Amadeus and Mozart

[Mary Chambers]

I think almost everybody now thinks that Mozart was like the character in Amadeus.

[mercia]

is there much documentary evidence of Mozart's character ?

[Mary Chambers]

is there much documentary evidence of Mozart's character ?

I was referring to Imo and Ben, not Amadeus, when I talked about it being very close to documentary

Mozart wrote a lot of letters, as did Britten. I doubt if there were many contemporary films or recordings of Mozart, though

[mercia]

sorry I didn't really phrase my question properly - all I meant was do we know much about Mozart's character from historical written evidence which contradicts the impression given in Amadeus - or put another way - is Amadeus wildly inacurrate in its portrayal of Mozart ...... as far as we know?

completely off topic I realise [except that you mentioned Amadeus first ]

[french frank]

sorry I didn't really phrase my question properly - all I meant was do we know much about Mozart's character from historical written evidence which contradicts the impression given in Amadeus - or put another way - is Amadeus wildly inacurrate in its portrayal of Mozart ...... as far as we know?

completely off topic I realise [except that you mentioned Amadeus first ]

Just OT as I haven't yet heard the play: I read Mozart's complete letters before picking up Amadeus off the shelf in a bookshop. I quietly put it down again because it didn't seem to me to represent Mozart's character. It appeared to focus on the Mozart who as a very young man wrote a batch of about six(?) letters to his young cousin. They were, ahem, lavatorial in nature. Plus a few contemporary anecdotes. But Mozart was also a man of the Enlightenment (hence a Freemason). His father criticised him for procrastinating with some of his commissions, especially when he wasn't very interested in them; he could be a bit dilatory in responding to family letters.

But for me (and this sort of comes back to the nature of 'drama'), Shaffer had a thesis that he wanted to illustrate about the nature of genius and that needed Mozart to be the kind of person he portrayed. I haven't seen the film or the play - except extracts - and read most of the play. It didn't present the picture that I had in my mind of the, sometimes irresponsible, sometimes responsible, man that Mozart became.

When does a playwright's dramatic purpose dictate the personality of his characters? One feels one wants to know; the alternative is that the playwright writes a dramatised documentary.

[Mary Chambers]

I think we need a Mozart expert here. I don't know how much historical material exists about Mozart apart from the letters.

Quite a bit of Ravenhill's play was taken from Imogen Holst's diaries, which reported conversations and events in some detail. This made it seem rather like a documentary to me. I found it a slightly uneasy combination of fact and fiction.

[french frank]

I wouldn't dream of claiming to be an expert, but as well as the letters - hundreds of them, from WAM and his family - I've read Otto Deutsch's Documentary Biography (I think that's what it's called - yes it is: I've checked now) which has collected many of the contemporary descriptions of Mozart, anecdotes and historical documentation of various sorts.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Shafer's Amadeus is a study of the mediocrity - it's about the jealousy of a man who believed himself talented until he encountered the real genius. The Mozart in the play is how Salieri sees him, not a historical depiction of the real Mozart (nor, really, of the historical Salieri - it's a re-telling of the myth of the two composers' relationship). The mediocrity confronted with his own impotence is a regular feature of Shafer's work - it's there in Equus and The Royal Hunt of the Sun, too.

[ardcarp]

That was so well-put Ferney.
Quite apart from anything else, Amadeus the film has inspired a generation of kids to whom Mrs Ardcarp (a DoM in a school) showed it. They loved the drama (including what was considered then as 'the naughty bits') and above all, with the ever-present Requiem, probably carried a whiff of Mozart for the rest of their lives.
So I've since been a bit sniffy with those who diss Shafer's piece as 'inauthentic'. As you say, Ferney, it's missing the point.

[aeolium]

Shafer's Amadeus is a study of the mediocrity - it's about the jealousy of a man who believed himself talented until he encountered the real genius. The Mozart in the play is how Salieri sees him, not a historical depiction of the real Mozart (nor, really, of the historical Salieri - it's a re-telling of the myth of the two composers' relationship). The mediocrity confronted with his own impotence is a regular feature of Shafer's work - it's there in Equus and The Royal Hunt of the Sun, too.

H C Robbins Landon wasn't too impressed with Amadeus: "Myths will continue to pursue Mozart. Amadeus, play and film, has already created another, and it may prove difficult to dissuade the public from the current Shafferian view of the composer as a divinely gifted drunken lout, pursued by a vengeful Salieri." And this is partly the point: whether people ought to be aware that plays and other fictional portrayals of real people are indeed fictional, their impact can be distorting simply because they were real people. Look at that nice Richard III - it's taken the best part of 400 years to shake off the incubus of Shakespeare's portrayal And then there is the film of Mann's Death in Venice, translating the story about a writer whose ideals of platonic beauty are confronted by a reality of physical attraction into a thinly disguised portrayal of Gustav Mahler, so that perhaps those knowing little or nothing of Mahler's life but knowing some of his music might conclude "Ah, yes - Mahler. He was the paedophile who died on a Venetian beach with Grecian 2000 running down his face. He wrote some nice music though."

Personally, I can't stand historical novels or plays (making exception for Shakespeare's and Marlowe's because of the beauty of the poetry and the fact that there was no concept of historical authenticity in their time as there is today). I like my fiction to go all the way and be really fictional, including the characters. After all, there is an infinity of imaginary characters out there just waiting to be brought to life: why mess around with the truth of real people's lives?

