Italian composer of the Classical period, Antonio Salieri, (1750-1825), was born in Legnano on August 18, 1750. He was the chief composer at the Viennese court.
Salieri was raised in a family of merchants. He studied harpsichord and violin early on. While young, his parents died. He eventually moved to Padua, then to Venice, where he met the composer Florian L. Gassman who invited him to attend the court of Vienna. Salieri studied with Gassman in Vienna, where he lived mainly. He was a friend of Christoph Gluck who was also his patron. Later, he became a court composer and conductor of the Italian opera, and court Kapellmeister.
He taught Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, and J. Nepomuk Hummel.
Salieri played the continuo in the first performance of Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation in 1798. He was conductor of the Tonkünstler Society. His music found enthusiastic audiences in Italy, France and Vienna.
Antonio Salieri was a musical rival of the younger Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, said to have intrigued the latter, and allegedly poisoned Mozart at the emperor’s court in Vienna, where he held the position of court composer. Such suggestion of poisoning is almost certainly not true. Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Mozart and Salieri, based on a poem by the great Russian poet Pushkin, has Salieri claiming that he poisoned Mozart, a theory made more melodramatic by the subsequent film Amadeus produced by Peter Shaffer, starring Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham This murder concept has been virtually disproved.
As Salieri's musical style became old-fashioned, his works lost favor and he composed relatively little after 1804, but remained an influential figure in Viennese musical life. He died in Vienna in 1825, age 75.
Salieri’s numerous Italian operas are traditional in their emphasis on melodic expression but they also show Gluck’s great influence especially with dramatic choral writing. He startled the public with his opera Les Danaides / The Danaids (Paris,1784), with its shocking subject concerning the horrors of hell.
Two of his greatest librettists:
- Lorenzo da Ponte, (who also wrote for Mozart)
- Giovanni Battista Casti, a distinguished poet
Salieri's operas include:
- Armida
- Les Danaides (The Danaids)
- Tarare, his most ambitious opera (1787)
- Falstaff (after Shakespeare)
- Angiolina
Among his other compositions:
- Oratorios
- Church music (including Masses, a requiem and litanies)
- Cantatas
- Arias
- Vocal ensembles
- Songs
- Symphonies
- Concertos
- Chamber music.
His greatest success is generally considered to be Tarare (1787), establishing him as Gluck’s musical heir apparent.
Perhaps the greatest tribute to Antonio Salieri comes from librettist da Ponte from his Memoirs in 1830, re-quoted from the Salieri Album, Decca:
"... Salieri, a man I truly liked and respected - not just because I owed him a debt of gratitude. I spent many happy hours and scholarly hours with him, and for six years he was not merely a friend but a brother to me."
Recommended CD:
The Salieri album, Cecilia Bartoli, Decca 475 100-2
Sources:
Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie (1994)
Harrap's Illustrated Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1990)
Peter Shaffer's Amadeus (Movie)
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