| Antonio Salieri | |
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Real Name |
Antonio Salieri |
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Born |
18 August, 1750 |
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Died |
7 May, 1825 |
Origin[]
Antonio Salieri was an Italian composer and teacher of the classical period. He was born in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy.
Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers. Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 until 1792, Salieri dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna. During his career, he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and his dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. As the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was responsible for music at the court chapel and attached school. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Eberl, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart were among the most famous of his pupils.
Antonio Salieri was born on August 18, 1750, to Antonio Salieri and Anna Maria. Salieri started his musical studies in his native town of Legnago; he was first taught at home by his older brother Francesco Salieri, and he received further lessons from the organist, Giuseppe Simoni. Salieri remembered little from his childhood in later years except for passions for sugar, reading, and music. Sometime between 1763 and 1764, both of Salieri's parents died, and he was briefly taken in by an anonymous brother, a monk in Padua, and then for unknown reasons in 1765 or 1766, he became the ward of a Venetian nobleman named Giovanni Mocenigo, a member of the powerful and well connected Mocenigo family. It is possible that Salieri's father and Mocenigo were friends or business associates, but this is obscure. While living in Venice, Salieri continued his musical studies with the organist and opera composer Giovanni Battista Pescetti, then following Pescetti's sudden death he studied with the opera singer Ferdinando Pacini (or Pasini). It was through Pacini that Salieri gained the attention of the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann, who, impressed with his protege's talents and concerned for the boy's future, took the young orphan to Vienna, where he personally directed and paid for the remainder of Salieri's musical education. Salieri and Gassmann arrived in Vienna on 1766. Gassmann's first act was to take Salieri to the Italian Church to consecrate his teaching and service to God. Salieri's education included instruction in Latin and Italian poetry by Fr. Don Pietro Tommasi, instruction in the German language, and European literature. His music studies revolved around vocal composition and thoroughbass. His musical theory training in harmony and counterpoint was rooted in Johann Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, which Salieri translated during each Latin lesson. As a result, Salieri continued to live with Gassmann even after Gassmann's marriage, an arrangement that lasted until the year of Gassmann's death and Salieri's own marriage in 1774. Beginning in 1766 Gassmann introduced Salieri to the daily chamber music performances held during Emperor Joseph II's evening meal. Salieri quickly impressed the Emperor. This was the beginning of a relationship between monarch and musician that lasted until Joseph's death. Salieri met Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known as Metastasio, and Christoph Willibald Gluck during this period at the Sunday morning salons held at the home of the Martinez family. Over the next several years Metastasio gave Salieri informal instruction in prosody and the declamation of Italian poetry, and Gluck became an informal advisor, friend, and confidante. It was toward the end of this extended period of study that Gassmann was called away on a new opera commission and a gap in the theater's program allowed for Salieri to make his debut as a composer of a completely original. The modest success of this opera launched Salieri's 34-year operatic career as a composer of over 35 original dramas.
Following the modest success. Salieri received new commissions for writing two additional operas in 1770, both with libretti by Giovanni Boccherini. In these first works, drawn mostly from the traditions of mid-century opera buffa, Salieri showed a penchant for experimentation and for mixing the established characteristics of specific operatic genres. The mixing and pushing against the boundaries of established operatic genres was a continuing hallmark of Salieri's own personal style, and in his choice of material for the plot (as in his first opera), he manifested a lifelong interest in subjects drawn from classic drama and literature. Salieri's first great success was in the realm of serious opera. Commissioned for an unknown occasion, Salieri's Armida, was translated into German and widely performed, especially in the northern German states, where it helped to establish Salieri's reputation as an important and innovative modern composer. It was also the first opera to receive a serious preparation in a piano and vocal reduction by Carl Friedrich Cramer in 1783. Armida was soon followed by Salieri's first truly popular success, La Fiera di Venezia. Salieri's next two operas were not particular or lasting successes, This uneven work was followed by a popular comedic success La locandiera, The majority of Salieri's modest number of instrumental works also date from this time. Upon Gassmann's death on 21 January, Salieri succeeded him as assistant director of the Italian opera in early 1774. On 10 October 1775 Salieri married Therese Helferstorfer, the daughter of a recently deceased financier and official of the court treasury. Sacred music was not a high priority for the composer during this stage of his career. During the next three years, Salieri was primarily concerned with rehearsing and conducting the Italian opera company in Vienna and with teaching. After the financial collapse of the Italian opera company in 1777 due to financial mismanagement, Joseph II decided to end the performance of Italian opera. This in effect left Salieri's role as assistant court composer in a much-reduced position. For the young composer, there would be few, if any, new compositional commissions to receive from the court. Salieri was left with few financial options and he began casting about for new opportunities.
