On Being Overlooked: Antonio Salieri’s Complicity in Mozart’s Death
I’ll get to the point: He didn’t do it.
History books are capricious masters. It’s unpredictable who gets recorded and why. Asked to name the two most famous composers and Mozart and Beethoven come up. Rightly so, too. Asked to name a contemporary of Mozart’s, and Antonio Salieri immediately comes to mind. Salieri (1750–1825) is an overlooked genius. From 1774 to 1824, 50 years, he shaped and defined music. Specifically, eighteen-century opera, having written 41 between 1771 and 1804, in three languages. He was also one of the best and most sought-after teachers available. Beethoven had him as a teacher, albeit at different time. He taught Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer was the most successful opera composer in history and another case of being overlooked.
Today, Salieri is remembered only in terms of Mozart. No one answered my question of the most famous composers with Salieri but mention Mozart, and Salieri comes to mind. We can name more of the Three Tenors than we can Salieri’s operas. It gets worse. Salieri is really remembered only because of Peter Shaffer’s 1984 movie Amadeus. It was so influential that we think Salieri looks like F. Murray Abraham. It gets even worse. The only reason we really remember him is that he is accused of killing Mozart. The story is worthy of an NBC Dateline episode. And opera. In 1897 Rimsky-Korsakov wrote Mozart and Salieri. The accusations have never really died down, and even today are controversial. This issue has never been resolved.
The facts
What is the likely truth then? We can start with what we know, or rather what we know we don’t know. Direct evidence is hard to come by of Mozart:
· We have no remains. Mozart was buried in an unmarked grave. To make this story sadder, the few people who did attend the funeral, left before they got to the graveyard, as was the custom of the day.
· The closest we have to a photograph is an unfinished portrait from nine years earlier. That doesn’t stop some forensic experts from drawing conclusions but largely, the painting is of little help.
· There was no death certificate or autopsy, so we have no expert record from the time of death. His own physician was vague about the symptoms.
What we do have is the historical record. It is known that he became sick on September 6, 1791, in Prague while attending the premiere of his opera La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus), for the coronation of Emperor Leopold II. That evening his friend Franz Niemetschek said he appeared pale and sad but still entertained friends at a party. From this time on, he required almost continual care. Returning to Vienna, he continued work on a requiem, commissioned from him earlier in the year. As his health deteriorated, he told his wife Constanze that he suspected poisoning. “I feel it too well,” she recorded in an 1824 interview, “my end is drawing near. I must have taken poison; I cannot get this idea out of my mind.” Specifically, one named aqua toffana, but provided no additional details. He would later change his mind twice on this issue. He became bedridden for the last fifteen days of his life but still wrote music. He had intense swelling of his hands and feet, was almost immobile, being painful to turn in bed, complained of a bitter taste on his tongue, and had sudden vomiting spells. He remained conscious until two hours before his death, and died on the morning of December 5, 1791.
What can be dismissed is poisoning. Notice that it was Mozart himself who started that rumor. Aqua toffana, is a slow-acting, arsenic-based poison. While it is colorless and tasteless, making it easy to slip into a drink or food, it requires several doses. It would induce the vomiting, but no other symptoms matching Mozart’s. In a letter published in 1824, Dr. Thomas Franz Closset, Mozart’s physician, discounted poisoning saying his affliction was “a rheumatic and inflammatory fever,“ and ″that it is impossible the slightest trace of anything violent, of anything like poison, could have escaped [me].″ It is interesting to note that the ink Mozart used contained arsenic, though not sufficiently concentrated. The ink might have killed him in 20 years. Not being aqua toffana doesn’t mean he wasn’t still poisoned. But again, there is little evidence supporting any type of poison.
The likely causes
The most likely cause was a natural death from kidney disease. In later stages, it could produce the excessive swelling, and the bitter taste due to uremic poisoning, or uremia. Uremia is the accumulation of toxins in the blood and is life-threatening. It is known that Mozart had childhood illnesses such as scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, smallpox, toothaches, and probably incidental mercury poisoning, all of which could contribute to kidney disease.