[ardcarp]

Read any Mary Renault, aeolium? I mention this because knowing nothing about the Ancient World (apart from what O-level Latin imparted about generals, plains and tents) her historical novels kindled a great interest in me. Likewise, Amadeus and Death in Venice may set a complete non-musician off on a voyage of discovery. And if it was OK for Shakespeare to play fast and loose with the actualite...and maybe he wasn't so far off with RIII...then why are we so po-faced about dramatic licence?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I understand, but do not entirely share aeolium's reservations - and it is a pity that a Musicologist of Robins Landon's calibre fell into the trap of so many less insightful Music critics in "understanding" Amadeus to be "a Shafferian view of" Mozart. Regarding regard Shaffer's work purely from the point of view of a dramatized biography is comic in its glorious missing of the point - it's like Thurber's The Great Macbeth Murder Mystery.

[french frank]

Absolutely 100% in agreement with aeolium (and HCRL) in this. In fact, it's not 'dissing' the play qua 'drama'; but the issue under discussion was not that anyway but about fictional/dramatic portrayals of real people. As fhg (correctly, I'm sure) said, Shaffer had a theme, a point he wanted to illustrate - hence the 'myth' - the bending of historical reality for an illustration of the theme. I doesn't matter whether Shaffer intended this as Salieri's distorted view of Mozart, the fact is that people come away with the idea that Mozart was as portrayed in Amadeus. That's the (unfortunate) latter day myth created by Shaffer.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Absolutely 100% in agreement with aeolium (and HCRL) in this. In fact, it's not 'dissing' the play qua 'drama'; but the issue under discussion was not that anyway but about fictional/dramatic portrayals of real people. As fhg (correctly, I'm sure) said, Shaffer had a theme, a point he wanted to illustrate - hence the 'myth' - the bending of historical reality for an illustration of the theme. I doesn't matter whether Shaffer intended this as Salieri's distorted view of Mozart, the fact is that people come away with the idea that Mozart was as portrayed in Amadeus. That's the (unfortunate) latter day myth created by Shaffer.

Do they? Is this really a "fact"? Does anyone on the Forum have this "idea", based on seeing the play (or film) - or is this just "people" "out there" whom you know (of) who have been led to think this? All the "non-'Classical'-loving" people I know who have enjoyed the film have bought Mozart CDs, gone to concerts featuring his Music and generally become enthusiastic for a repertoire of which they were previously only half-aware.

Whilst there are, of course, unfortunate individuals who write to their MPs to petition for the release from prison of a character from a soap opera, the blanket suggestion that "people" are incapable of distinguishing History and Literature isn't one with which I can agree.

[aeolium]

I understand, but do not entirely share aeolium's reservations - and it is a pity that a Musicologist of Robins Landon's calibre fell into the trap of so many less insightful Music critics in "understanding" Amadeus to be "a Shafferian view of" Mozart. Regarding regard Shaffer's work purely from the point of view of a dramatized biography is comic in its glorious missing of the point - it's like Thurber's The Great Macbeth Murder Mystery.

Robbins Landon was not the only musicologist to criticise Shaffer's portrayal - David Cairns was another. But how is it not a Shafferian view? We are indeed expected to wonder about some of Salieri's fantasies about Mozart, particularly the one about claiming near the end of his life to have poisoned Mozart. But are we expected to think that the Mozart who appears in the film is merely seen through Salieri's distorting perspective and in reality there is also the Mozart of the Enlightenment, the friend of Haydn, the composer for whom a good number of works (such as the mature string quartets) were the product of concentrated work and rework. But that other Mozart is never seen, only the coarse and comical figure and practical joker. And that is not even (in the play) the Mozart that Salieri wants to see: he wants to see a composer whose character matches the sublime music he hears. So the Mozart that is actually portrayed can only be Shaffer's view of him, it seems to me.

I did think the photography and some of the operatic staging in Amadeus were excellent, especially the Commendatore scene. And it undoubtedly led people to explore the music - not just of Mozart, apparently, but (perhaps ironically) also of Salieri.

Read any Mary Renault, aeolium? I mention this because knowing nothing about the Ancient World (apart from what O-level Latin imparted about generals, plains and tents) her historical novels kindled a great interest in me. Likewise, Amadeus and Death in Venice may set a complete non-musician off on a voyage of discovery. And if it was OK for Shakespeare to play fast and loose with the actualite...and maybe he wasn't so far off with RIII...then why are we so po-faced about dramatic licence?

I haven't read any of Mary Renault's work, ardcarp. Perhaps it is a good way in to the ancient world for some people, but I don't think it would work for me. As someone particularly interested in history, I'm aware of how hard it is to rediscover the habits, behaviour, ideas and assumptions of earlier ages - even for historians and biographers! When it comes to historical novels, there is the added problem of having to make the ideas and behaviour comprehensible and plausible to a modern readership and using modern language which invariably carries all kinds of assumptions arising in our own age. I confess to being inconsistent about this - I loved the I Claudius TV series, for instance. But too often I think my reaction would be: here are a load of modern characters plonked a few hundred (or thousand) years back in the past. I must be in a minority, given the popularity of and critical acclaim for Hilary Mantel.

One other point about historical novels. I think it's a shame when writers do not write about their own time as it can give future generations a great insight not just into the dry historical statistics of past ages - battles fought, economic trends etc etc - but also how people lived and thought. The novels of the Brontes, George Eliot, Dickens, Hardy, for instance give us an idea of life lived and felt, not just people as statistics. If George Eliot had written historical novels about ancient Greece, I don't think it would have been quite the same.

[Host - apologies for continuing to post mostly OT here - perhaps this part of the thread could be hived off and the posts about the Britten play left]