THE CHARACTERS


Antonio SALIERI


salieri
"Salieri was a much applauded conductor and composser of operas and other works, who entered the royal service in Vienna in his early twenties and continued in it for the remaining half century of his life. He was the associate of Gluck and Haydn, and the teacher of Beethoven and Schubert. He is said to have disliked Mozart, who had become in some degree a rival of his in Vienna."
The Oxford Companion to Music, ed. Percy Scholes (1938)

"Salieri was Chapelmaster to the Court, a clever shrewd man, possessed of what Bacon called crooked wisdom; and he was backed by ... a cabal not easily put down." Michael Kelly, Reminiscences (1826)
"An intriguer ... There can be no question of Salieri's malevolent interference with the success of his Austrian colleagues. His fine musicianship told him to concentrate his malice on Mozart, whose lamentable fate was due in no small degree to the Italian's machinations."
P. H. Lang, Music in Western Civilisation (1941)

"You can hardly imagine how charming they were and how much they liked not only my music, but the libretto and everything. They both said that it was an 'operone', worthy to be performed for the grandest festival and before the greatest monarch."
Mozart, after taking Salieri and Mme Cavalieri to The Magic Flute

"In the company of Paesiello, Martini, Salieri, and Haydn etc, Mozart said to the last, with whom he was friendly, 'I will make an exception for you, but all the other composers are veritable asses!'"
Sulpiz Boisserée, Diary (November 1815)

"Artists were calmly proceeding, industriously and actively, along the sure and direct road of art and approaching their fulfilment, according to the laws of Nature—when suddenly Mozart appeared, and by the force of his genius brought about a general revolution in artistic taste."
Ernst Ludwig Gerber, New Lexicon (1813)

Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART


mozart
"The score was no sooner put upon his desk, than he began to play the symphony in a most masterly manner, as well as the time and style which corresponded with the intention of the composer ... His voice in the tone of it was thin and infantine, but nothing could exceed the masterly way in which he sung. His father, who took the underpart of the duet, was once or twice out ... on which occasions the son looked back with some anger, pointing to him his mistakes." Daines Barrington, English lawyer and magistrate. (In June 1765, when Mozart was nine, Barrington was sent to test his powers.) "One day when I was sitting at the pianoforte playing the 'Non più andrai' from Figaro, Mozart, who was paying a visit to us, came up behind me ... He hummed the melody as I played and beat the time on my shoulders; but then he suddenly moved a chair up, and began to improvise such wonderfully beautiful variations that everyone listened to the tones of the German Orpheus with bated breath. But then he suddenly tired of it, jumped up, and, in the mad mood which so often came over him, he began to leap over tables and chairs, miaow like a cat, and turn somersaults like an unruly boy."
Karoline Pichler, Memoirs (1843-44)

"He was extremely irritable: his affections were lively but of short duration. He was melancholic and dominated by an active and mercurial imagination, which was only feebly kept in check by his reason. Mozart was all his life a sort of child. All his sentiments had more violence than depth ... He loved a few women with a liveliness which at first gave the appearance of passion but promptly burnt itself out."
J. B. A. Suard (1804)

"Well, I wish you good night, but first shit into your bed and make it burst. Sleep soundly, my love, into your mouth your arse you'll shove. Now I'm off to fool about and then I'll sleep a bit, no doubt. Tomorrow we'll talk sensibly for a bit vomit. I tell a things of lot to have you, you imagine can't simply how have I much say to; but hear all tomorrow it will you. Meanwhile, good-bye. Oh, my arse is burning like fire!"
Mozart, aged 21, in a letter to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart (5 November, 1777)

