Steve Schwartz writes:

>What the movie fails to consider, however, is the 18th-century context for
>this behavior.  Mozart was aping the manners of the nobility with whom he
>mingled.  He would never have said, for example, as the movie has him say,
>"Your majesty, I am a crude man." It wouldn't have occurred to him...

I doubt too that Mozart would have claimed to be a "crude man", but only
because he was known not to be terribly compliant where the nobility was
concerned.  Crudity simply wouldn't come up.  We love to express shock at
M.'s puerile poo-poo letters to his immediate family and his scatalogical
vocal works and then justify this behaviour as somehow peculiar to his
era.  There is evidence only that this behaviour was meant for his family
and immediate circle.  I don't think it's simply a case of middle-class
prudery, though, either.  Then as now, there are things we say and do only
in private.  Neither Mozart nor the Emperor would have stood in front of
each other happily planting roses while they discussed music.

If Schaffer is stacking the deck, he is stacking it for Salieri who needs
to justify his own mediocrity.

Eric James
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