Amadeus and Mozart

[jean]

Actually the myth was there before the play, wasn't it?

I think I assumed the truth of it myself when I was about 12.

[french frank]

Actually the myth was there before the play, wasn't it?

I think I assumed the truth of it myself when I was about 12.

(I will separate this topic in a mo.)

A 'myth' was there, certainly, in fact several, but not the myth that Mozart, the sublime musical genius was 'in reality' a coarse, unlikeable, little buffoon which Shaffer gave to the world.

[french frank]

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.

I refer you to Mary 's comment which is now the OP and which started the discussion on Amadeus:

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

The fact that all your "non-'Classical'-loving" acquaintances have become enthusiastic about Mozart's music after seeing Shaffer's work is a thoroughly good thing. But it says nothing as to whether they have been able to distinguish the fictional Amadeus from Mozart - unless they've also been enthusiastic enough to read the factual documentation about him.

[Mary Chambers]

I was just a tiny bit confused when I looked at New Posts and found I had started a thread called Amadeus and Mozart. It was just a throwaway comment! I was referring to the general public rather than people with a serious interest in music.

[french frank]

I was just a tiny bit confused when I looked at New Posts and found I had started a thread called Amadeus and Mozart. It was just a throwaway comment!

A very thought-provoking throwaway!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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.

Exactly; Salieri (in the play) has a very strict and narrow idea of what "genius" is, and how he expects it to behave. That Mozart's personality falls very far short of these ideals is what turns Salieri insane - he believes that the coarse personality is a direct mocking of his own feeble achievements by God Himself, and that by killing Mozart, he is exacting revenge upon that God. We know that the real Salieri did not murder Mozart, and we are told that the real Salieri is reported to have confessed to having poisoned Mozart. Shaffer explores these facts through the medium of Theatre: it's Salieri's insanity that is the subject of the play: the insanity of the mediocrity confronted by the genius of a man whose morals fall so far short of what he demanded of himself. That's why we don't see "the other" Mozart in the play - because Salieri doesn't see him. And that's also why it's called "Amadeus" - a name which the real Mozart never used, and which was never used before the Nineteenth Century, when many of the myths about Mozart's life were invented. It's a rich, magnificent play, exploring myths, mediocrity, the borderlines of sanity, genius and so much else.

So the Mozart that is actually portrayed can only be Shaffer's view of him, it seems to me.

No, I think you've missed the point, aeolie.

Or, of course, I have.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The fact that all your "non-'Classical'-loving" acquaintances have become enthusiastic about Mozart's music after seeing Shaffer's work is a thoroughly good thing. But it says nothing as to whether they have been able to distinguish the fictional Amadeus from Mozart - unless they've also been enthusiastic enough to read the factual documentation about him.

But they have - surely that is what "people" do when their enthusiasms are ignited by a work of fiction of this sort - they find out as much as they can about the real thing upon which the fiction is based. Doesn't everyone do this?

[french frank]

But they have - surely that is what "people" do when their enthusiasms are ignited by a work of fiction of this sort - they find out as much as they can about the real thing upon which the fiction is based. Doesn't everyone do this?

Erm, no, I wouldn't have thought so. But it would depend on the circles in which you move.

The film was hugely popular. Classic FM helped to popularise the music. But I doubt that all the people who liked the film and the music bothered to read a serious documented biography about Mozart - who according to Deutsch usually called himself Wolfgang Amadè Mozart as an adult, a translation of his real name Gottlieb (latinised as Theophilus - yes I know it's Greek, but in Latin form). Which must have seemed an irony to Shaffer's Salieri: true.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Erm, no, I wouldn't have thought so. But it would depend on the circles in which you move.

Well, I don't move in the same circles as Tracy-Ann Oberman, but her chosen specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind a few years ago was "The History of Imperial Rome" - a subject she became fascinated with after watching I, Claudius as a child, so it's not just my own "circles" (which are more ellipses).

The film was hugely popular. Classic FM helped to popularise the music. But I doubt that all the people who liked the film and the music bothered to read a serious documented biography about Mozart

Well, I doubt this, too - but this is rather different from your earlier statement the fact is that people come away with the idea that Mozart was as portrayed in Amadeus. "Most people"? "Some people"? "A few people"? "My Greengrocer"? Does this prevent Shaffer from having written an astonishing piece of theatre? Would this astonishing piece of theatre have worked as effectively if Shaffer had given the two composers different names? Can we even begin to accept that an invented character, Giovanni Klopstopff, could have a genius equal to Mozart's - doesn't the catalyst for "Salieri's" insane jealousy have to be Mozart's?

