A few days ago I watched the film Amadeus with some friends of mine. It is a fantastic movie: beautifully filmed and shot, and with some of the finest acting I've ever seen. It's a deeply moving story of artistic struggle - and not only that, but a very funny character assassination.
Yes, it is completely historically inaccurate: neither Mozart nor Salieri much resembled their real-life counterparts; Salieri most certainly did not kill Mozart; and beyond some rivalry in trying to acquire jobs there is no evidence of acrimony between them. (Mozart said some rude things about Salieri, but let's be fair, Mozart said rude things about lots of composers.) And indeed, Mozart and Salieri even jointly composed a cantata!
Salieri was forgotten for a very long time until the twentieth century. Indeed, he can owe his revival to the 1979 play Amadeus that gave way to the 1984 film Amadeus. It's one of life's little ironies.
Was this just?
On the basis of Salieri's '26 Variations on La Folia', probably not. The 'Variations' were the best known set of orchestral theme-and-variations until Brahms' 'Variations on a Theme of Haydn'. Salieri's 'Variations' use a melody called La Folia, a very simple 16-bar melody that has survived through the centuries to this very day.
The '26 Variations' date to 1815, as Beethoven is entering his late period of creativity. Salieri doesn't stray far from La Folia, so much of the variation in his work is in the orchestra: you could, not entirely unfairly, compare it to Ravel's 'Bolero' in that respect. It's an exercise in orchestration. There's a harp solo, a violin solo, and skillful use is made throughout of woodwind colors and of rhythmic variation. If Ravel's 'Bolero' could survive, why not Salieri's 'Variations'?
Many composers have been forgotten. Today's classical recording industry is a blessing: many composers that were forgotten, be it shortly after their death or over the course of the 20th century, are now being revived. This is a good thing.
Music historians are doing excellent work also: Christopher Fifield's book The German Symphony Between Beethoven and Brahms restores numerous composers between the two Bs to their place in history, and Douglas Shadle's The Nineteenth Century American Symphonic Enterprise is an excellent corrective to the silly idea that no truly American classical music existed until Dvorak. If you can check them out through your local Library, I highly recommend both.
A few years ago, I can not remember when, I read an article about two groups that were each shown a Classical-era symphony. One was told it was by Mozart; the other, given the name of its true composer. As you may expect, the group told that it was a Mozart symphony thought far more highly of it then the other group.
The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that the symphony was neither as great as the first group thought it, nor as poor as the second group regarded it.
The second and less obvious conclusion to draw, and this relates to Salieri's unjustly forgotten Variations and to the recording industry spurred revival of forgotten composers, is that genius is both more and less common then we think it is.
Firstly, it is more common then we think it is in that more composers have been touched with it then we generally like to admit. Perhaps with less frequency then the great names that we tend to remember, but still touched with it.
Secondly, it is less common then we think in that our tendency to elevate certain Men of Genius above other men (and women) results in some of their works being elevated above their merit by virtue of the name attached. If Beethoven hits genius more often then any of his contemporaries, does that really justify forgetting the many fine works of Louis Spohr? If Schumann is remembered for his unique brand of brilliance, even if he is sometimes criticized, and for the emotion of his work, does that really justify forgetting the symphonies of Johann Kalliwoda, whose work was a major influence on Schumann, to the point that Schumann outright borrowed some of Kalliwoda's techniques?
Reader, I don't think it does.
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