In 1778, Gluck turned down an offer to compose the inaugural opera for La Scala in Milan. Salieri was offered the commission, which he gratefully accepted. Joseph II granted Salieri permission to take a year-long leave of absence (later extended), enabling him to write for La Scala and to undertake a tour of Italy. Salieri's Italian tour of 1778–80 began From Milan, Salieri included stops in Venice and Rome before returning to Milan. During this tour, he wrote three new comic operas and he collaborated with Giacomo Rust on one opera. Of his Italian works one, La Scuola de' gelosi (The School for Jealousy), a witty study of amorous intrigue and emotion, proved a popular and lasting international success.
Upon his return at imperial behest to Vienna in 1780, Salieri wrote a work that did not last in theaters, Mozart's work being the one that lasted until the 18th century. In 1783 the Italian opera company was revived with singers partly chosen and vetted by Salieri during his Italian tour; the new season opened with a slightly re-worked version of Salieri's recent success La Scuola de' gelosi. Salieri then returned to his rounds of rehearsing, composition, and teaching. However, his time at home in Vienna quickly ended when an opportunity to write an opera for Paris arose, again through the patronage of Gluck. Salieri traveled abroad to fulfill an important commission. The original commission that reached Salieri in 1783–84 was to assist Gluck in finishing a work (The opera Les Danaïdes) for Paris that had been all but completed; in reality, Gluck had failed to notate any of the scores for the new opera and gave the entire project over to his young friend. Gluck feared that the Parisian critics would denounce the opera by a young composer known mostly for comic pieces and so the opera was originally billed in the press as being a new work by Gluck with some assistance from Salieri, then shortly before the premiere of the opera the Parisian press reported that the work was to be partly by Gluck and partly by Salieri, and finally, after popular and critical success on stage, the opera was acknowledged in a letter to the public by Gluck as being wholly by the young Salieri. Les Danaïdes was received with great acclaim and its popularity with audiences and critics alike produced several further requests for new works for Paris audiences by Salieri. The opera was on the stages of Paris for more than forty years. Upon returning to Vienna following his success in Paris, Salieri met and befriended Lorenzo Da Ponte and had his first professional encounters with Mozart. Joseph II had Mozart and Salieri each contribute a one-act opera and/or Singspiel for production at a banquet in 1786. Salieri then returned to Paris for the premiere of his tragédie Lyrique Les Horaces (The Horatii), which proved a failure, which was more than made up for with his next Parisian opera Tarare, with a libretto by Beaumarchais. The success of his opera Tarare was such that it was soon translated into Italian at Joseph II's behest by Lorenzo Da Ponte as Axur, re d'Ormus (Axur, King of Hormuz) and staged at the royal wedding of Franz II in 1788.
In 1788 Salieri returned to Vienna, where he remained for the rest of his life. In that year he became Kapellmeister of the Imperial Chapel upon the death of Giuseppe Bonno; as Kapellmeister he conducted the music and musical school connected with the chapel until shortly before his death, being officially retired from the post in 1824. Axur and his other new compositions completed by 1792 marked the height of Salieri's popularity and his influence. Just as his apogee of fame was being reached abroad, his influence in Vienna began to diminish with the death of Joseph II in 1790. During this period, Salieri composed two additional extremely innovative musical dramas to libretti by Giovanni Casti. Due, however, to their satiric and overtly liberal political inclinations, both operas were seen as unsuitable for public performance. This resulted in two of his most original operas being consigned to his desk drawer. Two other operas of little success and long-term importance were composed in 1789, and one great popular success La cifra (The Cipher). As Salieri's political position became insecure he retired as director of the Italian opera in 1792. He continued to write new operas per imperial contract until 1804 when he voluntarily withdrew from the stage.
When Salieri retired from the stage, he recognized that artistic styles had changed and he felt that he no longer had the creative capacity to adapt or the emotional desire to continue. Also as Salieri aged, he moved slowly away from his more liberal political stances as he saw the enlightened reform of Joseph II's reign, and the hoped-for reforms of the French revolution, replaced with more radical revolutionary ideas. As the political situation threatened and eventually overwhelmed Austria, which was repeatedly crushed by French political forces. The emotional effect that this political, social, and cultural upheaval had on the composer. That these radical changes, especially the invasion and defeat of Austria, and the occupation of Vienna intertwined with the personal losses that struck Salieri in the same period, led to his withdrawal from operatic work. As his teaching and work with the imperial chapel continued, his duties required the composition of a large number of sacred works, and in his last years, it was almost exclusively in religious works and teaching that Salieri occupied himself. Among his compositions written for the chapel were two complete sets of vespers, many graduals, offertories, and four orchestral masses. During this period he lost his only son in 1805 and his wife in 1807. Salieri continued to conduct publicly. He also continued to help administer several charities and organize their musical events. His remaining secular works in this late period fall into three categories: first, large-scale cantatas and one oratorio Habsburg written on patriotic themes or in response to the international political situation, pedagogical works written to aid his students in voice, and finally simple songs, rounds or canons written for home entertainment; many with original poetry by the composer. His teaching of budding young musicians continued, and among his pupils in composition (usually vocal) were Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonio Casimir Cartellieri, Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert. He also instructed many prominent singers throughout his career, including Caterina Canzi. All but the wealthiest of his pupils received their lessons for free, a tribute to the kindness Gassmann had shown Salieri as a penniless orphan. In November 1823 Salieri attempted suicide. He was committed to medical care and suffered dementia for the last year and a half of his life. He died in Vienna on 7 May 1825, aged 74 and was buried in the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof on 10 May. At his memorial service on 22 June 1825, his own Requiem in C minor – composed in 1804 – was performed for the first time. His remains were later transferred to the Zentralfriedhof.
