/lit/ - Literature

>>15839383

The final scene is wonderful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_f3aV_Vwk

One of the most beautiful, touching and disturbing scenes of all time. Many people do not understand the horror behind the words of Salieri: he is not only a madman, a man whose brain was slowly eaten by the termites of obsessions, the ants of neuroses: he is still aware of the differences in talent and ability that divide him and even an absolute (the absolute of absolute) majority of the human race from a handful of exceptional individuals.

In the darkness of the cinema his dark litany was not only blessing the priest, himself, the poor lunatics in the madhouse; he was blessing, as he said, all the mediocrities in the world. He was forgiving all of us, all of us who can only contemplate with absolute admiration and horror the huge peaks that a few souls are able to climb (by that rare concentration of genes, talent, obsession, will-power, madness-drive to work and insatiable hunger improve), while we have to be contempt in making of small hills and mounds our imaginary Everest's.

This final scene is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen; one of the most pessimistic; one of the darkest; one of the truest.

And in perfect contrast with the dark, cruel, chaotic world of the hospice, with the desolating environment that stinks with the fumes of urine, sweat and despair; in contrast with the physical contortions of the sick bodies and with the even most aggressive and ruinous mental contortions (all those poor brains being shattered by unattainable mental wolves, the invisible packs of private nightmares), in perfect contrast with the abyss, we have the music of Mozart, one of the most beautiful things ever produced in the universe, and among the music of Mozart one of the softest, most innocent, one of the most childish and touching lullabies.

This final scene is a micro masterpiece in a movie that is all made of wonders; is one of the most beautiful poems of this great book of cinematic poetry that is this film.

>>15839383

I love Amadeus

I also know that the movie contains severe liberties with the biography of Mozart. He was not as carefree and reckless buffoon; his production was not so ready-perfect and devoid of drafts and corrections; Salieri was not his enemy in real life; his compositions were not just vomited on paper as if germinated in the vacuum of his soul or whispered in his ears by angels. Actually Mozart sketched a lot, but his wife destroyed many of his drafts after he died (to make the myth more impressive).

But despite all that this film is magnificent. Mozart is not the subject of the film, but Salieri. The theme of the movie is the desperation of a struggling and demanding artist in the face of someone who, in addition to all the effort that requires in the realm of art, has also the mysterious faculty of natural talent. The theme of the movie is the torment of a soul that simultaneously loves and hates the same thing.

The final scene is one of the most amazing and terrible things I've ever seen. Salieri is not he, and he alone, a loser (how many viewers tend to think). He blesses all the mediocrities of the world, but this does not only refer to him and mad people at the asylum, and is not a delusion of his diseased mind. He is blessing all mankind, all of us, all of us who are not in the select group of individuals who actually took humanity to the highest peaks of its ability. Salieri is all of us at the end of the film; he feels sorry for himself and for all mankind. In that scene he is calling all the people in the dark cinema a sad group of mediocrities, but few people notice it.

>>15839649

And the final scene is wonderful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML_f3aV_Vwk

One of the most beautiful, touching and disturbing scenes of all time. Many people do not understand the horror behind the words of Salieri: he is not only a madman, a man whose brain was slowly eaten by the termites of obsessions, the ants of neuroses: he is still aware of the differences in talent and ability that divide him and even an absolute (the absolute of absolute) majority of the human race from a handful of exceptional individuals.

In the darkness of the cinema his dark litany was not only blessing the priest, himself, the poor lunatics in the madhouse; he was blessing, as he said, all the mediocrities in the world. He was forgiving all of us, all of us who can only contemplate with absolute admiration and horror the huge peaks that a few souls are able to climb (by that rare concentration of genes, talent, obsession, will-power, madness-drive to work and insatiable hunger improve), while we have to be contempt in making of small hills and mounds our imaginary Everest's.

This final scene is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen; one of the most pessimistic; one of the darkest; one of the truest.

