One of the little tragedies A. S. Pushkin was conceived as "Envy", and was later named "Mozart and Salieri". According to the story, Salieri was jealous of Mozart's success and talent and therefore poisoned him. It was this work that gave rise to the legend that is the biggest misconception about the two composers: in fact, Mozart had much more reason to envy Salieri, and the latter did not participate in the poisoning of a genius!
Between the two composers there really was hostility, the reason for which was constant rivalry. It was not about the scale of talent, but about the position in society. In the XVIII century. often arranged creative competitions. So, for example, on February 6, 1786 at one end of the Orangery imperial palace Schönbrunn staged Salieri's opera, and at the other end - Mozart. Both works were written by order of Emperor Joseph II, both were about a lawsuit between singers for one role. But Mozart's opera failed, and Salieri's opera was a success with the public.
In 1774, the court composer Gassmann died. Shortly before this, Mozart came to Vienna in the hope of becoming Gassmann's successor, he achieved an audience with Empress Maria Theresa, about this meeting his father wrote: "The Empress behaved very nicely, but nothing more." Salieri received the post of court composer and bandmaster of the Italian opera.
Salieri's success in the 18th century was simply stunning, his operas were staged much more often than Mozart. In the eyes of the emperor, Salieri had much more weight. Mozart tried to push back his opponent, but he did not succeed. One should also take into account the fact that the public at that time perceived the opera differently than the modern one, they expected recognizable plots and familiar intrigues from the productions. Salieri perfectly knew the tastes of the public and knew how to please her.
In 1781 Mozart settled in Vienna. In the same year, the question of the musical education of the young princess Elizabeth was decided at court, Mozart and Salieri claimed the post. Again, preference was given to the second, since Mozart had a reputation for being frivolous. young man, which caused fear for the honor and dignity of the 15-year-old princess.
In his letters, Mozart constantly blames his opponent for all his failures: “The Emperor ruined everything, for him there is only Salieri”; "Salieri is unable to teach piano"; “I have information that a big intrigue is being prepared, Salieri and his accomplices are climbing out of their skin,” etc.
Salieri was aware that Mozart was a genius, he treated him in a friendly and non-aggressive way. Salieri's reputation as the murderer of Mozart is based primarily on Pushkin's version of this plot, although it did not correspond to reality. Perhaps the reason for this interpretation was that Salieri was the author of an opera in which Peter I was ridiculed, and Pushkin treated him with great reverence; or perhaps the author simply believed the rumors.
On this moment There are about a hundred versions of the reasons for the early death of Mozart, among which various diseases are in the lead. The most commonly referred to are rheumatic fever and kidney failure. Mozart's death was painful - high fever, joint pain, swelling, rash. The doctors were powerless, he was treated with bloodletting and poured more than two liters of blood. December 5, 1791 the great composer died. He was only 35.
If you are not a musician, then most likely the first thing you heard about Antonio Salieri was that he poisoned Mozart. This myth is so rooted in the minds that more than one work was written and filmed about Salieri's envy of Mozart, and even the term "Salieri's syndrome" appeared in medicine. Who really was Antonio Salieri, and was his dislike for Mozart really that strong?
Who poisoned Mozart? Certainly, Salieri. And, although most people have long known that the version of Salieri's participation in the death of Mozart is the most unlikely of all, this stereotype has firmly settled in our imagination.
The term "syndrome" Salieri"in medicine means discrediting someone else's success and pathological aggression against the object of envy. This is what attitude looks like. Salieri to Mozart in the legend of the poisoning, as well as in the works of art that followed it, but in reality, the situation was rather radically opposite, at least in the years of their lives.
Antonio Salieri born August 18, 1750 small town Legnago, near Venice. His family was quite prosperous, but no one intended to make a musical prodigy out of his son, although they did not resist his passions. His elder brother Francesco helped him take his first steps in music. Alas, by the age of 14, Antonio was left an orphan. But musical career was provided to him.
While studying in Venice, the then popular Viennese composer Florian Leopold Gassmann, who at that time was a bandmaster at the court of Emperor Joseph II, drew attention to him. Since that time, Vienna has become Antonio Salieri hometown, although he never learned German, speaking in a mixture of French and Italian.
The house where you were born Antonio Salieri
"Fragile constitution small man with flaming eyes, quick-tempered, but immediately ready for reconciliation, in general, extremely pleasant. Hospitable and amiable, benevolent, cheerful, witty, an inexhaustible source of anecdotes ... ”, - this is how he described Salieri one of his contemporaries. And despite the fact that many people imagine the old man Salieri next to the young brilliant Mozart They only had a five year age difference.
His first fully published musical composition Anthony Salieri wrote at only 21 years old, and it immediately received public recognition. The next comedy opera, The Fair of Venice, was also a success. Glory itself floated into the hands of the young composer. Operas came out from under his pen one after another. A few years later, in 1774, Gassmann dies. He was replaced as Kapellmeister by Giuseppe Bonno. And a 24 year old Antonio Salieri received an equally important position - court composer of chamber music and bandmaster of the Italian opera troupe.
But not everyone was happy with the success. Salieri. And among his critics was Ludwig Mozart, the father of the future genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But the fact is that Mozart Sr. could not realize himself with dignity in a simpler musical way, so he invested everything he could in his son. And here Ludwig did not need a competitor. Moreover, he instilled a dislike for Salieri and to his son.
Wolfgang Mozart and Maria Anna Mozart play for the Empress Maria Theresa (1760-1770 work)
In his article on Mozart and Salieri, Austrian musicologist Leopold Kantner wrote the following: "What were Mozart's claims to Salieri? For example, he writes that in the eyes of the emperor Salieri had more weight, but he himself, Mozart, no. However, it is not necessary to think at the same time that the situation was such that Salieri infiltrated the emperor's confidence, pushing Mozart aside. It was just the opposite. This Mozart tried to push back Salieri, which he failed. Mozart inherited this phobia from his father - “Italians”, he blamed everything on these same “Italians”.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose front Salieri there were more than enough odds, since his father, Ludwig Mozart, made him a genius from the first day of his life, at one time he was a very underestimated musician. Unlike Salieri who served in the imperial court.
For example, when both composers presented their plays to the world in 1787, the opera Salieri enjoyed much greater popularity, as evidenced by some documents. “In Vienna, Wolfgang Amadeus' opera The Marriage of Figaro was coldly received. But in Prague, she caused delight, ”wrote in one of the reports. While the following was written in another: “During the performance of the opera Salieri- "Beaumarchais" public excitement was incredible. To control the crowd, special gates were erected. Four hundred soldiers patrolled the streets around the Opera House."
Shot from the film "Little Tragedies"
During your lifetime Antonio Salieri enjoyed great popularity, about the same as now Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His operas broke records that are still inaccessible to many today. For example, one of his operas was staged 33 times in the first 9 months, which was considered an unheard of triumph. When in August 1778 there was a grand opening of the Milanese opera house La Scala, it was Salieri who was invited to write the opening opera.
Antonio Salieri was literally spoiled for fame. Being the favorite of many monarchs, he even allowed himself to reject flattering offers from persons of royal blood. He refused the Swedish king Gustav III to accept a place at his court.
Mozart, in those days, such success never dreamed of. He was not very eager to receive at court. Despite his success, Mozart's position was not brilliant. He was forced to give lessons, compose country dances and waltzes. Therefore, Mozart had more than enough reasons for envy. In 1776 Salieri composed an oratorio for the Vienna Musical Society and played it with great success. After that, Mozart wrote in a letter to his father: “With what joy I would give a public concert here! Here, every musician receives the favor of the Emperor and a significant part of the public! But I got rejected. Oh, how I want the death of those who prevent me from doing this ... ". It was in the spirit young genius, as he often expressively reacted to events.
But this does not mean that Mozart disliked Salieri. Marcel Brion, one of Mozart's biographers, wrote in his study: "The personal relationship of the two composers did not at all bear the character of either militant hostility, or even malicious envy." On the contrary, after some time both composers became friends, and Mozart respected the authority very much. Salieri.
Antonio Salieri conducted several works by Mozart, and was also the first to perform his “Symphony No. 40” in 1791, and after his appointment as court bandmaster in 1788, first of all, he returned Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro” to the repertoire, which he considered his best opera.
And Mozart, in turn, invited Salieri to the premiere of The Magic Flute, after which, not without joy, he wrote to his wife: “He listened and looked with all attentiveness, and from the symphony to the last chorus there was not a single piece that would not have caused him the exclamation “bravo” or "Bello".
Shot from the film "Amadeus"
At the same time, the rumor about Mozart's poisoning was not started up by Pushkin in "Little Tragedies", but appeared almost immediately after the death of Wolfgang Amadeus. So what, after all, is the root of this problem? According to one version, Beethoven's Conversational Notebooks are to blame. The fact is that Salieri was not only a famous composer, but also, on early stages, taught such a future musical geniuses like Schubert, Liszt, Czerny, Meyerbeer, Hummel and Beethoven. Relationships with all students Antonio Salieri were very warm, so when he himself was dying, Beethoven visited him. Since by that time Beethoven was already deaf, he was forced to communicate with others using a notebook. And in one of these notebooks they found an entry: « Salieri again very bad. He has completely lost his mind. He keeps saying that he is responsible for Mozart's death, that he gave him poison.".
But the orderlies of the hospital in which he spent his last days Antonio Salieri, categorically denied this kind of recognition. An official paper, signed by two orderlies and the maestro's attending physician, has been preserved about this. In those years and after a long time, rumors circulated about who was still guilty of Mozart's death. The only thing that could dispel doubts is medical expertise remains of Mozart. But unfortunately this brilliant composer was buried in a common grave, which leaves any hope of finding his remains.
