Realizing You’re Salieri
In a wild month of intense geopolitics, I thought it might be nice to discuss something a little more philosophical. As I had been receiving clips of the 1984 period drama Amadeus on my social media for weeks, just before Christmas I finally had an opportunity to sit down and watch it. And, besides being a fantastic movie with great dialogue and acting, in watching Antonio Salieri’s descent into his own self-proclaimed mediocrity after fiercely comparing himself constantly to Mozart, I can’t help but notice there’s a lesson here for us, even though the rivalry is not necessarily historically accurate.
Salieri’s journey in the film is painful. His commitment to God in exchange for his musical ambitions is tested to such a degree that one can only feel immense frustration. His sheer hard work and perseverance in becoming the Court Composer to Emperor Joseph II is seemingly rewarded, only to be entirely undermined by the achievements of Mozart’s pure talent. The famous scene in which Mozart is summoned by the Emperor to be commissioned for the writing of an opera—where Mozart is almost ambushed with humiliation by Salieri and Count Orsini-Rosenberg—is ultimately reversed as Mozart perfects a piece written by Salieri for the Emperor.
Indeed, from here, Salieri makes all the wrong choices. Driven by his understandable but unwise anger at God for the latter’s apparent breaking of their deal, Salieri embarks on a path of covert jealousy and, to some degree, sabotage of Mozart’s work and performances. He seals his fate with the burning of the crucifix that hangs in his room, symbolically showing how his vengeful pride and fear of inadequacy have now consumed him. He feels that Christ has abandoned him, so he abandons Christ. As a consequence, Salieri is punished, and throughout the rest of the film he has to wrestle with the sin that he’s just committed.
However, despite his own feelings, he begins to recognize Mozart as something beyond the normal realms of musical capability. In the scene where he takes a look at the first drafts that Mozart’s wife, Constanze, brings him for approval, Salieri sees Mozart’s work as transcending even his own pride. In spite of himself, he attends all of Mozart’s concerts just so he can take part in the pleasure of the music the “boy genius” has labored over.
Toward the very end of the movie, Salieri’s acceptance of Mozart’s greatness becomes complete as he helps the ailing Mozart, feverish on his deathbed, finish his Requiem. As he has continued to lie to Mozart about his own feelings, he also believes that in this final act of sublimation to the great composer’s talents, he might be saved. But instead, Mozart passes away by the light of the morning, becoming the ultimate and final sanction for Salieri’s earlier break with faith:
“Your merciful God. He destroyed his own beloved rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of his glory. He killed Mozart, and kept me alive to torture! Thirty-two years of torture, thirty years of slowly watching myself become extinct! My music growing fainter, all the time fainter, til no one plays it at all. And his…”
We live in an era where most of us like to believe we’re Mozart: we like to believe that we are talented, experts, and at the top of our game. Indeed, the standard of success today, speaking purely economically, is so high that there is hardly any middle ground whatsoever. To be successful, you must be elite; otherwise, you must content yourself with being a mediocrity. The painful truth of the matter, however, is that there are truly Mozarts in this world. I have met a few. They are truly talented individuals who, out of sheer protection from God, it seems, are capable of driving history forward into the future. But most of us are not Mozarts, but Salieris.
The terrible fact of our era is that of comparison and, in a society built on economic competition, we constantly compare ourselves to others and want to compete to become the best. This has been the mentality that has driven America to become as powerful and successful as it is today. But the fate of Salieri is a warning to the rest of us that if we choose to ignore humility in the face of true greatness, the result is a bitter and resentful existence. As Salieri is wheeled out to the water closet, proclaiming himself the Patron Saint of Mediocrities, he reaches the embodiment of this final fate that he made for himself.
For many of us (and myself very much included), humility in the face of true greatness and chosenness is very hard to achieve. It takes a force of will to embrace that death of ego in order to be appreciative of what God has given humanity in the form of others. If we follow Salieri, we are doomed to resentment, but if we accept it and become comfortable with the limits of our abilities, we can truly find happiness and our own utility. For Salieri was still, despite everything, a great composer.