And in perfect contrast with the dark, cruel, chaotic world of the hospice, with the desolating environment that stinks with the fumes of urine, sweat and despair; in contrast with the physical contortions of the sick bodies and with the even most aggressive and ruinous mental contortions (all those poor brains being shattered by unattainable mental wolves, the invisible packs of private nightmares), in perfect contrast with the abyss, we have the music of Mozart, one of the most beautiful things ever produced in the universe, and among the music of Mozart one of the softest, most innocent, one of the most childish and touching lullabies.

This final scene is a micro masterpiece in a movie that is all made of wonders; is one of the most beautiful poems of this great book of cinematic poetry that is this film.

>/lit/ - Literature

>>15839664
>>15839383
go back to /tv/ with the other plebs
amadeus is surface level garbage for midwits.

>>15839835
This. Enough with these fucking reject threads already.

>>15839767
>>15839835

>I would like to ask you: which author or passage did the same for you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th_ro9CiASc

>>15839383

Mozart's music was honestly very distinct from his contemporaries. When I see thinks like actual scholars making such blunders such as mistaking Michael Haydn's symphony no.25 for a Mozart symphony, especially one so late, I really begin to wonder if they have any musical sensibility whatsoever. Even in his own life, Mozart's music was considered by many in the establishment to be rather rowdy and violent. This becomes more apparent when you listen to his music on period instruments (I recommend listening to Rene Jacobs' 2007 recording of the Jupiter with the Freiburger Barockorchester, specifically the last movement). The piano - forte dynamic contrast and fortepiano in Classical era music is often credited to Beethoven, but this violent contrast has its origins in Mozart's late works, which was highly unusual for the time. We also know that his music was quite distinct bc he really was not as popular during his own lifetime as some might think. Die Zauberflote and Le Nozze di Figaro were both commercial disasters and are now among the most popular operas of all time. The Mozart craze started around 2 years after his death, bc his wife Constanza used his early death to create an almost mythological account of her husband's life and organised many events to popularise him, like commissioning other lesser composers (e.g. Susssmayr) to complete his Requiem (only the first 20 minutes or so were actually written by Mozart) primarily for her own financial benefits.

>>15839383
>>15840450

For me its honestly really Kant. I find the beauty of his philosophical exposition tremendously awe-inspiring, almost symphonic in its scope and like a cathedral in its architectonic. Idk why people find him a chore to read. The lucidity of his writing and his razor-sharp arguments only inspire admiration in me, even if is line of reasoning is not always in accordance with my own. And I respect how he reserves moments of rhetorical flourish to explain the importance of the task he has set himself and does not resort to it during argumentation. I still find the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason to be one of the most beautiful passages in all of literature:

'Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The first starts at the place that I occupy in the external world of the senses, and extends the connection in which I stand into the limitless magnitude of worlds upon worlds, systems upon systems, as well as into the boundless times of their periodic motion, their beginning and continuation. The second begins with my invisible self, my personality, and displays to me a world that has true infinity, but which can only be detected through the understanding, and with which … I know myself to be in not, as in the first case, merely contingent, but universal and necessary connection. The first perspective of a countless multitude of worlds as it were annihilates my importance as an animal creature, which must give the matter out of which it has grown back to the planet (a mere speck in the cosmos) after it has been (one knows not how) furnished with life-force for a short time. The second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth, as an intelligence, through my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the entire world of the senses, at least so far as may be judged from the purposive determination of my existence through this law, which is not limited to the conditions and boundaries of this life but reaches into the infinite'. (Practical Reason, 5:161–2)

>>15839383
Salieri's characterization was fairly ingenious. Mozart feels like a caricature of some sort of Hollywood trope I can't quite put my finger on. Overall, a fairly good middlebrow movie.

for me it's Papa Haydn

>>15839383
You're a teenager, yes? It's a good film, entertaining and moving, but you should know you will mature and find better works. And much of this film is made in such a way that one can feel like a genius themselves when watching it, some element of a pseud in it.

But yeah it's still a good movie.