Bust Antonio Salieri in the building of the Paris Opera
In order to restore the good name Antonio Salieri, in 1997, at the initiative of the Milan Conservatory, a rather peculiar trial was held, during which Salieri accused of murdering Mozart. Researchers of the work of both composers were presented as witnesses for the defense and the prosecution. The court recognized Anthony Salieri innocent "for lack of corpus delicti".
History often plays tricks on us. And sometimes a beautiful and fascinating myth prevails over real facts. It was precisely the victim of a beautiful and exciting story, captured by Pushkin himself, that he became Antonio Salieri is a brilliant composer who devoted his whole life to his musical vocation, as well as helping young composers achieve their success.
In my deep conviction, Mozart is the highest, culminating point, to which beauty has reached in the field of music.
P. Tchaikovsky
Mozart is the youth of music, an eternally young spring, bringing to mankind the joy of spring renewal and spiritual harmony.
D. Shostakovich
Boris Kushner. In defense of Antonio Salieri
Part 2: Salieri's students. Sunset of the Master. Mozart and the romanticization of genius.
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3. Fortunately, in addition to composing operas, Salieri had many other activities that filled the rest of his life. He taught composition and singing to numerous students, played a huge role in organizing Viennese musical life and composed church music. Already in the early 1800s, he began to show signs of depression, which sharply intensified with old age. In 1804 he composed the Requiem with himself in mind. Apparently, Salieri seriously believed that he would die soon.
Salieri took up musical teaching during the years of his apprenticeship, and then it was one of the main sources of his livelihood. Subsequently, Salieri gave his lessons for free (with the exception of students from wealthy families). This activity continued for about 50 years. Without a doubt, Salieri was one of the best music teachers in Vienna in the field of singing, composition and music theory. Among his many students are Beethoven, Hummel, Moscheles, Czerny, Meyerbeer, Schubert, Liszt, Franz Xaver Mozart (youngest son of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Mozart Franz Xaver Wolfgang, 1791-1844)). The disciples spoke warmly about the Master. There is an interesting article showing " close-up» pedagogical methods Salieri on the example of his studies with Schubert (Maurice J.E. Brown, Schubert and Salieri. - The Monthly Musical Review, London, Nov. -Dec., 1958). Salieri noticed Schubert's outstanding talent when he was still a boy singing in the Court Chapel, and began to give him (of course, free!) Lessons at home. In June 1812, 15-year-old Schubert (Schubert, Franz, 1797-1828) began to study counterpoint with Salieri. Preserved a large number of Schubert's student compositions with comments and corrections by Salieri. With what care the composer, who occupied the highest position in Vienna, treated the lessons he gave to the then unknown boy! Schubert always considered himself a student of the Italian master. It is characteristic that Schubert dedicated to the teacher 5 songs to the verses of Goethe, op. 5. And this despite the fact that Salieri did not approve of the inclination of his students to the German song. Beethoven (Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827) considered Salieri as one of his teachers. A student of Salieri, the famous pianist and composer Moscheles (Moscheles, Ignaz, 1794-1870) already in 1858 recalled:
“I never met Schubert at Salieri’s, I don’t recall such a thing, but I remember well the interesting circumstance that I once saw a piece of paper in Salieri’s house on which “Beethoven’s student was here!” was written in huge Beethoven letters! ”(Thayer, Life of Beethoven - Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1970, p.399).
Antonio Salieri(Italian Antonio Salieri; August 18, 1750, Legnago, Republic of Venice - May 7, 1825, Vienna) - Italian and Austrian composer, conductor and teacher.
A student and follower of K. V. Gluck, the author of more than 40 operas, numerous instrumental and vocal-instrumental compositions, Salieri was one of the most famous and recognized composers of his time and an equally famous teacher: among his students are L. van Beethoven, F Schubert and F. Liszt. In Vienna for 36 years (1788-1824) Salieri served as court bandmaster - one of the most important musical posts in Europe.
The curse of Antonio Salieri was the myth of his involvement in the death of W. A. Mozart, which spread, despite constant denials, in some countries mainly due to the “little tragedy” of A. S. Pushkin. A court held in 1997 officially found Salieri not guilty of the death of a colleague.
Childhood in Italy
There is little information about Antonio Salieri's childhood; but it is reliably known that he was born in the small town of Legnago in a large family of a wealthy merchant. His father - also Antonio Salieri - sold sausages and ham, had no predisposition to music, but sent his eldest son Francesco to learn to play the violin with the famous virtuoso Giuseppe Tartini; Francesco became the first mentor of Antonio Jr. Salieri took lessons in playing the harpsichord from the organist of the local cathedral, Giuseppe Simoni, a student of the no less famous Padre Martini. Apparently, the young Salieri was not a child prodigy - in any case, he did not become famous in this capacity - but, according to eyewitnesses, in addition to excellent hearing, outstanding abilities and hard work rare in his years, he had a beautiful voice.
In February 1763 Salieri lost his mother; father, completely ruined as a result of unsuccessful trading operations, died in November 1764; 14-year-old Salieri was raised by his father's friends - the wealthy and aristocratic Mocenigo family from Venice. The head of the family (his relative, Alvise IV Mocenigo, was at that time the Doge of the Venetian Republic), a music lover and patron of the arts, apparently, took up Salieri's further musical education: from 1765 he sang in the choir of St. Mark's Cathedral, studied basso continuo from the Vice-Capellemeister of the Cathedral, the then famous opera composer J. B. Peshetti, he studied harmony and the basics of singing from the tenor F. Pacini. Years later, memories of the "city of a thousand channels" echoed in some of Salieri's comic operas; but the Venetian period was short-lived: on young musician, on the recommendation of Pacini, drew the attention of Florian Leopold Gassman, the court composer of Joseph II, who was on business in Venice. In June 1766, Gassmann, returning to Vienna, took Salieri with him.
Youth in Vienna
The new patron became Salieri's second father. Gassmann (at that time one of the few foreign composers who gained recognition in Italy) took up not only his musical education - playing the violin, general bass, counterpoint, reading scores - he hired teachers of German, French, Latin and literary Italian; taught everything that could have anything to do with his future profession, including secular manners. Gassman introduced Salieri to the recognized master of the opera libretto, the court poet Pietro Metastasio, in whose house Viennese intellectuals and artists gathered - many years later, in an obituary, the famous music critic Friedrich Rochlitz called Salieri one of the most educated Austrian musicians.
In the capital of Austria, Salieri began his service in 1767 as an assistant to Gassmann, in 1769 he received the position of harpsichordist-accompanist of the court opera house. But Gassman was part of a narrow circle of associates, with whom the emperor played music almost daily, and introduced Antonio into this circle, thereby laying the foundation for his brilliant court career. A young man of short stature, swarthy, with black hair and black lively eyes, as his contemporaries described, modest, but at the same time cheerful and sociable, moreover, recommended by Gassman as the most capable of his students, quickly won the favor of the emperor.
Finally, Gassmann introduced him to Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose adherent and follower Salieri remained until the end of his life, although the real rapprochement between the composers took place later. This was the time when Gluck's reforms in relation to the "serious opera" (opera-seria) - his desire to turn the "opera-aria" into a musical drama, where music is subordinated to poetic text, enhances and sets off the word and at the same time ensures the dramatic unity of the opera, not allowing it to break up into separate numbers (which was the sin of the traditional opera series), and finally, his desire for clarity and simplicity did not find understanding among the Viennese public. Neither Orpheus and Eurydice (1762) nor Alceste (1767) were successful either in Vienna or in other cities, and the reformer himself was forced to write operas in a more or less traditional style, until, in the mid-70s , did not find an appreciative audience in Paris.
ABOUT early work Not much is known about Salieri; biographers have established that by the age of 20 he had a concerto for oboe, violin and cello with orchestra and an a cappella mass. Among the secular genres in the musical culture of the Enlightenment, opera occupied a dominant position; although for some (especially in Paris) it was more than just an opera, for others it was just a fashionable entertainment. This genre, apparently, from the very beginning was also the main one for Salieri: he wrote his first opera, The Vestal Virgin (Italian: La Vestale), back in 1768 or in 1769. But the composition has not been preserved, and all that is known about it is that it was a small Italian opera for four voices and a choir.
The first success came to Salieri already in 1770, when instead of Gassmann, who was busy with another order, he had to compose the opera-buffa “Educated Women” (Italian: Le donne letterate) for the Christmas carnival. Written over the next three years the buffa operas The Fair of Venice and The Innkeeper (based on the play by C. Goldoni The Hostess of the Hotel) and the heroic-comic The Stolen Tub consolidated his success in Vienna and gained European popularity in a matter of years. Among Salieri's early operas, the baroque Armida (1771) stands apart, based on T. Tasso's poem Jerusalem Liberated, is no longer a comic opera, but a real musical drama, "also touching on the tragic", by Salieri's own definition. In 1774, it was staged in distant St. Petersburg by the then court bandmaster Tommaso Traetta, despite the fact that court bandmasters usually performed only their own compositions; for Salieri, such exceptions, except for Traetta, were made by Giovanni Paisiello and Giuseppe Sarti.
Conquest of Europe
In January 1774 Gassmann died; in the highest musical post in Vienna - the court bandmaster - which he held since March 1772, Gassmann was replaced by Giuseppe Bonno, and Salieri, by that time already the author of 10 operas, inherited from the teacher the positions of court composer of chamber music and bandmaster of the Italian opera troupe. "At 24," writes Rudolf Angermüller, "he assumed one of the most important musical positions in Europe." Vienna was already one of the leading opera capitals in those years, and it was the Italian opera that was revered at the Habsburg court. The rise of the young composer, justified by his success with the public, was, not least, due to his closeness to the emperor - participation in his chamber music performances. At the same time, writes D. Rice, the impulsiveness and unpredictability of Joseph II never allowed Salieri to consider his position strong enough. Moreover, the composer Salieri could not feel out of competition: since the emperor considered any rivalry fruitful for art, he deliberately arranged competitions between composers (and between librettists), ordering operas on the same plot from them. The composition of operas was the responsibility of the bandmaster, and the treasury, which had become impoverished as a result of hostilities, determined the direction of Salieri's work: staging comic operas, in comparison with the opera seria, required lower costs and was more successful with the Viennese public.