"Now farewell, dearest friend, dearest Hikkiti Horky! That is your name, as you must know. We invented names for ourselves on the journey. Here they are. I am Punkititi. My wife is Schabla Pumfa. Hofer is Rozka Pumpa. Stadler is Notschibikitschibi. My servant Joseph is Sagdarata. My dog Goukerl is Schomanntzky. Madame Quallenberg is Runzifunzi. Mlle Crux is Ramlo Schurimuri. Freistädtler is Gaulimauli. Be so kind as to tell him his name."
Mozart, aged 31, in a letter to Baron Gottfried von Jacquin (14 January 1787)

"I have never before heard anyone play with such intelligence and grace. 1 was particularly overwhelmed by an adagio and by several of his extempore variations for which the emperor had chosen the theme, and which we were to devise alternately."
Clementi on Mozart (1781)

..."Clementi's sonatas ... are worthless ... Clementi is a ciarlatino, like all Italians. He writes Presto over a sonata or even Prestissimo and Alla breve and plays it himself Allegro in 4/4 time ... What he does really well are his passages in thirds; but he sweated over them day and night in London. Apart from this, he can do nothing, absolutely nothing, for he has not the slightest expression or taste, still less, feeling."
Mozart on Clementi, letter to his father (1783)

"As Mozart and his wife were climbing into the coach for Prague the messenger stood ghost-like before them, touched Mozart's wife on the coat, and asked: 'What will happen to the Requiem now?'. . . In Prague Mozart fell ill and dosed himself ceaselessly; his colour was pale and his countenance sad ... A foreboding sense of his approaching death seemed to have produced this melancholy mood."
Franz Xaver Niemetschek, Mozart (1808)


"If I were to tell you all the things I do with your portrait you would certainly laugh. When I take it out of its case, I say: 'Hello Stanzerl, little rascal ... kiss and hug.' When I put it in again, I let it slide in slowly and keep saying 'Ah-ah-ah-ah!' in the special way that meaning demands. Then at last a quick 'Good night, little mouse. Sleep tight!'"
Mozart to Constanze (1789)

"In July (1790) a mysterious messenger presented Mozart with an anonymous letter inviting him to compose a Requiem Mass and to name his own price for it. He accepted the offer ... Yet he could not rid himself of the idea that he had been poisoned, that the messenger was a visitant from the other world, and that he was composing the Requiem for his own death."
Edward J. Dent, Mozart's Operas (1913)

JOSEPH II of Austria


joseph
"Joseph II is perhaps the completest enlightened despot in European history ... His youthful reading had brought him certain doctrines of the inherent natural rights of man ... but he also believed that in all matters temporal, the ruler was absolute, responsible to no man ... Joseph decided everything himself, from issues of the highest policy to such problems as whether a zebra should be bought for Schönbrunn Zoo, or whether girls in State institutions should wear stays."
C. A. Macartney, The Hapsburg Empire (1968)

"Joseph II formed the plan ... of alienating taste from Italian operas by supporting German Singspiele and singers ... He accordingly assembled the best singers, and commissioned a German opera from Mozart. For these virtuosi he wrote the well-known and well-loved Singspiel The Flight from the Seraglio in 1782. It created a widespread sensation; and the cunning Italians soon saw that such a mind could endanger their foreign tinklings. Envy now awoke with all the sharpness of Italian poison! The monarch, at heart delighted with this new and deeply expressive music, nevertheless said to Mozart: 'Very many notes, my dear Mozart!'"
Franz Xaver Niemetschek, Mozart (1808)

"The imperial court and administration, the latter much increased by the new bureaucracy created by Joseph II, and the financial and commercial interests that gravitated to it, constituted a sizeable musical public of whom a significant proportion were musical amateurs ... The Court itself, despite economics compared with the lavish outlay of earlier times, was still the foremost patron."
Hugh Ottoway, Mozart (1979)

"The Emperor himself is well aware of his own meanness and has passed me over solely on this account."
Mozart, letter to his father (October 1782)

Joseph: "The opera [Don Giovanni] is divine, and perhaps it is finer than Figaro, but it is not food for the teeth of my Viennese." Mozart: "Let us give them time to chew it."