Walter Meyer wrote about Mozart, giving an example from the film 'Amadeus':

>...  Somebody once described genius as the ability to make the unexpected
>appear inevitable in retrospect.  Remembering now how "inevitable" some of
>Mozart's melodies sound, and forgetting that we've been hearing them for
>all our musical lives, it's hard to realize how "unexpected" they were when
>first heard.

It's said that Mozart was a genius at using and re-inventing the
conventions of his day.  That's sort of in line with your Salieri example.
That also made me think of something enigmatic said by somebody (all I
remember - vaguely - is reading it in Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Mozart
biography - although I could be wrong):

Haydn surprises you with the unexpected, Mozart with the expected.

Profound!

Felix Delbruck
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