In 1778, Joseph, torn between a feeling - love for Italian music and his imperial duty, closed the Italian Opera in order to protect the German opera - the Singspiel. As A. I. Kroneberg wrote, “he considered it necessary to patronize everything folk, German, and therefore tried to suppress in himself, or at least not to reveal predilection for foreign things.” The experiment failed: the Singspiel enjoyed limited success in Vienna, and six years later the Italian Opera was revived, with Salieri again becoming its bandmaster. But for six years it was his operatic activity that he had to transfer outside of Vienna.
While the Viennese public preferred the comic opera, the composer himself, an admirer of Gluck, was drawn to the musical drama. Breaking with the established schemes of the opera seria, filled with dramatic content, "Armida" turned out to be the first non-Glukovian opera in which the main ideas were implemented opera reform Gluck. In 1778, on the recommendation of the reformer himself, who saw his follower in the young composer, Salieri received an order for an opera series to open the La Scala theater rebuilt after a fire. This opera was Recognized Europe, presented to the public on August 3, 1778. A year later, another theater, Canobbiana, was opened in Milan with Salieri's opera The Fair of Venice. The opera buffa The School of the Jealous (Italian: La scuola de "gelosi", written by him in 1779, commissioned by the Venetian theater), again on the plot of C. Goldoni, turned out to be one of Salieri's most successful operas: more than 40 productions followed the Venice premiere throughout Europe, including London and Paris. new edition of this opera, made for Vienna in 1783, J. W. Goethe's review has been preserved - in a letter to Charlotte von Stein: “Yesterday's opera was magnificent and very well performed. It was the "School of the Jealous" to the music of Salieri, the public's favorite opera, and the public is right. It has a richness, an amazing variety, and everything is done with a very delicate taste.
In Italy, Salieri's operas, in addition to Milan and Venice, were ordered in Rome and Naples; he had a chance to work during these years in Munich, where at the beginning of 1782 another of his opera series, Semiramide, written by order of Elector Karl Theodor, was staged with great success. Joseph II, meanwhile, tried to attract Salieri to work on a German comic opera, but this was not his path: the melodist Salieri, until the end of his days, considered the German language not the most suitable for singing. Although he nevertheless composed one singspiel for the emperor - “Chimney Sweep” (German: Der Rauchfangkehrer), to the libretto of the court physician of Maria Theresa Leopold von Auenbrugger. Written in 1781, The Chimney Sweep was a success in Vienna until it was eclipsed by W. A. Mozart's singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782).
In the footsteps of Gluck
"Danaids"
Gluck's operas excited pre-revolutionary France not only and sometimes not so much with the novelty of the form as with the content: the Aesopian language of ancient tragedy or the medieval legend of the Austrian composer's opera preached the values of the "third estate". In the struggle that unfolded in the 70s between the supporters of Gluck and the supporters of Niccolo Piccinni, according to S. Rytsarev, "powerful cultural layers of aristocratic and democratic art" entered into open controversy. The aging reformer not only captivated Salieri with his ideas, but also contributed a lot to his career: in 1778 he recommended him to the directorate of La Scala, a few years later he gave him the order of the Royal Academy of Music for the opera Danaides, which Gluck himself, who suffered two strokes , could not perform. Salieri was well known in Paris, but - as the author of bright comic operas; when Gluck officially proposed Salieri instead, the management of the Opera considered the replacement to be unequal.
The premiere of the first French opera by Salieri - with the name of Gluck on the poster, only later, when an undoubted success was indicated, Gluck named the name of the true author - took place in April 1784 and brought him, in addition to the recognition of the Parisian theatrical public, the patronage of the sister of Joseph II, Marie Antoinette, to which Salieri dedicated his work. Joseph himself, after the success of Danaid, wrote to the Austrian envoy in Paris, Count F. Mercy d'Argento: can replace him when the time comes."
"Danaids" lasted in the repertoire of the Paris Opera until 1828 and managed to make, as I. Sollertinsky wrote, "a stunning impression" on the young G. Berlioz. This opera was not a simple imitation of Gluck: the creator of classical tragedies also wrote comic operas in his time, but he was not in the habit of combining the tragic and the comic in one work, as Salieri does starting from the overture, where with a gloomy introduction that makes one recall the overture to " Alceste" by Gluck contrasts sharply with an almost buffoon sonata allegro. Such a mixture of "high" and "low" genres already took Salieri's opera beyond the classicism to which Gluck was committed. The student developed his own musical style, built on contrasts that the classical symphony did not know at that time, combining arias, choirs and recitatives in a special way.
Upon his return to Vienna, Salieri again turned to the buffa opera genre, which impressed him, like Gluck, by the fact that it had long been developing in the direction of “musical drama”: in essence, Gluck, with his reforms, transferred it to “serious opera” - with all the necessary corrections for seriousness - those principles that in the second half of the 18th century in Italy and France were somehow affirmed in the young genre of comic opera. In 1785, Salieri wrote, to the libretto of G. Casti, his best, admittedly, opera buffa - “The Cave of Trofonius” (Italian: La grotta di Trofonio), the musical style of which, according to the critic, combined “easy melody Italian buffa opera and the language of the Austrian magic singspiel.
Researchers find many parallels between The Danaids and Trophonius Cave, on the one hand, and Mozart's Don Giovanni, written in 1787, on the other, despite the fact that both Salieri operas were widely known in the second half of the 80s . J. Rice suggests that Mozart consciously "drawn inspiration" from Salieri's music.
In the Danaids, as in the following operas by Salieri, researchers note the quality that was lacking not only in the Italian opera seria, but also in Gluck: symphonic thinking that creates a whole not from fragments, even if they are combined in a Gluckian way into large scenes, but from the natural development of the material. And in this respect, "Danaids" and "Cave of Trophonius" also anticipate the work of the late Mozart.
The "greatest musical diplomat" Salieri preferred not to speak out about the works of his contemporaries - with the exception of Gluck, whose work was for him, according to the testimonies of his students, a guiding star - and no one really knows what feelings Mozart's operas evoked in him. G. Abert believed that Salieri, "involved in the fairway of high musical drama", could not but dissociate himself from Mozart and his art, their different attitude towards Gluck prevented any kind of spiritual rapprochement. But if he was jealous - about the success of The Abduction from the Seraglio (Mozart could not boast of other successes at that time, and Salieri's real rivals were J. Sarti and J. Paisiello), then in February 1786 he received satisfaction when his one-act opera First Music, Then Words won in direct competition with Mozart's Theater Director.
A great disappointment awaited Salieri in France: the first of two operas ordered by him, the lyrical tragedy "Horace" (according to P. Corneille), first staged in December 1786, was not successful. In this innovative opera based on an ancient Roman plot, the acts were connected by interludes, similar to the choirs in a Greek tragedy. But this was not what was expected at Versailles and Fontainebleau, where performances were going on: “French gallantry,” one of the newspapers wrote in those days, “desires love, performance, dancing, and this is rarely combined with historical works where the basis is severe heroism. Fortunately for the composer, this failure was not enough to undermine his reputation.
"Tarar" and "Aksur"
Our disputes, it seems to me, made it possible to create very good poetics intended for opera, for Salieri was born a poet, and I, a bit of a musician.- P. O. Beaumarchais
In the same 1786 in Paris, Salieri became close friends with P. O. Beaumarchais; the fruit of their friendship was the most successful, including financially, Salieri's opera, Tarar. The premiere at the Royal Academy of Music took place on June 8, 1787 and caused a stir comparable only to the productions of Gluck's most "scandalous" operas.
Dedicating the libretto of the opera to the composer, Beaumarchais wrote: “If our work is successful, I will be obliged almost exclusively to you. And although your modesty makes you say everywhere that you are only my composer, I am proud that I am your poet, your servant and your friend. In this opera full of allusions, set in Hormuz, the people finally overthrow the cruel and ungrateful monarch and elect their hero, Tararus, as ruler. Beaumarchais read his play in the salons, where it enjoyed constant success, and yet, musicologist Larisa Kirillina believes, Salieri's impressive music significantly increased the impact of the text: The East, the colorful and expressiveness of the orchestra, the brightness of the melodic characteristics, the powerful contrasts of solo and mass scenes, the picturesque sound pictures, etc. - created an irresistible effect that contributed to the long and massive success of this composition in any audience. However, the modern listener, writes L. Kirillina, is impressed by "a strong heroic style, sometimes directly anticipating Beethoven." Echoes of the overture to Act I can be heard in Beethoven's Second Symphony, who could not but know this opera.
Bust of Antonio Salieri in the building of the Paris Opera; sculptor L. F. Shabo
The revolutionary pathos of the opera, which, moreover, existed in two editions: one for the seething Paris, the other, called "Aksur, the king of Ormuz", already to the Italian libretto by L. da Ponte, commissioned by Joseph II, for conservative Vienna, was understandable not for everyone, and therefore for several decades it has been with constant success (more often as Aksur) all over Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow, and even to Rio de Janeiro.
In the summer of 1790, Beaumarchais informed Salieri that part of the celebrations dedicated to the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was the performance of "Tarara" with an epilogue specially written for this occasion. A passionate admirer of Mozart, E. T. Hoffmann, having heard “Axura” already in 1795 in Königsberg, wrote: “The music of this opera, as always by Salieri, is excellent: the richness of thoughts and the perfection of recitation put it on a par with the works of Mozart. ... If I composed such an opera, I would consider my life successful! Aksur became the favorite opera of Joseph II and became almost an official symbol of the monarchy. Thus, during the wars against revolutionary France, the opera, under various titles, was performed on both sides of the front line. And when General Bonaparte founded the so-called Cisalpine Republic in Italy, this historical event was also marked by the production of Salieri's opera at La Scala on June 10, 1797. The repertoire of the Paris Opera "Tarare" adorned until 1826; "Aksur" on the German stage went up to mid-nineteenth century.
