
Antonio Salieri’s Revenge - pseudolus
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/03/antonio-salieris-revenge
======
jancsika
> That arrangement lands particularly hard on contemporary composers, who must
> compete with a group of semi-mythical figures who are worshipped as house
> gods.

Likewise, it's probably true that the popular history of modern science
focuses on too small group of well-known 20th-century scientists. But if
you're going to lay out that argument you probably should _not_ choose John
von Neumann as your example case.

Same with W.A. Mozart. He's the semi-mythical gods' semi-mythical god. Where
another composer might write a menuet Mozart might have three dances with
conflicting time signatures sounding at the same time (yet agreeing in their
harmonies). And that's just in passing-- it's not even a climactic moment of
the opera (which itself manages to exceeds that moment in historical
importance).

Or he might throw a wildcard variation into a theme and variations and end up
writing a folk-like melody so convincing that it's extracted for a 21st-
century commercial to sell Irish whiskey.[1]

The impact of Mozart is that you can strip away all the pretension and hero-
worship from the classical world and his music would probably still take up
its current proportion of worldwide performance time. It turns out his music
really is that striking and stands out when people listen closely.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN2kxy--
UiM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN2kxy--UiM)

~~~
iosonofuturista
> That arrangement lands particularly hard on contemporary composers, who must
> compete with a group of semi-mythical figures who are worshipped as house
> gods.

Hardly a new phenomenon. Brahms could be arguably said to belong to that
Pantheon, but he struggled hard with the old composers reputation. Of
particular note its first symphony [0]

But also one can do a search for his quotes relating to Beethoven, Mozart or
Bach.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_(Brahms)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_\(Brahms\))

~~~
jancsika
Right.

What I'm saying is that any composer who would have struggled with Mozart's
reputation would have very quickly hit up against a bigger problem: that
nearly no other human beings have the capacity to remember, synthesize, and
internalize the amount of music necessary to compose the way he did.

That's why while Mozart was "grandfathered" into the Romantic period by early
Romantic composers and writers, everyone emulated Beethoven in practice. At
least obsessive motivic transformation is a tractable problem. (One which,
btw, is a subset of Mozart's output.)

Bach is in that same ballpark, though I'd argue that Mozart's output also
includes examples of clear mastery of Bach's contrapuntal techniques.

------
pseudolus
It's tragic that a man's reputation can be sullied for centuries after his
death merely as the result of the overactive imaginations of court gossips.
Then again, were it not for his reputation as the murderer of Mozart, who
would remember him?

~~~
Apocryphon
Doubtless there were dozens of not hundreds of composers throughout Europe in
that timeframe. Surely there were some forgotten or in obscurity who still had
music worth listening to? At least Salieri’s name and work lives on, even in
another’s shadow.

~~~
JasonFruit
I was a classical violist, and we don't have a lot of repertoire, so we often
rob minor works from other instruments to enrich our stockpiles. I'm amazed at
how little of that material is any good. The taste of generations of musicians
and audiences has done an amazing job of gathering the wheat and releasing the
chaff; there's not much among the productions of minor composers that can
stand with Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and the like. Every
time I find a new work by Draeseke, Zelter, Sirmen, Juon, or some other
mediocrity, I hope this will finally be the one jewel — but it never is.

~~~
atombender
There is definitely a lot of forgettable fluff in the history of music. On the
other hand, there are many great composers that deserve to be better known --
not particularly obscure, but at the same time without the kind of name
recognition of the top tier, except to serious fans of classical music. C. F.
Abel, Biber, Albicastro, Molter, Sances, Marais, Blavet, Leclair, Heinichen,
Forqueray, Carbonelli, Carissimi, Cavalli, Bonporti, Busoni, Zelenka,
Agricola, the Caccinis, Couperin, Gesualdo... Very hard to find concert
programs featuring many of these!

~~~
p1esk
I think Couperin stands out on your list. He’s better known and more popular
than the rest.

~~~
JasonFruit
That may depend on your experience; some of his list are very well known to
vocalists, others to violinists, others to keyboard players, and so on.

~~~
p1esk
I was speaking from the point of view of non-musician/non-specialist. In my
subjective opinion, Couperin would definitely make the top 100 of best
classical composers, while I'm not so sure about the rest. Sure, he's no Bach,
but he's still one of the top composers of baroque period:
[https://www.baroque.org/baroque/composers](https://www.baroque.org/baroque/composers)

------
JuliusPullo
Here is something about the Amadeus play and movie that this author, like so
many others, does not seem to get: the entire plot is based on the illusions
of a madman. Did the author missed the part at the beginning where the
character Salieri slashes his own throat and is then put in a madhouse? Every
account about Mozart and everyone else in the movie/play is the version of
some nut who is clearly out of his mind. "Amadeus" was never meant to be a
historical biography.

------
ken
> I struck off into another street for fear of hearing something still worse.

Antonio was smart enough to stay away from social media!

That also sounds like half the reason he's not a big name today: he was more
interested in writing and teaching music than self-promotion.

------
etqwzutewzu
Salieri.

It reminds me this quote: "Whenever I want to add new functionality to
Sanjay’s code, it seems like the hooks are already there. I feel like Salieri.
I understand the greatness. I don’t understand how it’s done."

in the excellent article "The Friendship That Made Google Huge"
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-
friendship...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-
that-made-google-huge)

