Antonio Salieri Quotes
Latest Antonio Salieri quotes from Amadeus
Quotes
But why? Why would God choose an obscene child to be His instrument? It was not to be believed! This piece had to be an accident. It had to be!... It better be!
Mediocrities everywhere... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you... I absolve you all.
So rose the dreadful ghost from his next and blackest opera. There, on the stage, stood the figure of a dead commander. And I knew, only I understood that the horrifying aparition was Leopold, raised from the dead! Wolfgang had actually summoned up his own father to accuse his son before all the world! It was terrifying and wonderful to watch. And now the madness began in me. The madness of the man splitting in half. Through my influence, I saw to it Don Giovanni was played only five times in Vienna. But in secret, I went to every one of those five, worshipping sounds I alone seem to hear. And hour after hour, as I stood there, understanding how that bitter old man was still possessing his poor son even from beyond the grave. I began to see a way, a terrible way, I could finally triumph over God.
While my father prayed earnestly to God to protect commerce, I would offer up secretly the proudest prayer a boy could think of: "Lord, make me a great composer. Let me celebrate Your glory through music and be celebrated myself. Make me famous through the world, dear God. Make me immortal. After I die, let people speak my name forever with love for what I wrote. In return, I will give You my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility, every hour of my life, Amen." And do you know what happened? A miracle!
Emanuel Schikaneder: Look, I asked you if we could start rehearsals next week and you said yes.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Well, we can.
Emanuel Schikaneder: So let me see it. Where is it?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Here. It's all right here in my noodle. The rest is just scribbling. Scribbling and bibbling, bibbling and scribbling.
Mozart! Mozart, forgive your assassin! I confess, I killed you...
It's unbelievable, the director has actually torn up a huge section of my music. They say I have to rewrite the opera. But it's perfect as it is! I can't rewrite what's perfect!
Come on now, be honest! Which one of you wouldn't rather listen to his hairdresser than Hercules? Or Horatius, or Orpheus... people so lofty they sound as if they shit marble!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Confutatis maledictis" - when the wicked are confounded. "Flammis Acribus Adictis." How would you translate that?
Antonio Salieri: Consigned to flames of woe.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Do you believe in it?
Antonio Salieri: What?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A fire which never dies, burning you forever?
Antonio Salieri: Oh yes.
Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.
Emperor Joseph II: You are passionate, Mozart, but you do not persuade...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Nine performances! Nine, that's all it's had! And withdrawn!
Antonio Salieri: I know, I know, it's outrageous. Still, if the public doesn't like one's work, one has to accept the fact gracefully.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: But what is it that they don't like?
Antonio Salieri: I can speak for the Emperor. You make too many demands on the royal ear. The poor man can't concentrate for more than an hour... you gave him four.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: What did you think of it yourself? Did you like it at all?
Antonio Salieri: I thought it was marvelous.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Of course! It's the best opera yet written, I know it... why didn't they come?
Antonio Salieri: I think you overestimate our dear Viennese, my friend. You know you didn't even give them a good bang at the end of songs, to let them know when to clap?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I know, I know... maybe you should give me some lessons in that.
They're all so beautiful. Why don't have three heads?
My music... they started without me!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The whole thing is set in a harem, Majesty. In a seraglio.
Count Orsini-Rosenberg: You mean in Turkey?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Yes, exactly.
Count Orsini-Rosenberg: Then why especially does it have to be in German?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: It doesn't, especially. It could be in Turkish if you really want.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes! Old dead legends! Why must we go on forever writing about gods and legends?
Baron Van Swieten: Because they do. They go on forever. Or at least what they represent. The eternal in us. Opera is here to enoble us. You and me, just the same as His Majesty.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Why must I submit samples of my work to some stupid committee just to teach a thirteen-year-old girl?
Count Von Strack: Because His Majesty wishes it.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Is the emperor angry with me?
Count Von Strack: Quite the contrary.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Then why doesn't he simply appoint me to the post?
Count Von Strack: Mozart, you are not the only composer in Vienna.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: No, but I'm the best!
Constanze Mozart: Wolfie, I think you really are going mad. You work like a slave for that idiot actor who won't give you a penny. And here, this is not a ghost! This is a real man who puts down real money. Why on earth won't you finish it? Can you give me one reason I can understand?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: It's killing me.
Sire, only opera can do this. In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it's just noise, no one can understand a word. But with opera, with music... with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it's not noise, it's a perfect harmony!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Why must I submit samples of my work to some stupid committee just to teach a thirteen-year-old girl?
Count Von Strack: Because His Majesty wishes it.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Is the emperor angry with me?
Count Von Strack: Quite the contrary.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Then why doesn't he simply appoint me to the post?
Count Von Strack: Mozart, you are not the only composer in Vienna.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: No, but I'm the best!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Whom did they choose?
Antonio Salieri: Herr Zummer.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Herr Zummer? But the man's a fool, he's a total mediocrity!