““ Tarar ” Salieri, - writes L. Kirillina, - found himself at such a historical point, from which wide views opened up both to the past, to the baroque XVII and XVIII centuries, and to the future - to the XIX century. The wide international recognition of both versions of the work, both Tarara and Aksura, testified not only to the merits of the music, but also to the fact that this genre and stylistic direction was perceived as extremely relevant and promising.” J. Rice heard the “echo of Aksura” in latest operas Mozart - "The Mercy of Titus" and "Magic Flute".
After Tarara
Salieri, who lived for a year in the house of Beaumarchais during the period of work on Tarar, probably shared the revolutionary enthusiasm of his French friend in 1790; moreover, in the melody of one of Tarar's arias, the Marseillaise was heard retroactively, although only Rouget de Lisle could borrow from Salieri. And yet, the revolution that broke out in 1789 did not allow him to consolidate his Parisian success. "Everyone wants to present his poem to you," Beaumarchais wrote to him; but the war between the Habsburg Empire and revolutionary France forced Salieri to choose between Vienna and Paris. He chose Vienna, and wrote his next serious opera, Palmyra, Queen of Persia, in 1795 already for the Austrian capital. Like both of his French operas, "Palmyra" both musically and in its stage design, was located between the baroque and the empire style of the "grand opera" that had not yet been born. An eloquent review of I. W. Goethe has been preserved about it - in a letter to F. Schiller dated March 6, 1799: “In these winter days, which have returned to us again, Palmyra turned out to be a very welcome gift. I can hardly wait for a new performance of the opera, and the same is happening to many." This opera, according to L. Kirillina, “anticipates such luxurious scores as Rossini’s Semiramide or Verdi’s Nabucco: the same almost excessive generosity, the same frescoed brightness of contrasts, the same desire, if not to excite, then imperiously capture the mass the listener and something to please the connoisseurs.
Of those written after "Palmyra", the greatest popularity fell on the "charming", according to I. Sollertinsky, opera buffa "Falstaff, or Three Jokes" - the first musical embodiment of W. Shakespeare's comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor", which became one of the first, along with Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, examples of "high" comedy in opera. The music of "Falstaff", light, but not lightweight, naturally combining humor and lyricism, is marked, according to F. Brownbehrens, by "enlightened wisdom". The opera premiered in Vienna on January 3, 1799; L. van Beethoven already in March published 10 piano variations on a duet theme from this opera.
three emperors
When, in February 1788, Emperor Joseph II dismissed the aged court bandmaster (leader of the Court Chapel) Giuseppe Bonno, the appointment of 37-year-old Salieri to this post was expected: the emperor’s special disposition towards him in Vienna was well known. On the part of Joseph, this appointment was not only a sign of recognition of the European glory of the composer: Salieri's court career was equally promoted by his gift as a conductor - in Europe he was considered one of the best conductors of his time - and his organizational skills, his active social activities and, probably, last but not least, sophistication in court diplomacy. This highest musical post in the capital of the Habsburgs made Salieri the actual manager of the entire musical life of Vienna.
But in February 1790, the enlightened monarch died, he ascended the throne younger brother Leopold, who disapproved of his predecessor's activities and was suspicious of his entourage; musicians had no access to the new emperor. When, in January 1791, Leopold II dismissed the director of the Court Theater, Count Rosenberg-Orsini, Salieri, probably expecting the same fate, submitted his resignation. However, the emperor did not accept the resignation, although he got rid of many other favorites of Joseph, - he freed Salieri only from the duties of bandmaster of the Court Opera (this post was taken by his student Joseph Weigl). Among several operas presented in Frankfurt on the occasion of Leopold's coronation as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was the favorite of his predecessor, Aksur.
On March 1, 1792, Leopold died unexpectedly; his son, Emperor Franz II, of the 43 years of his reign, spent the first 23 in the fight against France and was even less interested in music than his father; however, he also needed Salieri - as an organizer of festivities and celebrations, including during the Congress of Vienna, a writer of cantatas and hymns glorifying the Habsburg empire and its victories. Salieri remained court bandmaster until 1824, when he was forced to resign for health reasons.
Later years
Like many of his contemporaries, who worked too intensively in their youth, Salieri the composer expected an early sunset. His last opera, which could not stand comparison with earlier ones in the eyes of the public and critics, the singspiel "Negros", he wrote in 1804. Although by position he often had to write music for official festivities and celebrations, Salieri himself, deeply religious from childhood, was increasingly attracted to sacred music, and even that he often wrote "for himself and for God."
The more time and effort he could now devote to pedagogical and social activities. For several decades, from 1777 to 1819, Salieri was a regular conductor, and from 1788 the head of the Vienna Musical Society (Tonkünstlersocietät), main goal which was originally a regular, 4 times a year, holding charity concerts in favor of the pension fund established by the society for the widows and orphans of Viennese musicians. This society, founded in 1771 by F. L. Gassmann, played exclusively important role in the musical life of not only Vienna, but throughout Europe, laying the foundation for public concerts. Collecting considerable funds for the pension fund, the concerts of the society, with the participation of a symphony orchestra, a choir and soloists, at the same time introduced the public to new compositions and did not let it forget the old masterpieces: the concerts included works by G. F. Handel, K. Dittersdorf, J. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and many other composers. Often they became a launching pad for young talented performers. Because of this society, in December 1808, Salieri even quarreled with Beethoven, who appointed his author's concert ("academy") on the same day on which the charity concert was to take place, and who tried to lure the best musicians from the society's orchestra. Salieri bequeathed part of his fortune to the Fund for Widows and Orphans of Viennese Musicians.
Since 1813, he was a member of the committee for the organization of the Vienna Conservatory and headed it in 1817, then still under the name of the Singing School.
In his mature years, the real state councilor Antonio Salieri was showered with honors from various sides: he was a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, an honorary member of the Milan Conservatory, Napoleon introduced him to the French Academy (as a foreign member), and the Bourbons who finally returned in 1815 were awarded the Order Legion of Honor.
The last years of the composer's life were overshadowed by gossip about his involvement in the death of Mozart. As Alfred Einstein wrote, Vienna "in everything that concerns slander and gossip, then and then remained a provincial town." In his right mind and in solid memory, Salieri resolutely rejected this monstrous slander, saw in it only "malice, ordinary malice" and in October 1823 he asked his student Ignaz Moscheles to refute it before the whole world. Otto Deutsch suggested that it was this gossip that eventually provoked the composer breakdown. Later, when Salieri was placed in a mental hospital - as the rumor claimed, after an unsuccessful suicide attempt - a rumor spread that he himself confessed to poisoning Mozart. This rumor is captured in Beethoven's "conversational notebooks" for 1823-1824, which later served as a weighty argument for many opponents of Salieri, although Beethoven himself, judging by the remarks in the notebooks, rejected any gossip about his teacher. Both in those years and later, people who did not harbor hostile feelings towards the composer, but who took the rumor for granted, saw in his confession only confirmation of his difficult mental state. So, F. Rokhlits wrote in an obituary: “... His thoughts became more and more confused; he was more and more immersed in his gloomy daydreams ... ... He accused himself of such crimes that would not have occurred to his enemies either.
Serious researchers, however, pay attention to the fact that the very fact of Salieri's confession has not been confirmed by anyone and nothing, and the persons who allegedly heard his confession have not been established. Two orderlies assigned to Salieri in the clinic, J. Rosenberg and A. Porsche, made a written statement on June 25, 1824, in which “in front of God and in front of all mankind” they swore with honor that nothing like this had ever been heard from Salieri, and also in the fact that “because of his poor health, no one, not even members of his family, was allowed to visit him.” The testimony of the orderlies was also confirmed by Dr. Roerich, who treated Salieri. Since the rumor about Salieri's confession leaked to the press, first to the German and then to the French, as early as April 1824, a refutation was published in the Berlin music newspaper and in the French Journal des Débats, written by the composer and music critic Sigismund close to the Mozart family Neukom: “Many newspapers repeated that Salieri, on his deathbed, confessed to a terrible crime - that he was the culprit premature death Mozart, but none of these newspapers indicated the source of this terrible accusation, which would have made the memory of a man who for 58 years enjoyed the universal respect of the inhabitants of Vienna hateful. It is the duty of every person to say what he personally knows, since it is a question of refuting the slander with which they want to stigmatize the memory. outstanding person". The well-known poet and librettist Giuseppe Carpani spoke in a Milanese magazine with a refutation. Regarding the death of Mozart at the same time, in 1824, the chief physician of Vienna, Dr. E. Guldner von Lobes, testified: “He fell ill with rheumatic and inflammatory fever in late autumn. These diseases were widespread at that time and affected many. […] His death attracted everyone's attention, but not the slightest suspicion of poisoning occurred to anyone. […] The disease took its usual turn and had its usual duration. […] A similar disease attacked at that time a large number of the inhabitants of Vienna and for many of them had the same fatal outcome and with the same symptoms as Mozart. An official examination of the body revealed absolutely nothing unusual.
Salieri died on May 7, 1825 and was buried on May 10 at the Matzleindorf Catholic Cemetery in Vienna. “Behind the coffin,” Ignaz von Mosel wrote, “was the entire staff of the imperial chapel, headed by the director, Count Moritz von Dietrichstein, as well as all the bandmasters and composers present in Vienna, a crowd of musicians and many respected music lovers.” In 1874, the composer's remains were reburied at the Vienna Central Cemetery.
Private life
On October 10, 1775, Antonio Salieri married the 19-year-old daughter of a retired Viennese official Theresia von Helferstorfer, whom he called the love of his life in later years. Teresia bore Salieri seven daughters and one son. Three daughters died in childhood, and the son Alois Engelbert died at the age of 23 in 1805. Theresia died in 1807.