The cast of thousands
So how did Salieri get accused? While the connection may be obvious to us now, it wasn’t back then. The first documentation of the accusation was in 1803, a full 12 years after Mozart’s death. Carl Maria von Weber, a cousin of Mozart’s wife Constanze, wrote of his meeting Salieri once. The rumors got a boost in 1823 after a failed suicide attempt by Salieri. During the attempt, and perhaps in a deranged state of mind, he confessed to the murder. A lucid Salieri later recanted the statement, saying “I can say in good faith that there is no truth to the absurd rumor that I poisoned Mozart.” Two of his servants who had been with him that night testified they never heard him confess to the murder.
The relationship between Mozart and Salieri, which stands as the main issue here, is hard to define. Yes, Mozart was one of Salieri’s few direct competitors, namely in Italian opera. But Salieri was always in a position of authority over Mozart. Until emperor Joseph II’s death in 1790, just a year before Mozart’s own death, Salieri was court composer, director of the Italian Opera, and court conductor. Salieri had considerable influence over theaters and patronage. Mozart believed Salieri unduly influenced the emperor against his operas The Abduction from the Seraglio, and later, The Marriage of Figaro. Mozart suspected Salieri blocked him in 1789 from teaching piano to the princess of Württemberg, which would have been an important source of income. Too, Salieri was far from alone in disliking Mozart. The emperor’s court had a complete cabal working against Mozart. There is no doubt that Salieri was open to using his power for his own ends. By all accounts, he was an egoist, shrewd, and had what the philosopher Francis Bacon called crooked wisdom. But however talented, ultimately, Mozart was no threat to Salieri. The point is, Salieri had no motive for killing Mozart. Even at that, there is no evidence that Salieri had any hostility towards Mozart in anything but a professional realm. Constanze publicly stated she thought Mozart’s death was due to illness and overwork. She was well aware of the professional accusations but never commented on them. Constanze even allowed Salieri to be her son’s teacher in 1807, an odd thing to do if she truly believed the rumors. Salieri’s staunchest supporter was Beethoven. He was Beethoven’s favorite teacher and later, friend.
Mozart’s biographers all but acquitted Salieri. Franz Niemetschek, Mozart’s first biographer in 1798, never mentioned the accusation. Edward Holmes’ 1845 biography The Life of Mozart mentions it only as a footnote. As did Otto Jahn in his 1859 biography, going as far as calling the accusation shameful. The other biographers Arthur Schurig, Eric Blom, and Nicholas Slonimsky maintained the same position.
This aspect becomes clear. There is not a major character, contemporary, or expert in this story who supports any accusations. What we’re left with is hearsay and time-honored rumor-mongering. In 1824, Beethoven concertgoers were passed a leaflet containing a poem, and a cartoon picturing Salieri over Mozart with the poisoned cup. The composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini, remembered mostly for the Lone Ranger theme, refused to ever meet Salieri. But Rossini had no direct involvement with or direct knowledge of the issue. He was acting only on rumors.
It gets odder, too. In 1861, Georg Friedrich Daumer, a researcher of antiquities and religious polemicist, a profession we would now call an internet troll, accused the Freemasons of the murder. Mozart had been a Freemason for seven years and was well-regarded among the brotherhood. However, his music in general, and the Magic Flute in specific, strayed from their ideals, and he did not adhere to the Masonic principles.
This theory got a boost during the Nazi period by none other than General Erich Ludendorff, the German hero of World War I. As might be expected, there were anti-Semitic accusations and that his death was part of a larger plot to “rob Germans of their national pride.” The Russians as late as 1953 claimed to have evidence supporting the accusations. The Soviet musicologist Igor Boelza was said to have a document written by Mozart’s priest noting the confession, but Boelza never produced the document.
Conclusion
It’s hard to figure out Salieri’s status for history books. Even in his own lifetime, his music faded. Maybe history books are fair: He wasn’t that good. His music just didn’t stand the test of time, or the audiences didn’t think it interesting. Certainly, he wasn’t the only one. Or maybe history books are unfair: He was that good but just not remembered. And such a shame for the fact we don’t listen to his music more. Salieri has the unique position of being remembered for other reasons. It was truly the day the music died, but it keeps Salieri in the history books, if only as a footnote.