- who according to Deutsch usually called himself Wolfgang Amadè Mozart as an adult, a translation of his real name Gottlieb (latinised as Theophilus - yes I know it's Greek, but in Latin form). Which must have seemed an irony to Shaffer's Salieri: true.

Yes; Amadè was how Mozart signed his name - the apotheosis into "Amadeus" occured long after his death.

[aeolium]

No, I think you've missed the point, aeolie.

I certainly missed that point. I thought Salieri didn't see the other Mozart because the other Mozart wasn't there, and that was what in part drove him to a frenzy of jealousy and determination to baulk Mozart at every point. I didn't have the sense that the Mozart that appeared was entirely a fantastical creation of Salieri's disordered mind - but that must be my mediocre understanding of Shaffer's genius Btw, I didn't think the mediocrity/genius theme was a very convincing one either: it almost seems like an argument for any budding playwright/composer/painter to lay down tools since s/he could never emulate the geniuses of the past, Bach/Shakespeare/Rembrandt or whoever.

I'd still like to see a poll of how many people thought the Mozart portrayed in the film was supposed merely to be a distorted creation seen through the prism of Salieri's insanity. HCRL and David Cairns obviously missed that subtlety.

[LeMartinPecheur]

I reckon I was fortunate in meeting Amadeus first as a radio play. In that format it seemed far more about the 'injustice' (in Salieri's eyes) of God's gift of unquestionable musical genius falling on the personally pretty loathsome WAM. I knew a fair bit about the biographies of Salieri and WAM and took it as a fantasy-presentation of the truth that genius is in no way proportionate to the artist's moral excellence or to his compliance with the tenets of religion.

Salieri feels himself to deserve the gift of divine genius far more because he is a better Catholic, even a morally better human being, and also one who is totally serious in his approach to art, and in his reverence for technical learning. He has also previously thought himself to be an absolutely top-grade composer, but realises as soon as he hears WAM that he lacks - will always lack - something essential and unlearnable.

The listener has every sympathy with his sense of injustice within the constructs of the play, while at the same time acknowledging that we'll always want WAM's music, not his.

The film almost completely removed this moral/ theological element because it was bound to be seen as biography rather than a "what if" construct.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I reckon I was fortunate in meeting Amadeus first as a radio play. In that format it seemed far more about the 'injustice' (in Salieri's eyes) of God's gift of unquestionable musical genius falling on the personally pretty loathsome WAM. I knew a fair bit about the biographies of Salieri and WAM and took it as a fantasy-presentation of the truth that genius is in no way proportionate to the artist's moral excellence or to his compliance with the tenets of religion.

Salieri feels himself to deserve the gift of divine genius far more because he is a better Catholic, even a morally better human being, and also one who is totally serious in his approach to art, and in his reverence for technical learning. He has also previously thought himself to be an absolutely top-grade composer, but realises as soon as he hears WAM that he lacks - will always lack - something essential and unlearnable.

The listener has every sympathy with his sense of injustice within the constructs of the play, while at the same time acknowledging that we'll always want WAM's music, not his.

Yes; this is my own reading of the (stage) play, too (I haven't heard the Radio version) - the round dance of sympathy and repulsion is a wondeful aspect of Shaffer's writing. (AND the way the whole play opens with whispered rumours, with gossip, with salacious tittle-tattle; AND the way Salieri is on-stage throughout, directing the narration - the actor playing Mozart has much less to do.)

[salymap]

i doubt that Beethoven, Sibelius and many other composers would come out well from the 'Amadeus' treatment.

Thankfully, we have their music - to me that's enough.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Does anyone know Rimski's opera "Mozart and Salieri" based on the myth perpetuated in Amadeus?
It's particularly interesting in its use of quotations from Don Giovanni and the Requiem, just as in the play/film.

[Pabmusic]

Does anyone know Rimski's opera "Mozart and Salieri" based on the myth perpetuated in Amadeus?
It's particularly interesting in its use of quotations from Don Giovanni and the Requiem, just as in the play/film.

Yes, I bought a recording in the 1970s, but I doubt that I could find it easily now.