Musical legacy
Salieri's music ... clearly stands out against the background of the usual solid compositions of that era with its eccentricity and the search for fresh solutions. Salieri organically combined Italian melody, Gluck's pathos, the ability to operate with stage contrasts and the possession of form, counterpoint and orchestration inherent in the Viennese classics. His scores were worth studying...- L. Kirillina
Antonio Salieri wrote more than 40 operas, his "Danaids", "Tarar" and "Aksur", "Cave of Trophonius", "Falstaff", "First music, and then words" and are currently staged and sounded in concert performance. The opera "Recognized Europe", written by him for the opening of the theater "La Scala", was again staged by Riccardo Muti in 2004 - for the opening of the Milan theater after a long renovation. Albums of arias from Salieri's operas performed by Italian opera prima donna Cecilia Bartoli enjoy great success.
Salieri's earliest operas, with the exception of Armida, were sustained in the classical Italian tradition, later, as F. Braunberens writes, Gluck's influence turned him from a representative of the "pro-Italian" direction into a Viennese composer from among the followers of the great reformer. And the teacher recognized the student: the composer, who went down in history as a reformer of the opera seria, actually imagined a renewal musical theater as a long process in which many musicians must take part; he sought to "awaken the need for change among composers", but at the end of his life, Gluck, not without bitterness, said that "only the foreigner Salieri" adopted his manners from him, "because not a single German wanted to learn them." The dying Gluck gave Salieri the composition "De profundis" to be performed at his funeral.
Musicologists, who have long been reconsidering the role of Salieri in the history of the development of the genre, agree that the best operas of this Viennese Italian - as, indeed, of Gluck himself - turned out to be his French operas: Danaides and Tarar. This was partly facilitated by the peculiarities of the French recitation: as Salieri himself said, in Vienna he dealt with "acting singers", in Paris - with "singing actors"; Gluck's musical drama demanded precisely singing actors. But first of all, as noted in late XIX century Max Dietz (who included Salieri and Horatii among the best operas), the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary France allowed both the teacher and the student to realize the maximum of their abilities - the maximum that was not in demand in conservative Vienna, which preferred the traditional Italian style. The Italian operas of Salieri, Dietz believed, with the possible exception of Armida and the Cave of Trophonius, were a thing of the past, along with the tastes they served; who heard only them, has no idea about the true gift of Salieri.
Modern musicologists are not so categorical about Italian operas. Rejected by the era of romanticism, like the vast majority of his contemporaries (which, however, did not prevent P. I. Tchaikovsky from studying his scores in the process of working on The Queen of Spades), Salieri, like many others composers of the XVIII century, "returned" - interest in his work began to revive in the middle of the 20th century. The return of Salieri's operas to the stage was also facilitated by the first complete edition of his operas, carried out in 1972. However, first of all, in the "Danaids" and "Tarara" Salieri appears as a follower, but not an epigone of Gluck; Ernst Bücken noted his "tendency to enhance realism." In these operas, writes L. Kirillina, there was a trend that later turned out to be extremely fruitful: “it led, on the one hand, to the creation of the genre of the “opera of salvation” […] (A. E. M. Gretry, L. Cherubini, A. Burton, G. L. Spontini; P. von Winter; L. Beethoven) - and on the other hand, to ... the genre of "grand opera", where the bright passions of the characters were outlined against the background of a multi-figure and multi-color fresco depicting a distant historical era or an exotic country (“William Tell” by G. Rossini; “The Puritani” by V. Bellini; “Huguenots”, “African Woman” and other operas by J. Meyerbeer)”.
In addition to Salieri's operas, there are about 100 arias for voice and orchestra, including those written for foreign operas - B. Galuppi, G. Paisiello, D. Cimarosa.
Although these genres have always been secondary to him, Salieri owns many works of chamber and orchestral music, written mainly during the period when he was the court composer of chamber music, including 3 symphonies, the Concert Symphony (1774), 5 concertos for various solo instruments, of which the most famous are the piano concertos in C major (1773) and B-flat major (1773), the Concerto for flute and oboe and orchestra in C major (1774) and the Triple Concerto for violin, oboe and cello in D major (1770). One of Salieri's most famous compositions in the field of instrumental music is "26 Variations on a Theme of the Spanish Folia" (Italian: Variazioni sull'aria La Follia di Spagna), written in 1815, as if in longing for baroque youth. In 2014, the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater staged the one-act ballet Salieri Variations to this music, often performed in concerts.
An important place in the work of Salieri, especially in recent decades, was occupied by sacred music: he wrote 5 masses, of which the most famous is Mass in D major (German: Hofkapellmeistermesse, 1788), oratorios, including those begun by Gluck commissioned from Paris " Last Judgment(1788) and Jesus in Purgatory (1803). Salieri also owns numerous religious hymns, hymns, including 3 Te Deum, one of which was written in 1790 for the coronation of Leopold II, as well as psalms, and among them 2 "De profundis", written in 1815 - in total the complexity of about 100 spiritual compositions. Back in 1804, he composed for himself the "Little Requiem" in C minor, which was first performed, according to the will, at his funeral - by the efforts of numerous students. One of the composer's best works in this genre is The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Italian: La Passione Di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo), written to a libretto by Metastasio in 1776. Salieri also applied the elements of Gluck's operatic reform to sacred music; as noted by the Austrian musicologist Leopold Kantner, he "developed a completely new church music style, simple and melodic"; this style, according to L. Kantner, was borrowed by Mozart in his Ave Verum, which is so unlike Mozart's other works.
In Russia and not only in Russia, a well-known legend led to the fact that for a long time Salieri the composer (whose compositions were mostly unknown to listeners) was invariably compared to Mozart and presented, accordingly, as a second-rate Mozart. However, in the USSR there were enthusiasts who back in the 70s of the XX century defended the Italian composer, including the performance of his music - in concerts and on the radio. As more and more works by Salieri returned to the theatrical stage and concert practice, it became clear that they needed no more comparison with Mozart's than the works of Gluck or Cherubini: this is a different direction, it professed other principles, but it was this direction that turned out to be the main one in the development of opera art. However, Mozart, as studies of recent decades show, learned a lot from Salieri.
Pedagogical activity
Antonio Salieri was an outstanding music teacher, one of the best in Europe; taught vocal composition, singing - solo and choral, reading scores, in which he knew no equal, and music theory. For a long time Salieri worked in tandem with J. G. Albrechtsberger, the best connoisseur of counterpoint in Vienna; after his death in 1809 he taught counterpoint himself. He brought up more than 60 composers and vocalists, while not rich, but talented musicians gave lessons for free, as if returning a debt to his benefactor Gassman.
Ludwig van Beethoven, portrait by K. T. Riedel
Young Beethoven worshiped Mozart and J. Haydn, but the first was not a teacher by vocation, he studied with the second for some time, but quickly became disillusioned. Beethoven found a real teacher in Salieri, to whom he dedicated three violin sonatas, op. 12, published in Vienna in 1799. The new mentor, to whom Beethoven came to learn Italian vocal technique, not only passed on his knowledge to him, but also converted him to his faith, drew attention to the direction that developed in parallel with the "Viennese classics": from Gluck to his Italian follower Luigi Cherubini and to Salieri himself. Beethoven, even in his mature years, highly appreciated both Gluck and Cherubini; the latter in 1818 called the greatest of contemporary composers. The relationship between the teacher and the student continued even after the actual training - for example, in 1806 Salieri helped the already mature and famous, but not experienced in the opera genre, Beethoven to finalize Fidelio; in the field of vocal writing, Salieri advised Beethoven, apparently until 1809 - in any case, Ignaz Moscheles, who studied composition with Salieri since 1808, later recalled that he saw in the mentor’s house “a sheet of paper on which there were huge Beethoven letters it was written "Beethoven's student was here!".
Franz Schubert, portrait by W. A. Rieder
Franz Schubert was also a student of Salieri, whose talent experienced teacher saw when he was still a boy singing in the Court Chapel, and took him to his free education. In 1816, when the 50th anniversary of Salieri's stay in the Austrian capital was widely celebrated in Vienna, Schubert dedicated a short cantata to his teacher on his own text:
The best, kindest!
Glorious, wisest!
As long as I have a feeling
As long as I love art
I will bring you with love
And inspiration, and tears.
You are like God in everything
Great in heart and mind.
You are an angel to me given by fate.
I disturb God with a prayer,
To live in the world for hundreds of years
To the delight of all our common grandfather!
A favorite of Salieri, Schubert dedicated to his teacher Ten Variations for Piano, a cycle of songs to the words of J. W. Goethe and three string quartet. In his diary, he described Salieri as "an artist who, guided by Gluck, knew nature and preserved naturalness, despite the unnatural environment of our time."
Salieri's students were composers of several generations: Franz Liszt, who studied, like Schubert, for free, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Jan Nepomuk Hummel, the then popular opera composers Josef Weigl, Peter von Winter, Karl Blum, Ignaz Umlauf and especially highly valued by Haydn and Mozart Joseph Eibler; Ignaz Moscheles and Ignaz Mosel, who also became the first biographer of his teacher. Salieri's students were Carl Czerny and Ferdinand Rees, who had previously studied with Beethoven; Anton Bruckner's future teacher Simon Zechter and many, many others. Constance Mozart gave him her son Franz Xaver Wolfgang to study. Many outstanding vocalists of that time studied with Salieri, including Catarina Cavalieri, the first Constanza in Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, Anna Milder-Hauptman, the first Leonora in Beethoven's Fidelio, and Carolina Unger, who became the first performer of the alto part in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Gassmann's two daughters, who became singers, were also his students - Salieri took care of them after the death of the teacher.
