Jon Gallant <[log in to unmask]>:

>I must say, I was impressed by F.  Murray Abraham's brilliant and
>affecting performance as Salieri in the movie, but I only recently heard
>an example of Salieri's music, on the radio.  It was a set of variations
>on La Folia, the lovely old tune used to fine effect by many composers from
>Corelli through Rachmaninoff.  You would think nobody could go wrong with
>that theme, but Salieri's treatment was so pedestrian, so cloddish, that it
>sounded like a satire on by-the-numbers composition in the classical style.
>Incredily bad.  It reminded me that there are indeed reasons why some music
>fails the test of time.

There must be many works of Salieri that doesn't worth too much.  I've
heard an infinitesime of them, but that's what statistically one may
expect from many XVIII century composers (due to their high volume of
compositions, let's state it clear).  However, I suppose that I've been
lucky with "my own" Salieri's infinitesime.  I watched once on TV a
complete act of an opera on a "turkish" subject (sorry for my memory:
may some on the list help me to remember th title?).  I enjoyed it very
much and the music was pretty, I mean:  very delicate and driven out
with impeccable taste.  I've heard also a kind of concerto or sinfonia
concertante for oboe and violin (?) (sorry again...), that was not bad
at all.  Let's give the man some credit.  After all, he became a court
composer, and I don't think that Emperor Franz was so deaf!:-)

Pablo Massa
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