I have just recently watched the 184 film Amadeus in my music appreciation class, and we have been asked to compare the movie with the actually facts and history of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart in Salzburg, Austria. The movie does show Mozart as a child playing music for kings, and the Archbishop. At the age of five he was already composing little pieces, he would play them to his father who would write them down. His performances as a child prodigy began with an exhibition, in 1762, at the court of the Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. During which time in the movie, they tell a story about Antonio Salieri, a young boy in Italy who has a burning passion for music as well. Salieri had learned of Mozart, and idolized him very much. Salieri became the Court Composer for the Emperor of Austria, and when he learned that Mozart was in Vienna he decided to seek him out and see how good he really was. I haven't been able to find anything stating that that event was true, so I'm guessing it was just an additive in the movie. However, After finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. Mozart had a great number of friends and admirers in Salzburg. In 1782 he completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which premiered on July 16, 1782 and was a huge success.
Mozart ended up moving in with the family of his future wife near the height of his quarrels with Colloredo. The Weber family had moved to Vienna from Mannheim, and Mozart;s interest shifted to the third daughter, Constanze. The movie also portrayed the relationship between the two of them. It was true that Mozart had a hard time getting consent from his father to marry her. The couple had six children, but only two survived infancy.
In the movie, it shows that Antonio Salieri was extremely jealous of Mozart's work and the love that the people had for him, but I haven't found anything saying that that was true. Mozart did become intimately acquainted with the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Mozart also met Joseph Haydn in Vienna, and the two became good friends. Haydn in 1785 told the visiting Leopold: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition." The movie showed Mozart as being a huge success when he first started out, and when he first came to Vienna, but for some reason people just stopped coming to see him. It was said in the movie that Mozart should have pupils to teach music to, but he was too proud to teach anyone and said that he needed more time for composition. Some historical facts say that he did in fact have trouble with saving money, and that he and his wife didn't have a luxury life style for long.
Toward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786 he had ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank.
Mozart began drinking pretty heavily, and his last year until his final illness struck, was a time of great productivity. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute, the final piano concerto (K. 595 in B-flat), the Clarinet Concerto K. 622, the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E-flat), the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618, and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
In the movie, after the death of Mozart's father, Salieri's plans to destroy Mozart reached an all time high. He dressed in the costume that Leopold wore and went to Mozart's home to comission a Requiem for "a man that always deserved a Requiem Mass." He was going to get the mass from Mozart, and then acheive Mozart's death. Then, at the funeral he could take credit for the beautiful piece of music that Mozart had written. My absolute FAVORITE scene from the movie is when Mozart is laying in his bed telling Salieri all of the things to write down for the mass. He started with "Confutatis" and you could hear the music in the background as he was thinking of it in his head. Then he moves to "Voca Me" and so on and so forth. Morning comes and Mozart starts getting tired. He asked if he could rest a bit, and then finish the "Lacrymosa". However, he didn't get to finish it. He died at 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 at the age of 35. The evidence that he actually dictated the music to Salieri is very slim. Mozart was burried in a common grave.