Relationship with Mozart
On August 18, 1750, two characters were born simultaneously in Italy: one of real history music, and the other - from a small tragedy by Alexander Pushkin. By a fatal coincidence, they still bear the same name: Antonio Salieri.- A. Volkov
The old gossip that poisoned the last years of the composer's life still often connects the name of Salieri with the name of Mozart as his alleged killer. In Russia, this gossip received the status of a legend thanks to A. S. Pushkin’s little tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” (1831), set to music by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov (1898): the name Salieri became a household name for envious and insidious mediocrity, he he himself, as B. Steinpress wrote, turned with the light hand of Pushkin into a musician about whom they know nothing, but they talk a lot.
Pushkin's version in Russia has been constantly refuted since the publication of his little tragedy - in the 30s years XIX centuries, they argued not even about whether Salieri poisoned Mozart, but about whether Pushkin had the right to slander Salieri, whether art, as P. V. Annenkov said, “has a different morality than society.” The well-known music critic A. D. Ulybyshev published in 1843 " New biography Mozart" wrote: "If you really need to believe the rumors that are still echoing, then one of them was marked by a terrible action - Salieri poisoned Mozart. Fortunately for the memory of the Italian, this tale is devoid of both foundation and plausibility, it is as absurd as it is terrible. Nevertheless, Pushkin's "little tragedy" in different time inspired some other writers, including, presumably, Peter Schaeffer, the author of the play "Amadeus" (1979), on which Milos Forman made the film of the same name.
Meanwhile, in the composer's homeland, they did not even suspect the existence of this legend until the English theater came to Italy on tour with Schaeffer's play. It was this play, which caused indignation in Italy, that prompted the Milan Conservatory to initiate a trial against the composer - on charges of murdering Mozart. In May 1997, the court, which sat in the main hall of the Milan Palace of Justice, after hearing witnesses for the prosecution and defense (researchers of the life and work of Mozart and Salieri, as well as doctors), acquitted the composer "for lack of corpus delicti".
In Schaeffer's play, however, Salieri does not poison Mozart with poison, but brings him to the grave with intrigues and intrigues - in Austria and Germany this version has become more widespread. Echoes of these rumors can also be found in a large article about Salieri in the encyclopedia "General German Biography" (German: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie), published in 1890: as an opera composer, was, so to speak, a demon who prematurely brought this German genius to the grave. Nor did they stop before attributing to such an amiable, generous and humble person thought of murder, they even agreed to the ridiculous assertion that out of envy he poisoned Mozart.
If the Austrian musicologist Max Dietz called “all these serious accusations” unproven, then his Russian colleague, E. Braudo, wrote 40 years later as something taken for granted: “Salieri, Beethoven’s teacher, also earned notoriety for his ugly intrigues against Mozart, which gave rise to the legend that he poisoned the creator of Don Juan. Meanwhile, researchers have long disputed these accusations, since all "intrigues" and "intrigues" have one documentary source - letters from Mozart and his father. So, J. Rice in his book "Antonio Salieri and the Vienna Opera", analyzing in detail Mozart's complaints - not only against Salieri (at that time the bandmaster of the Italian opera troupe), but also against all Viennese Italians - finds them for the most part unfounded; in addition, accusations of rivals in intrigues were the most common thing in the opera in those years (Joseph II, on the contrary, feared that the bandmaster himself might become a victim of intrigues). Not possessing the diplomatic gift of Salieri, Mozart, with his explosive temperament, sometimes gave the members of the Italian troupe a reason to suspect him of "German" intrigues. In general, wrote Dietz, in order to surpass Mozart in the perception of the then public, neither great efforts nor sophisticated intrigue were needed.
Be that as it may, in recent years Mozart and Salieri did not seem like enemies. It is known that Salieri conducted several works by Mozart in the second half of the 80s, he also became the first performer of Symphony No. 40 in 1791, and after his appointment as court bandmaster in 1788, he first of all returned Mozart's opera Le nozze di Figaro to the repertoire, which considered his best opera. In turn, Mozart invited Salieri (together with his student K. Cavalieri) to the performance of The Magic Flute and wrote to his wife on October 14, 1791: “You cannot imagine how kind both were, how much they liked not only my music, but the libretto and all together. - They both said: The opera is worthy to be performed during the greatest celebrations before the greatest monarchs - and, of course, they would have watched it very often, because they had never seen another more beautiful and pleasant performance. “He listened and watched with all his attentiveness, and from the symphony to the last chorus, there was not a single piece that did not make him [exclamation] bravo or bello (nice).”
On the question of envy
Since all the accusations against Salieri suggest the same motive - envy, the researchers wonder: could Salieri really be jealous of Mozart? If we take out the mythical prediction of the opponent's posthumous glory, it turns out to be difficult to find reasons for envy: Mozart's lifetime fame was greatly exaggerated by his early biographers - in his genre, in opera, Salieri was a disproportionately more successful composer during these years (despite the fact that Mozart , as A. Einstein writes, from his youth they were inspired that it was opera that was the pinnacle of all arts). The cool reception of Mozart's Don Giovanni was explained by Max Dietz as "the pampering of Vienna with the melodies […] of Martin and Salieri". Almost from the moment of his arrival in Vienna, Salieri enjoyed the invariable favor and patronage of the emperor, since 1788 he held a post that any Viennese musician could only dream of: the craft of composing music was considered not the most respected in Vienna - Empress Maria Theresa called composers "useless people ”, - while the position of court bandmaster, in addition to high salaries and constant orders, provided a certain position in society. Composers of that time, according to the Austrian musicologist L. Kantner, fought primarily for their position. The largest contemporary Mozart scholar Rudolf Angermüller believes that their social position, as well as their position in the musical world, was too unequal: not only Salieri's envy of Mozart, but even simple rivalry between them is unlikely.
Meanwhile, Mozart had reasons to envy Salieri: he knew or did not know about his "immortal genius", but he thought about the transient - for many years he unsuccessfully sought positions at various European courtyards, in letters to his father from Vienna, constantly complained about the inattention of the emperor; although J. Rice claims that the excellently musically educated Joseph II Mozart enjoyed more patronage than any other musician except Salieri. In 1790, after the death of Joseph and the accession to the throne of Leopold II, Mozart tried to improve his position; he wrote to the son of the Emperor, Archduke Franz: “Thirst for fame, love of activity and confidence in my knowledge make me dare to ask for the position of the second Kapellmeister, especially because the very skillful Kapellmeister Salieri never studied church style, but from my youth in perfectly mastered this style. But even Mozart did not become Salieri's deputy (Ignaz Umlauf held this position since 1789); under Leopold, his situation only worsened. Mozart was also unlucky in the teaching field: a year before his death, he had only two students left - and he had to ask a friend of Puchberg to notify everyone he could that Mozart was recruiting students.
“Mozart’s biographers,” German musicologist Hermann Abert wrote at the beginning of the 20th century, “sinned a lot against this Italian, under the influence of a sense of false national patriotism, exposing him as an evil intriguer and an incapable musician.” The Vienna court has long welcomed Italian musicians, the post of court bandmaster, as a rule (with a few exceptions), was occupied by Italians, and Giuseppe Bonno was Salieri's predecessor for 14 years. On the opera stage - and not only in Vienna - Italian composers, like Italian singers, dictated fashion and shaped taste. Leopold Mozart constantly complained about the “dominance” of the Italians, who were certainly “scammers”, and for him, like for many of his colleagues, it didn’t matter that Salieri lived in Vienna from the age of 16, studied with Gassmann and Gluck and was much more Austrian composer than Italian. The same G. Sivers from the Berlin Musical Weekly (German Musikalische Wochenblatt), who in December 1791 launched gossip about the possible murder of Mozart (while doctors insisted on the non-violent nature of his death), 28 years later unexpectedly clarified that Mozart, according to rumors, became a victim of some "Italians" - nationality turned out to be more important than specific names. According to the music critic P. Buscaroli, the rumors about Salieri's involvement in the death of Mozart symbolically reflected "revenge and revenge, which the German musicians eventually took over the Italians, who kept them in subjection for two centuries."
One of Salieri's many Austrian students, Joseph Weigl, wrote on his grave:
Rest in peace! Cleaned from dust
May eternity shine on you
Rest in peace! In eternal harmony
Your spirit is now liberated.
He expressed himself in magical sounds
Now hovering in eternal beauty.
original text(German)
Ruh sanft! Vom Staub entblößt,
Wird Dir die Ewigkeit erblühen.
Ruh sanft! In ew'gen Harmonien
Ist nun Dein Geist gelost.
Er sprach sich aus in zaubervollen Tönen,
Jetzt schwebt er hin zum unvergänglich Schönen.
Antonio Salieri was born into a large family of a wealthy merchant; also in early childhood showed aptitude for music, and his first violin mentor was his elder brother Francesco, a student of Giuseppe Tartini. Antonio received organ lessons from a church organist, a student of Padre Martini. In 1763, Salieri lost his mother, and soon his father; the orphaned teenager was taken in by his father's friends - the rich Mocenigo family from Venice, where Salieri continued his musical education; from 1765 he sang in the choir of St. Mark's Cathedral. In 1766, the court composer of Joseph II Florian Leopold Gassman, who happened to be in Venice on business, drew the attention of Salieri and took him to Vienna with him.
In the capital of Austria, Salieri began his service as a harpsichordist-accompanist at the court opera house. Gassman was not just an excellent teacher who managed to teach Salieri a lot, who was engaged not only in music, but also in his general education - many years later, in an obituary, the famous music critic Friedrich Rochlitz would call Salieri one of the most educated musicians - Gassman was part of a narrow circle close associates, with whom the emperor liked to play music, and introduced Antonio into this circle, thereby laying the foundation for his brilliant court career. Gassman introduced his student to famous poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, in whose house Viennese intellectuals and artists gathered, and with Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose adherent and follower Salieri remained until the end of his life, although the real rapprochement of the composers took place later.
