Amadeus: Mozart vs. Salieri

Many accounts of Mozarts life have been created, and no one trul knows what was true and what is false. In the film Amadeus, Mozarts life is portrayed in the 18th century, in Vienna, Italy. This much is true. The film portrays a composer named Antonio Salieri, whom in the movie plots to kill Mozart. Before Salieri meets Mozart, he highly respects Mozart and his music, however, when he meets Mozart in person, he is highly disappointed to find that Mozart's personality does not match the grace and beauty of his music. Salieri cannot believe that God would bestow such a gift upon such a imbecile, and he renounces God completely and vows to do everything he can to destroy Mozart. Throughout the movie, Salieri pretends to befriend Mozart and help him while he tries to tear him down from Behind. The film ends with Salieri attempting suicide to be remembered and leaving a false confession that he murdered Mozart with Arsenic. However this fails, and his confession is disbelieved, which leaves him to live out the remainder of his life in Mediocrity. In reality, evidence suggests that ther may have been antipathy between the two men, but the idea that Salieri was the cause of Mozart's death was not given credence. Some documents show that there may have been rivalry between the two, but a relationship marked by mutual respect existed. In fact, Salieri taught music to Mozart's son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart. Some reject the romantic notion that Mozart wrote out perfect manuscripts of the works already completed in his head. Personally, I think that Mozart was a prodigy that comes along once in a millenia,if that, and was genuinely that kind of musician that no one will ever completely understand.

The Baroque Period Defined

The title word Baroque is italian for bizare, though exuberant is more appropriate, as music in the baroque period is characterized with energy and livelyhood. The term baroque originated in the 1860's to decribe the highly decorative style of the public and religous buildings in the 17th and 18th century. A major theme underlying music at the time was exploration of form. At the time, there was still much to be dicscovered: New harmonic lines and harmonic progressions, combinations of instruments, and new forms in music such as fugue,canon, and variations in a bassline, popular tunes, and chorales. As the 1600's progreesed, these musical forms took definite shape, and the period from 1700 to 1750's can be viewed as highly "Baroque". Also important was the circumstances under which a composer worked. Take Vivaldi, for example.Though he wrote many fine, complex concertos, many of his pieces were meant merely as a five finger exercise for his students. Vivaldi spent most of his working life employed by Ospedale della Pieta.Often called an orphange, the Osepedale, was actually ahome for the female offspring of noblemen.The Osepedale was thus endowed by Numerous "anonymous" fathers. the young chicks were well looked after, their musical standards the highest. Indeed, many of Vivaldi's finest pieces were excerises he would play with his talented women.In the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the different styles and forms of the baroque period were combined to perfection. Johann Sebastian Bach came from a musical family stretching back through many generations, and the Bachs were well-known throughout their "home ground" of Thuringia in what is now southeast Germany. Many of them were church and court musicians, and one or two were instrument makers. During Bach's life time, his son would recall " No musician of any consequence visiting Lepzip would ever fail to visit my father." Lepzig was a important, universal musical city. Musicians from all over the world would come to stay at his apartments in the Thomas school building, where they would make music togeher. In his death he left a tremendous legacy.