MovieChat Forums > Amadeus (1984) Discussion > Why Solely Mozart?

Why Solely Mozart?

posted 10 years ago by HijodelCid
10 replies | jump to latest

It was not a good idea to restrict the music of AMADEUS to just Mozart, two snippets of Salieri and one of Pergolesi; that gives a very inaccurate and misleading idea of the music of that time. Why not excerpts of such as CPE Bach, the Haydn brothers and Gluck?
Can you picture a movie bio of, say, Rachmaninoff in which only the music of Rachmaninoff was featured, and there was absolutely no mention of his many very notable contemporaries?

God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)

[–] NewtonFigg 10 years ago

When you make your movie about Mozart, you can include your ideas of how it should be done.

[–] Suzume-san 10 years ago

"Gluck? Boring!"

[–] DoctorShemp 10 years ago

The OP is such a hipster, just trying to point out that he knows the other composers who around at the time (OBVIOUSLY).

Having Haydn or Gluck music would have been including it just for the sake of it, the movie was "busy" enough already with other music and topics. Besides, the whole PLOT is about Salieri being obsessed with Mozart's music.

[–] Lord-Z 10 years ago

In the mind of Salieri, there are no others. He is the standard by which all is measured. The movie is about one man's obsession. In his crazed recollection, the entire world revolves around Mozart. Everyone else are simply mediocre.

[–] Rickshawwoo-589-736012 10 years ago

The movie was called Amadeus.
Enough said.

[–] RecordBreaker84 10 years ago

Because Mozart's music was one of the main characters.

[–] fortunate1 10 years ago

These 'Amadeus' threads have a heavier-than-usual concentration of ignorant observations, Hijo/Cyclops, but I think yours takes the prize among them all -and that's really saying what a bad boy you are.

[–] HijodelCid 10 years ago

Having listened to all 170 CDs of the Brilliant Classics complete collection of Mozart, which I bought on 19 July 2006, I take exception to being called ignorant about the favorite son of Salzburg.
Mozart did not appear out of nowhere; he knew other composers and was influenced by them, and he in turn influenced others. AMADEUS is a painfully inaccurate portrayal of M; showing a more accurate picture of the musical world in which he lived and worked would have improved it immensely.

God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)

[–] fortunate1 10 years ago

You miss still the point, sonny.
Amadeus is a movie -a movie, my friend. You dither on about musicology and historiography, but those criteria are secondary, even irrelevant here. A movie is a visual thing that depends on a completely different armature from music to succeed, and I thought this one did quite well in rendering the creative urge, the creative struggle, in cinematic terms -no easy thing to do.
You brag about your own aural fluency, but that's like a buxom woman coming into a high-end kitchen and demanding respect for her torso: there's no reason to believe she can cook, even if the staff are pleased to admire her assets gratis.

[–] HijodelCid 10 years ago

I hate Palma's THE UNTOUCHABLES because it's full of lies; Eliot Ness deserved better.
Mozart had a fascinating life that requires no fictionalization. An accurate movie about him would be a masterpiece.
As for aural fluency, how well do you know the work of M and his contemporaries? It was because I really wanted to know M well that I was willing to pay the price that the Brilliant Classics people demanded.

God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)