In January 1774, after the death of Gassmann, Salieri received the posts of court composer and bandmaster of the Italian Opera in Vienna, and in February 1788 he was appointed court bandmaster (leader of the Court Chapel). Antonio Salieri held this highest post in musical Vienna and, as R. Angermüller writes, "one of the most important musical posts in Europe" under three emperors - until 1824. Salieri's court career was equally facilitated by both his gift as a conductor - in Europe he was considered one of the best conductors of his time, and his organizational skills, and, probably not least, his diplomatic gift.
Salieri's composing career was just as successful: fame came to him with his first opera, Educated Women, staged in Vienna in 1770; the subsequent "Armida", "Venetian Fair", "The Stolen Tub", "The Innkeeper" were staged both in Austria and abroad. The baroque opera Armida, written in 1771, was already staged in distant St. Petersburg in 1774 by the then court bandmaster Tommaso Traetta, despite the fact that court bandmasters usually performed only their own compositions; for Salieri, such exceptions, except for Traetta, were made by Giovanni Paisiello and Giuseppe Sarti.
Breaking with established patterns, filled with dramatic content, Armida turned out to be the first non-Glückian opera in which the main ideas of Gluck's operatic reform were implemented. In 1778, on the recommendation of the reformer himself, who saw his successor in the young composer, Salieri received an order for an opera to open the La Scala theater rebuilt after a fire. This opera was Recognized Europe, presented at La Scala on August 3, 1778; Francesca Lebrun sang at the premiere. Written the following year by order of the Venetian theater, the opera buffa The School of Jealousy turned out to be one of Salieri's most successful operas: in 30 years she withstood more than 60 productions throughout Europe from Lisbon to Moscow.
In 1776, Emperor Joseph closed the Italian Opera in order to patronize the German opera - the Singspiel; the experiment failed, and six years later the activity of the Italian Opera was resumed, and Salieri again became its conductor; but for these six years he had to largely transfer his activities outside of Vienna, not only to Italy (in addition to Milan, his operas were staged in Venice, Rome and Naples), but also to Munich, where, in particular, at the beginning of 1782 with his opera Semiramide, commissioned by Elector Karl Theodor, was staged with great success. Salieri managed to contribute to the development of the singspiel: his "Chimney Sweep" (Der Rauchfangkehrer, 1781), written to a libretto by Maria Theresa's court physician Leopold von Auenbrugger, preceded Mozart's famous singspiel "The Abduction from the Seraglio" (1782).
Gluck's operas excited pre-revolutionary France not only and sometimes not so much with their novelty of form as with their content: the Aesopian language of ancient tragedy or the medieval legend of Gluck's opera preached the values of the "third estate". The aging reformer not only captivated Salieri with his ideas, but also contributed a lot to his career - first recommending him to the directorate of La Scala, a few years later - giving him an order from the French Royal Academy of Music for the opera Danaids, which Gluck himself could no longer perform according to state of health. The premiere of the opera took place in April 1784, and since that time Salieri was not only loved by the Parisian public, but also enjoyed the patronage of Marie Antoinette.
The Danaids were not a simple imitation of Gluck: the creator of classical tragedies also wrote comic operas in his time, but he was not in the habit of combining the tragic and the comic in one opera, as Salieri does, starting with the overture. The student developed his own musical style, built on contrasts, which even the classical symphony did not know at that time. Researchers find many parallels between the "Danaids" and the buffa opera "Cave of Trofonio", created two years later, on the one hand, and Mozart's "Don Giovanni", written in 1787, on the other; J. Rice suggests that Mozart consciously "drawn inspiration" from Salieri's music.
In the Danaides, as in the following operas by Salieri, researchers note the quality that was lacking not only in the Italian opera seria, but also in Gluck: symphonic thinking that creates a whole not from fragments, even if they are combined into large scenes, but from natural development material; and in this respect the Danaids and the Cave of Trofonio also anticipate the work of the late Mozart.
In 1786, in Paris, Salieri became close to Beaumarchais, who also played an important role in his life. The fruit of this friendship was the most successful, including financially, Salieri's opera "Tarar", presented at the Royal Academy of Music on June 8, 1787 and caused a stir comparable only to the productions of the most "scandalous" Gluck operas. In 1988, after a 160-year break, the production of "Tarara" failed - music historian V. Brownberens, in addition to poor direction, attributed the failure to the fact that the opera was so relevant for its time, so connected with it, that it left with this time forever. (Released 17 years later on DVD, this production is a success nonetheless.)
Dedicating the libretto of the opera to the composer, Beaumarchais wrote: “If our work is successful, I will be obliged almost exclusively to you. And although your modesty makes you say everywhere that you are only my composer, I am proud that I am your poet, your servant and your friend. In this opera full of allusions, set in Hormuz (Persia), the people finally overthrow the cruel and ungrateful monarch and elect their hero, Tararus, as ruler; the revolutionary pathos of the opera, which, moreover, existed in two editions: one for the seething Paris, the other, called "Aksur, the king of Hormuz", already on the libretto by L. da Ponte, for conservative Vienna, was not clear to everyone , and therefore for decades it has been with constant success all over Europe (more often as "Aksur"), right up to St. Petersburg. In the summer of 1790, Beaumarchais informed Salieri that part of the celebrations dedicated to the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was the performance of "Tarara" with an epilogue specially written for this occasion.
Passionate admirer of Mozart E.T. Hoffmann, having heard "Aksur" in Koenigsberg, wrote that the music of the opera "as always with Salieri, is excellent: the richness of thoughts and the perfection of recitation put it on a par with the works of Mozart." Aksur became Emperor Joseph's favorite opera and became almost an official symbol of the monarchy. Thus, during the wars against revolutionary France, the opera, under various titles, was performed on both sides of the front line. And when General Bonaparte founded the so-called Cisalpine Republic in Italy, this historical event was also marked by the production of Salieri's opera at La Scala (June 10, 1797).
About the opera “Palmyra, Queen of Persia” written in 1795, an eloquent review by J. V. Goethe has been preserved - in a letter to F. Schiller dated March 6, 1799: desired gift. I can hardly wait for a new performance of the opera, and the same is happening to many."
Both Tararus and its Italian version, Aksur, King of Ormuz, and the earlier Danaids already anticipated the “opera of salvation” (L. Cherubini, G. Spontini, “Fidelio” by L. van Beethoven) and the “grand opera »beginning of the 19th century. Of those written after Palmyra, the most popular was the buff opera Falstaff, or Three Jokes, the first musical embodiment of Shakespeare's comedy, presented in Vienna on January 3, 1799; L. van Beethoven already in March published 10 piano variations on a duet theme from this opera.
When, in February 1788, Emperor Joseph dismissed the aged court bandmaster Giuseppe Bonno, Salieri's appointment was expected: the emperor's special disposition towards him was well known. But in February 1790, Joseph died, his younger brother Leopold ascended the throne, who did not approve of the activities of his predecessor and was suspicious of his entourage; musicians had no access to the new emperor. When Leopold II dismissed the director of the Court Theater, Count Rosenberg-Orsini, Salieri, probably expecting the same fate, submitted his resignation. However, the emperor did not accept the resignation, he released Salieri only from the duties of Kapellmeister of the Italian Opera. Among the several operas presented in Frankfurt on the occasion of Leopold's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor was Emperor Joseph's favorite opera Aksur.
On March 1, 1792, Leopold II died unexpectedly; his son, Emperor Franz, of the 43 years of his reign, spent the first 23 in the fight against France and was even less interested in music than his father; however, he also needed Salieri - as an organizer of festivities and celebrations, including during the Congress of Vienna.
Like many of his contemporaries, who worked too intensively in their youth, Salieri the composer expected an early sunset. His last opera, which could not withstand comparison with earlier ones in the eyes of the public and critics, he wrote in 1804 (the singspiel "Negros"). The more time and effort he could now devote to pedagogical and social activities.
For many decades, from 1777 to 1819, Salieri conducted charity concerts, which regularly, 4 times a year, were held by the Society of Musicians (since 1788, Salieri headed this society) in favor of the widows and orphans of Viennese musicians. At these concerts, the audience was introduced to new compositions and was not allowed to forget the old masterpieces; often they became a launching pad for young talented performers, including Beethoven the pianist.
An important role in the musical life of Vienna was played by the so-called "academies" - large public concerts dedicated to a particular composer, living or deceased, and Salieri usually took an active part in them, as an organizer and as a conductor.
Since 1813, Salieri was a member of the committee for the organization of the Vienna Conservatory and headed it in 1817 (at first it was called the Singing School).
In his mature years, the real state councilor Antonio Salieri was showered with honors from various sides: he was a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, an honorary member of the Milan Conservatory, Napoleon introduced him to the French Academy (as a foreign member), and the Bourbons who finally returned in 1815 were awarded the Order Legion of Honor...
The last years of the composer's life were overshadowed by rumors about his involvement in the death of Mozart. In his right mind and in solid memory, Antonio Salieri resolutely rejected this monstrous slander and asked his student Ignaz Moscheles to refute it before the whole world; but later, when, after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Salieri was placed in a clinic for the mentally ill, a rumor spread that he himself confessed to poisoning Mozart. This rumor is captured, in particular, in Beethoven's colloquial notebooks for 1823-1824, while for both A. Schindler, who reported the news, and for Beethoven, this alleged recognition was only evidence of Salieri's grave condition. Currently, some researchers question the very fact of recognition, as unconfirmed by anyone and nothing, others, such as Piero Buscaroli, believe that in the mental state that Salieri was in for the last year and a half, the accusation could easily turn into self-accusation.
On October 10, 1774, Antonio Salieri married the 19-year-old daughter of a retired Viennese official Theresia von Helferstorfer, whom he called the love of his life in his later years. Teresia and Antonio had eight children: seven daughters and one son; but three daughters died in childhood, and the son Alois Engelbert died at the age of 23 in 1805. Theresia died in 1807.
