Salieri, an appreciation

Antonio Salieri, 1750-1825, was mostly an opera composer. He was also an important pedagogue who taught Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt, no less. With the possible exception of Leopold Mozart, who erroneously considered him a devious plotter against his son, he was well respected by those who knew him.

From the last years of his life in the 1820s it has been rumored he "killed Mozart", and, since these rumors were first circulated, better-informed people have known that he in fact had no role in the death of Mozart. Scholars and cognoscenti, excited by the opportunity for pedantry, greeted Peter Shaffer's play, and the movie that came of it, Amadeus, with huge hostility, with some of the criticism reaching a level of childish vituperation that continues to this day, mostly focused on the movie version, which differs in some details from the play (though not, as I recall, greatly). The criticism is largely overblown, bordering on ridiculous.

The fact is, no one seems to remember that the story is told entirely from Salieri's point of view while he's being interviewed by a priest in a mental institution! There is no dramatic or logical reason that the facts of the movie should be literally accurate. About the worst that you could say of it is that it is not the sort of thing even a mental patient of the early 19th century would invent, but that's debatable. Mental patients can invent all sorts of things. Salieri did in fact attempt suicide in his last years, and I believe I've read it is true (I'm not sure) that he spent some of his time in what passed for a mental hospital in those days. So perhaps the movie's historical accuracy should be judged only in its first few minutes, before Salieri begins to tell his tale.

Besides, even as the movie tells the tale, Salieri doesn't really murder Mozart, at least not in any clear cut fashion. Salieri's role in Mozart's death is debatable, even given the facts of this tale told by a madman. Basically, Salieri keeps Mozart up a bit past his bed time while he's ill--on the orders of a fictional patron and promises of money. Murder? I doubt in most courts of law.

Nevertheless, millions of viewers of the movie were left with the impression that "Salieri killed Mozart". That's not so bad, a mere historical inaccuracy, but many were also left with the impression that Salieri was not only a bad composer, but utterly incompetent and untalented. And that truly is bad, if it has contributed to his music being ignored, for nothing could be further from the truth. Judging from the few works of his I've heard (a few arias, overtures, and one complete opera, Falstaff, as well as the exquisite piano concerto below), he was a composer of immense gifts, subtle and sophisticated in his creations, with true and rare talent.

If you're one of those who know Salieri as Mozart's killer, I hope you will reconcile yourself to him and listen with an open mind to this piano concerto, which is a masterpiece. If you're rushed for time, listen to the second movement at the very least:

Antonio Salieri: Piano concero in C major
I Solisti Veneti, Claudio Scimone
Aldo Ciccolini, piano

1. Allegro maestoso
   
2. Larghetto
   
3. Andantino
   

Unfortunately, there are some sonic SNAFUs in the first movement.

Quentin Tarantino's top 20 movies since 1992

Here Quentin Tarantino lists his Top 20 movies since he became a director. I'm not endorsing the list, but I think it's interesting (I might want to see a few of these, like The Host). With the exception of Dogville, the ones I have seen are mediocre (I've seen only those marked with asterisks).

Battle Royale
Anything Else
Audition
The Blade
Boogie Nights
Dazed & Confused
Dogville*
Fight Club*
Fridays
The Host
The Insider
Joint Security Area
Lost In Translation*
The Matrix*
Memories of Murder
Police Story 3?
Shaun of the Dead
Speed*
Team America
Unbreakable*

"M. Night Shamalamadingdong". Hrm.

BTW, I genuinely liked Inglourious Basterds. I think it's his best since Pulp Fiction (in fact the only other I've really found memorable).

White Christmas as a canon

Merry Christmas, fifty days early!

Simply put, a canon is a musical form wherein a single voice begins singing a melody and is subsequently joined by a second or more voices singing the same melody, either in the same key ("at the unison") or transposed by some interval (e.g., "at the fifth"). The voices "fit" together in that, even though they aren't sung in sync, they produce no unresolved dissonances. A famous example is Row, row, row your boat, which is a unison canon:



Another is Frère Jacques. But there are many examples. You can read more about canons on Wikipedia.

Stephen Malinowski, the inventor of the Music Animation Machine (or MAM), had the insight, one Christmas season almost two decades ago, that the familiar tune White Christmas works as a canon at the fifth.

Though more common, such a discovery is akin to finding a particularly satisfying palindrome or a four leaf clover. In other words, a wonderful serendipity. Here, Mr. Malinowski presents his canon with a specially composed bass line, synthesized voices, and animation generated by the MAM. Enjoy!

A disturbing ethical question

This is an ethical conundrum that I believe originated with the philosopher Peter Singer. If it didn't originate with him, he at least popularized it. I feel intuitively I know what the right answer is; in fact I even think the right answer is obvious. The implications I'm not so sure about....

Imagine you find yourself at a railroad switching station. The switch, in its current position, diverts a train onto a length of track with a helpless baby on it.

A train is approaching, but it can’t stop in time. Neither is there time to run and save the baby.

If you throw the switch, the train is diverted onto a length of track on which sits your brand new $350K uninsured Lamborghini Murcielago. Assume no one will die if the car is struck by the train, though I suppose it's reasonable to assume a bit of property damage to the train will ensue.


Would you throw the switch and ruin your expensive car or would you do nothing and allow the baby to die?

The answer is obvious, to most of us, I would expect. You would throw the switch and save the baby.

Changing a few parameters

Here’s what I consider to be the disturbing implication for how we actually live our lives. Suppose I change the drawing to this:


The threat is no longer a train. It’s death by hunger. The track is no longer a train track...it’s a path of consequences, the switch no longer a switch, but a personal decision about how you spend your money (on a really expensive car or on children). And what’s at stake is not a single child’s life, but fifty children. Yep, I’ve changed the hypothetical a lot, but how have I changed the ethical question?

This is the problem. How has this changed ethically? And, if it hasn’t, what does that imply?

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that $350K would feed and clothe 50 children in the third world until they reached adulthood. As long as there are starving children, why would anyone ever choose to spend that sum of money on a car? Or any amount of money on any luxury?