The relationship between Mozart and Salieri was complex. In the 1780s, while Mozart lived and worked in Vienna, he and his father Leopold wrote in their letters that several "cabals" of Italians led by Salieri were actively putting obstacles in the way of Mozart's obtaining certain posts or staging his operas. Their letters suggest that both Mozart and his father, being Austrians who resented the special place that Italian composers had in the courts of the Austrian nobility, blamed the Italians in general and Salieri in particular for all of Mozart's difficulties in establishing himself in Vienna. In July 1783, he again wrote to his father of "a trick of Salieri's", one of several letters in which Mozart accused Salieri of trickery. Decades after Mozart's death, a rumor began to circulate that Mozart had been poisoned by Salieri. This rumor has been attributed by some to a rivalry between the German and the Italian schools of music.Carl Maria von Weber, a relative of Mozart by marriage, is said to have refused to join the Ludlamshöhle (Ludlam's cave), a social club of which Salieri was a member, and avoided having anything to do with him. These rumors then made their way into popular culture. The Mozart's rivalry with Salieri could have originated with an incident in 1781, when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of Princess Elisabeth of Württemberg, and Salieri was selected instead because of his reputation as a singing teacher. The following year Mozart once again failed to be selected as the princess's piano teacher. But at the time of the premiere of Figaro, Salieri was busy with his new French opera Les Horaces. In addition, when Lorenzo Da Ponte was in Prague preparing the production of Mozart's setting of his Don Giovanni, the poet was ordered back to Vienna for a royal wedding at which Salieri's Axur, re d'Ormus would be performed. Mozart was not pleased by this. The rivalry between Salieri and Mozart became publicly visible as well as audible during the opera composition competition held by Emperor Joseph II in 1786 in the Orangery at Schönbrunn. Mozart was considered the loser of this competition. However, there is also evidence attesting to Mozart and Salieri sometimes appearing to support each other's work. For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788, he chose to revive Figaro instead of introducing a new opera of his own, and when he attended the coronation festivities for Leopold II in 1790, Salieri had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage. Salieri and Mozart even jointly composed a cantata for voice and piano, Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, which celebrated the return to the stage of the singer Nancy Storace. In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart told his wife that he had picked up Salieri and Caterina Cavalieri in his carriage and driven them both to the opera; about Salieri's attendance at his opera The Magic Flute, speaking enthusiastically. Salieri, along with Mozart's protégé Johann Nepomuk Hummel educated Mozart's younger son Franz Xaver Mozart, who was born about four months before his father's death.
Public Domain Works[]
All works made by Antonio Salieri published before January 1, 1929 are in the public domain in the US.
Some notable works are listed below:
Public Domain Music Composed by Salieri[]
List of compositions by Antonio Salieri can be found here.
- Mass in C major
Public Domain Theatrical Works by Salieri[]
List of operas by Antonio Salieri can be found here.
- Armida
- La fiera di Venezia
- La scuola de' gelosi
- Der Rauchfangkehrer
Public Domain Appearances[]
All published appearances of Antonio Salieri before January 1, 1929 are public domain.
Some Notable Appearances are listed below:
Public Domain Theatrical and musical appearances[]
- Mozart and Salieri (1831)
- Mozart and Salieri (1898), A Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov adaptation of Pushkin's play, Mozart and Salieri (1831), as an opera of the same name.
Notes[]
- The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791 at the age of 35 was followed by rumors that he and Salieri had been bitter rivals, and that Salieri had poisoned the younger composer; however, this has been proven untrue because the symptoms displayed by Mozart's illness did not indicate poisoning and it is likely that they were, at least, mutually respectful peers. Despite denying the allegation, Salieri was greatly affected by the accusations and widespread public belief that he had contributed to Mozart's death, which contributed to his nervous breakdowns in later life.
- Salieri and his music were largely forgotten from the 19th century until the late 20th century. This revival was due to the dramatic and highly fictionalized depiction of Salieri in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus (1979), which was given its greatest exposure in its 1984 film version, directed by Miloš Forman.