Salieri wrote more than 40 operas, of which the Danaids, Trofonio Cave, Tarar and its Italian version, Aksur, Falstaff, are still famous. The opera "Recognized Europe", written by him for the opening of the theater "La Scala", is now on this stage - staged by Riccardo Muti. IN Lately especially often in different countries his theatrical divertissement “First the music, then the words” (Italian) is performed, with which Salieri won the competition with Mozart in 1786. Finally, albums of arias from Salieri's operas performed by Italian opera prima donna Cecilia Bartoli enjoy great success.
The earliest operas by Antonio Salieri are sustained in the classical Italian tradition, later, according to F. Brownberens, Gluck's influence turned him from a representative of the "pro-Italian" direction into a Viennese composer from among the followers of the great reformer. And the teacher recognized the student: at the end of his life, Gluck was not without bitterness said that "only the foreigner Salieri" adopted his manners from him, "because not a single German wanted to learn them"; the dying Gluck gave Salieri the composition "De profundis" for performance at his funeral. And musicologists have long been reconsidering the role of Salieri in the development of opera as a genre.
In addition to Salieri's operas, there are about 100 arias for voice and orchestra, including those written for foreign operas - B. Galuppi, G. Paisiello, D. Cimarosa.
Salieri is credited with many chamber and orchestral music, including 3 symphonies, the Concert Symphony (1774), 5 concertos for various solo instruments, of which the most famous are the piano concertos in C major (1773) and in B flat major (1773) and the Triple Concerto for violin, oboe and cello in D major (1770). One of Salieri's best works in the field of instrumental music is "26 Variations on a Theme of the Spanish Folia" (Variazioni sull "aria La Follia di Spagna), written in 1815.
An important place in the work of Antonio Salieri, especially in recent decades, was occupied by sacred music: he wrote 5 masses, of which the most famous Mass in D major (Hofkapellmeistermesse, 1788), oratorios, including The Last Judgment (1787/1788); Franz Schubert highly appreciated his oratorio "Jesus in Purgatory" (1803), while noting: "it is written in a purely Gluckian way." Salieri also wrote many religious hymns, including 3 Salve Regina, hymns, including 3 Te Deum (one of them was written in 1790 for the coronation of Leopold II), psalms, including 2 "De profundis", written in 1815 year, as well as "Requiem" in C minor, written by the composer for himself in 1804 and first performed, according to his will, at his funeral; another requiem remained unfinished. One of the composer's best works is The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, written to a libretto by Metastasio in 1776. Salieri also applied the elements of Gluck's operatic reform to sacred music; as noted by the Austrian musicologist Leopold Kantner, Salieri "developed a completely new church music style, simple and melodic"; this style, according to L. Kantner, was borrowed by Mozart in his Ave Verum, which is so unlike Mozart's other works.
Interest in the work of Antonio Salieri began to revive in the middle of the 20th century; in the last 20 years alone, his operas Catilina, The Number, Chimney Sweep, Innocent Love, Kublai the Great Tatar Khan, Rich Man for a Day, The World Inside Out, have been staged in different countries, many countries for the first time; at present, a significant part of his legacy has already been released on CD and DVD.
In Russia and not only in Russia, a well-known legend led to the fact that for a long time Salieri the composer (whose compositions were mostly unknown to listeners) was invariably compared to Mozart and presented, accordingly, as a second-rate Mozart; however, as more and more works by Salieri returned to concert practice and to the theatrical stage, the understanding came that they needed as little comparison with Mozart's as the works of Gluck or Cherubini: this is a different direction, it professed other principles, Yes, and Mozart, as studies of recent decades show, learned a lot from Salieri
Antonio Salieri was an outstanding music teacher, he taught singing, composition and music theory, and gave lessons to poor but talented musicians for free, as if returning a debt to his benefactor Gassman.
Young Beethoven worshiped Mozart and J. Haydn, but the first was not a teacher by vocation, he studied with the second for some time and subsequently claimed that Haydn taught him absolutely nothing. Beethoven found a real teacher in Salieri, to whom he dedicated three violin sonatas, op. 12, published in Vienna in 1799; new mentor not only passed on his knowledge to him, but also converted to his faith, drew attention to the direction that developed in parallel with the “Viennese classics”: from Gluck to his Italian follower Luigi Cherubini and to Salieri himself. The prevailing notion that Beethoven was merely developing traditions Viennese classics(Haydn and Mozart), has long been disputed by many musicologists: Beethoven highly appreciated Gluck, in his mature years he preferred Cherubini over Mozart, as for his attitude towards Salieri, Ignaz Moscheles, who studied composition with Salieri since 1808, later recalled that I saw in the mentor's house "a piece of paper on which was written in huge Beethoven letters\"Beethoven's student was here!\"".
The relationship between the teacher and the student continued even after the actual training - for example, in 1806 Salieri helped the already mature and famous, but not experienced in the opera genre, Beethoven to finalize Fidelio; Beethoven took vocal lessons from Salieri until 1809...
Franz Schubert was also a student of Salieri, whose talent an experienced teacher saw when he was still a boy singing in the Court Chapel, and took him to his free education. In 1816, when the 50th anniversary of Salieri's stay in the Austrian capital was widely celebrated in Vienna, Schubert dedicated a short cantata to his teacher on his own text:
The best, kindest!
Glorious, wisest!
As long as I have a feeling
As long as I love art
I will bring you with love
And inspiration, and tears.
You are like God in everything
Great in heart and mind.
You are an angel to me given by fate.
I disturb God with a prayer,
To live in the world for hundreds of years
To the delight of all our common grandfather!
Salieri's students were composers of several generations: Franz Liszt, Jacques Meyerbeer, Jan Nepomuk Hummel, Joseph Weigl, Ignaz Mosel (who also became the first biographer of his teacher); in addition to Beethoven, and his own students - Karl Czerny and Ferdinand Ries, highly valued by Haydn and Mozart, Joseph Eibler and who had previously studied with Mozart Franz Xaver Süssmeier, Anton Bruckner's future teacher Simon Zechter and many, many others ... Constance Mozart gave him to study his son Franz Xaver Wolfgang. The art of singing from Salieri was studied by many outstanding vocalists of that time, including Anna Milder-Hauptmann, the first Leonora in Beethoven's Fidelio.
According to contemporaries, Salieri's relationship with students developed in different ways, but, as a rule, they were very warm and emotional (some argue that Liszt's departure from Vienna was the reason for Salieri's unsuccessful suicide attempt in 1823).
An old legend links the name of Salieri with the name of Mozart as his alleged killer. In Russia, thanks to Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1831), set to music by Rimsky-Korsakov (1898), the name Salieri has become a household name for envious mediocrity. The legend of Salieri's involvement in the death of Mozart is also current in some other countries, as evidenced by Peter Schaeffer's play Amadeus (1979) and the film of the same name by Milos Forman (1984) based on it.
However, in the composer's homeland, they did not even suspect the existence of this legend until the English theater came to Italy on tour with Schaeffer's play. It was this play, which caused indignation in Italy, that prompted the Milan Conservatory to initiate a trial against the composer - on charges of murdering Mozart. In May 1997, the court, sitting in the main hall of the Milan Palace of Justice, after hearing witnesses for the prosecution and defense (researchers of the life and work of Mozart and Salieri, as well as doctors), delivered an acquittal: he did not kill.
The relationship between Mozart and Salieri was uneven, and several harsh statements about Salieri are known from both Mozart himself and his father. However, these statements for the most part refer to the early 80s and do not differ from the usual temperamental Mozart's comments about competing musicians. At the same time, in his last letter wife (October 14, 1791) Mozart pays much attention to Salieri's visit to the performance of The Magic Flute, describing the enthusiastic reaction of a colleague as something very important for himself. It is known that in the second half of the 80s Salieri conducted several works by Mozart, he also became the first performer of Symphony No. 40 in 1791, and after his appointment as bandmaster of the court opera in 1788, he first of all returned Mozart's opera Le nozze di Figaro to the repertoire ( which he considered his best opera). There was even a composition - a cantata for voice and piano "On the Recovery of Ophelia" (Italian, 1785), written jointly by Mozart and Salieri on the occasion of the return to the stage of the singer Anna Storace. On the whole, there is no reason to believe that there was ever any particular enmity between Mozart and Salieri.
Fate favored Salieri too much: for many years he held the highest musical post in Vienna, had considerable power, was perhaps the most successful composer of his time, during the life of Haydn and Mozart he was officially recognized as the first composer of Vienna - all this could not but make him the natural object of envy of less fortunate colleagues. In addition, he was a stranger and for this reason alone aroused suspicions of patronage to compatriots. The Vienna court has long welcomed the Italians, but even before the rise of Salieri (before him, the Italian Giuseppe Bonno was the court bandmaster for 15 years), the “Italian dominance” caused discontent among Austrian composers. According to P. Buscaroli, the legend of Salieri's involvement in the death of Mozart symbolically reflected "revenge and revenge, which the German musicians eventually took over the Italians, who kept them in subjection for two centuries."
At the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, it was important for music critics and the first biographers of Mozart to emphasize the fidelity of Mozart's music to his native, Austro-German tradition, as opposed to Italian influence. Salieri was chosen as the personification of the Italian "bias" in Viennese music as the most authoritative composer. Italian descent, - which can hardly be considered legitimate: Salieri lived in Vienna from the age of 16, as a composer formed in Vienna, under the influence of Gassmann and Gluck, and musically was much closer to the Germans than to the Italians.
One of Salieri's many Austrian students, Joseph Weigl, wrote on his grave:
Ruh sanft! Vom Staub entblößt, Wird Dir die Ewigkeit erblühen. Ruh sanft! In ew'gen Harmonien Ist nun Dein Geist gelost. Er sprach sich aus in zaubervollen Tönen, Jetzt schwebt er hin zum unvergänglich Schönen..
