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Mozart

We know that Mozart is the hero of the movie Amadeus. We know this because the movie is given his name, and because - unless we are music scholars - we know about Mozart and not Salieri. But by the end of the movie we have come to understand that Salieri is a heroic figure as well, and we come to a greater appreciation of the heroism of those for whom great acts - artistic or otherwise - are essayed.

One of the issues that the movie touches on is the importance of the different national schools of music that were to some extent at war with one another at the Viennese court. Salieri was one of the many teachers of Italian musical style, and his success (and failure) rested not only upon his own skills and merits as a musician but also on the importance of Italian music, which was seen as more entertaining and more joyous than either French or German music. Italian music - more in contrast with German music than with French - was also more inclined to emphasize vocal over instrumental music, homophony over polyphony, and melody over counterpoint. German composers and audiences applied themselves to the study of Italian music to imbue their own work with greater vitality and greater lightness.

In the movie Amadeus, Salieri is presented as a man who is fundamentally tormented by the fact that God has given the powers to make the most beautiful music to a "creature". Salieri sees music and composition as one of the greatest and most sophisticated acts to which humans can aspire: He sees the ability to create and appreciate music as defining characteristics of humanity. And yet even as he believes that music is a gift to humanity from God himself he also sees evidence of this gift in Mozart, a man who cannot possibly be favored by God because he is impious and immoral.

Although Salieri never articulates the alternative possibility (at least not explicitly) in the movie, he at least hints that Mozart's gifts (s

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Mozart. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:27, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1688137.html