captures the essence of their rivalry, works and the Viennese courts in a manner that few scholars can dispute. “I think you overestimate our dear Viennese, my friend,” [xii] states Salieri to Mozart in the film. While Mozart sought to outdo Salieri by creating the greatest operas to ever grace the stage, his rival knew how to out do him in a different manner. Although Salieri’s “artistic individuality was not strong… [or] important enough to impress upon the opera a new character,” [xiii] his operas were tuned perfectly to the ears of the nobility as well as the public. Italian opera was traditional and popular. So too, was Salieri: In other words…Mozart’s operas were less to the taste of the monarch and the public in Vienna than those of Salieri, and it was the same all through Germany. Whatever the appreciative few may have thought of Figaro and Don Giovanni, to the general operatic public, Salieri was certainly the greatest of the living composers. [xiv] Mozart was the genius, but Salieri was the composer of the people. Both men strove to gain what the other held and both men were fatally consumed by their envy to do so. While both musicians respected the other’s works, Salieri was crippled by his jealousy of Mozart’s musical talents. “Mozart’s superior gifts…made Salieri’s lifelong devotion to music meaningless.” [xv] He knew that Mozart’s abilities greatly surpassed his own. Regardless of all his power, prestige and fame, Salieri knew he could not compare to the child prodigy from Salzburg. The film Amadeus illustrates this beautifully through Mozart’s braying laughter, “directed towards all us common mortals who have been spitefully, maliciously denied the fire of creative genius.” [xvi] Salieri felt it was the mocking laughter of the gods, reminding him he could never attain the artistic brilliance he so greatly envied in Mozart. This further explains Salieri’s ever present desire to continually reassert his court influence in a clever and shrewd manner. His power and success stemmed directly from the Emperor, support Salieri had no intention of losing. When another composer of such genius is one’s contemporary, one must do whatever is necessary not to lose favor with the courts or the public. Mozart too was driven by envy, envy of Salieri’s power and success, especially among the nobility. In the final days of his life he was mysteriously commissioned to write The Requiem. Believing the work to be the supreme masterpiece of his career, the piece that would finally provide him with the success and recognition from the aristocracy he so desired. Mozart became consumed, his envy pushing him to madness. Driven to complete the composition for both the pecuniary and personal success he felt it would bring, Mozart worked himself into a state of physical and mental decline. He “began to speak of death and declared that he was writing the requiem for himself.” [xvii] Eerily prophetic, Mozart died weeks later on December 5, 1791. He continued to compose The Requiem while on his deathbed. [xviii]
circulate that Salieri poisoned the genius in order to maintain his position within the Viennese courts. Near the end of his life Salieri attempted suicide and claimed to have “murdered” Mozart, further perpetuating the myth. He had prevented the world from fully embracing the genius and beauty that was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart’s life was his art and his art had never come to full fruition, all due to Salieri. [xix] In a cruel twist of fate, Salieri realized he was living in a world that was slowly forgetting him, but Mozart was continuing to live on. Vienna and its courts no longer knew their most popular composer. The rivalry that consumed the latter portion of both Salieri and Mozart’s lives produced an outcome that neither could have foreseen. At the time of Mozart’s death in 1791, Salieri was the most powerful and popular composer in Vienna, while Mozart was buried in a poor, unmarked grave. Yet today, Salieri’s name is all but forgotten as Mozart is remembered as the pioneering musical genius of Vienna’s classical era. “Can you recall no melody of mine? I was the most famous composer in Europe,” [xx] laments Salieri in the beginning of the film Amadeus. The nature of their rivalry led to this unforeseeable conclusion. Salieri’s popularity was a direct result of playing into the contemporary tastes of the Viennese courts and public. Meanwhile, Mozart’s polarizing works fought tradition and introduced new musical styles. Ultimately, the lack of innovation within his traditional works led to Salieri being forgotten, but Mozart’s avant-garde compositions saw to it that he will always be remembered. Endnotes:
i Borowitz, “‘Murder’ of Mozart,” 284. ii Weber, “Musical Taste,” 180. iii Schenk, Mozart, 307. iv Ibid. v Ibid., 308. vi Braunbehrens, Maligned Master, 114. vii Heartz, “Figaro,” 257. viii Painter, “Mozart at Work,” 200. ix Braunbehrens, Maligned Master,114 x Ibid., 122. xi Braunbehrens, Maligned Master, 124. xii Thayer, Salieri, 97. xiii Schenk, Mozart, 368. xiv Shaffer, Amadeus, Film. xv Thayer, Salieri, 91. xvi Thayer, Salieri, 127. xvii Borowitz, “‘Murder’ of Mozart,” 282. xviii Marshall, “Film as Musicology,” 177. xix Borowitz, “‘Murder’ of Mozart,” 264. xx Ibid., 266
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