Antonio Salieri: No, no, he has yet to achieve mediocrity.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Keep it Majesty, if you want. It's already here in my head.
Emperor Joseph II: What? On one hearing only?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I think so, Sire, yes.
Emperor Joseph II: Show us.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Nine performances! Nine, that's all it's had! And withdrawn!
Antonio Salieri: I know, I know, it's outrageous. Still, if the public doesn't like one's work, one has to accept the fact gracefully.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: But what is it that they don't like?
Antonio Salieri: I can speak for the Emperor. You make too many demands on the royal ear. The poor man can't concentrate for more than an hour... you gave him four.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: What did you think of it yourself? Did you like it at all?
Antonio Salieri: I thought it was marvelous.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Of course! It's the best opera yet written, I know it... why didn't they come?
Antonio Salieri: I think you overestimate our dear Viennese, my friend. You know you didn't even give them a good bang at the end of songs, to let them know when to clap?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I know, I know... maybe you should give me some lessons in that.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes! Old dead legends! Why must we go on forever writing about gods and legends?
Baron Van Swieten: Because they do. They go on forever. Or at least what they represent. The eternal in us. Opera is here to enoble us. You and me, just the same as His Majesty.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The whole thing is set in a harem, Majesty. In a seraglio.
Count Orsini-Rosenberg: You mean in Turkey?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Yes, exactly.
Count Orsini-Rosenberg: Then why especially does it have to be in German?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: It doesn't, especially. It could be in Turkish if you really want.
My music... they started without me!
They're all so beautiful. Why don't have three heads?
It's unbelievable, the director has actually torn up a huge section of my music. They say I have to rewrite the opera. But it's perfect as it is! I can't rewrite what's perfect!
All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?
On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I'd never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.
I will speak for you, Father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.
From now on, we are enemies - You and I. Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind, I will block You, I swear it. I will hinder and harm Your creature as far as I am able. I will ruin Your incarnation.
Antonio Salieri: Astounding! It was actually, it was beyond belief. These were first and only drafts of music, but they showed no corrections of any kind. Not one. He had simply written down music already finished in his head! Page after page of it as if he were just taking dictation. And music, finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall. It was clear to me that sound I had heard in the Archbishop's palace had been no accident. Here again was the very Voice of God! I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink-strokes at an absolute beauty.
Constanze Mozart: Is it not good?
Antonio Salieri: It is miraculous!
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! 32 years of torture! 32 years of slowly watching myself become extinct. My music growing fainter, all the fainter till no one plays it at all, and his...
I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater, conferring on all who sat there, perfect absolution. God was singing through this little man to all the world, unstoppable, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar.
He was my idol. Mozart, I can't think of a time when I didn't know his name. I was still playing childish games and he was playing music for kings and emperors. Even the Pope in Rome! I admit I was jealous when I heard the tales they told about him. Not of the brilliant little prodigy himself, but of his father, who had taught him everything.
Antonio Salieri: My father, he did not care for music. When I told him how I wished I could be like Mozart, he would say; "Why? Do you want to be a trained monkey? Would you like me to drag you around Europe, doing tricks like a circus freak?"
Antonio Salieri: How could I tell *him*... what music meant to me?
That was not Mozart laughing, Father... that was God. That was God laughing at me through that obscene giggle...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Keep it Majesty, if you want. It's already here in my head.
Emperor Joseph II: What? On one hearing only?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I think so, Sire, yes.
Emperor Joseph II: Show us.
That was Mozart. That! That giggling dirty-minded creature I had just seen, crawling on the floor!
I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink-strokes at an absolute, inimitable beauty.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.
Emperor Joseph II: You are passionate, Mozart, but you do not persuade...
Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Confutatis maledictis" - when the wicked are confounded. "Flammis Acribus Adictis." How would you translate that?
Antonio Salieri: Consigned to flames of woe.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Do you believe in it?
Antonio Salieri: What?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A fire which never dies, burning you forever?
Antonio Salieri: Oh yes.
Come on now, be honest! Which one of you wouldn't rather listen to his hairdresser than Hercules? Or Horatius, or Orpheus... people so lofty they sound as if they shit marble!
Constanze Mozart: Wolfie, I think you really are going mad. You work like a slave for that idiot actor who won't give you a penny. And here, this is not a ghost! This is a real man who puts down real money. Why on earth won't you finish it? Can you give me one reason I can understand?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: It's killing me.
Sire, only opera can do this. In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it's just noise, no one can understand a word. But with opera, with music... with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it's not noise, it's a perfect harmony!
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Whom did they choose?
Antonio Salieri: Herr Zummer.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Herr Zummer? But the man's a fool, he's a total mediocrity!
Antonio Salieri: No, no, he has yet to achieve mediocrity.
Emanuel Schikaneder: Look, I asked you if we could start rehearsals next week and you said yes.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Well, we can.
Emanuel Schikaneder: So let me see it. Where is it?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Here. It's all right here in my noodle. The rest is just scribbling. Scribbling and bibbling, bibbling and scribbling.
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