Talent and Fairness

It doesn't seem fair that a creep like Wagner could write such beautiful music.

I'm puzzled by your statement. What does "fairness" have to do with talent or genius?

I don't know if you ever saw the 1984 movie Amadeus, but its dramatic tension derived from the fact that the cut-up delinquent Mozart out-composed the more pious hack Antonio Salieri. The former ended up in a pauper's grave but famous for the ages and the latter in an insane asylum consigned to oblivion.

The problem with getting your history from the movies is that truth is often subordinated to the needs of the plot. The supposed rivalry between Mozart and Salieri is largely a fiction. Although music historians have tried to correct the mistakes of the movie, they have largely worked in vain and the false history has displaced the true in populat culture. The author of the play on which the movie was based, Peter Shaffer, has said publicly that it is fiction, not fact—to no avail.Salieri was an important and respected musician in his time, and while as a composer he was not a match for Mozart—feasibly the greatest composer of all time—he did quite well and his works were popular in his day. He composed over 40 operas and a small number of instrumental works. In addition he taught composition to a number of well known composers, among them Beethoven, Czerny, Hummel, Lizst, Meyerbeer, and Schubert. Salieri did not go insane and he was not confined to an asylum, merely hospitalized a short time before his death. He and Mozart apparently got along quite well and composed a cantata together. Salieri attended the premiere of the Magic Flute and liked it. He conducted Mozart's works including a performance of Mozart's G-minor Symphony.In the last few years full recordings of three of Salieri's operas have been made and his work is being rediscovered and appreciated again.