Maestro Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) in the 1984 film “Amadeus” describing Mozart’s genius…
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On the page, it looked… nothing.
The beginning: simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse. Bassoons, basset horns.
Like a rusty squeezebox.
And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe!
A single note, hanging there, unwavering.
Until… a clarinet took it over,
sweetened it into a phrase of such delight…
This was a music I had never heard!
Filled with such longing,
such unfulfillable longing,
that it seemed to me I was hearing the voice of God.
But why? Why would God choose an obscene child
to be His instrument?
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Astounding! 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 the music already finished in his head.
Page after page of it, as if he were 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.
Here again was the very voice of God.