>>15840674
This. A lot like No Country For Old Men. Great film, it's still on the surface level when it comes to art.

>>15840674
I'm a actual adolescent who recently watched the film and thought something similar - I found it marvellous but it certainly cannot be the peak of the medium.
What is?

>>15840616
haydn was fucking based

>>15839767
>>15839835
At least it's interesting; I'd rather have this than the 12 other onions wojak threads present on the board right now.

>>15839383
>>I would like to ask you: which author or passage did the same for you?
I find myself struck this way not by entire passages, but by little turns of phrase. Like,

>Witness this army of such mass and charge Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd Makes mouths at the invisible event,

"With divine ambition puff'd" is such a perfect phrase. I can't really say why, but it's one of those phrases that, the moment you read it, you know it's going to stick with you for life.

>>15841501
>What is?
For that, you will first have to recognise true-art, what you are looking for, is not to be found in cinema. A modern laziness very often. But what is of cinema, I would recommend you stay away from French, and look at some classic Anglo's and Japanese. Coppola, Kubrick, Griffith, Welles, Ozu, Kurosowa and the likes. But two good films to start off with, to teach you the meaning of film as good as it may be, are Napoléon 1927 and Triumph of the Will(unironically) and the rest of Riefenstahl.

Honestly I think you should stick to Goethe and Shakespeare, and Beethoven and Mozart, for the presence of an artistic ideal. Cinema is corrupting when given too much reign, when praised too highly as it has been in our century and the last. Cinema when completely unique is only cinematography, a more limited thing than you would think. And not to mention how prone the money making system is to the instant gratification of cinema.

There is also the occasional good modernist film, such as this, but it's nevertheless still pretentious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wiP2qijblI

>>15839649
>but this does not only refer to him and mad people at the asylum, and is not a delusion of his diseased mind. He is blessing all mankind, all of us, all of us who are not in the select group of individuals who actually took humanity to the highest peaks of its ability.

damn, i really should call the muses for help then if i want to improve my craft

>>15840695
>Great film, it's still on the surface level when it comes to art.

how can a film achieve the deep levels of art may i ask you

>>15841769
It can't, and because of that most "good" films effectively operate on a very close level, but they can still be a lower art. Which has depth.

>>15841745
Try reading the Great man theory, if Amadeus depressed you in anyway about mediocrity or littleness than that's just a taste of reality.

No no, I'm not a mediocrity; I'm DIFFERENT. I'm very intelligent and great.

>>15841652
This post has words, but none of them actually mean anything.

>>15839383
I love Forman, definitely check out Firemans Ball if you haven't yet!

>>15840674
>>15841501
I mean, you could also just enjoy something without worrying whether it makes you a pseud to like it or not

>>15841778
Oh! Another country heard from!

>>15839835
all movies are garbage for midwits, tyranny of the visual is the defining trait of modernity

>>15841901
Are you telling me nothing was intelligible?

>>15842016
you have to read using your eyes retard.

>>15839383
Only great artists understand this feeling

>>15839383
>is it true that much of Mozart's music was extremely similar to that of his contemporaries
Absolutely not. Even amateur listeners should be able to intuit this from his rather radical harmonic language and usually extended forms.
>much of what Mozart produced was done in haste and it was not so remarkable, reusing common ideas and clichés of the time.
This is true, he devised and detailed several strategies for rapidly composing music.

>>15839835
correct, and it completely misrepresents both history and the nature of genius in order to make its banal points

>>15839383

Beethoven > Mozart

>>15841785
i was half-joking, the great man theory i already know, i will try to create great art nonetheless

Play Salieri

>>15841778

>>15839649
>The final scene is one of the most amazing and terrible things I've ever seen. Salieri is not he, and he alone, a loser (how many viewers tend to think). He blesses all the mediocrities of the world, but this does not only refer to him and mad people at the asylum, and is not a delusion of his diseased mind. He is blessing all mankind, all of us, all of us who are not in the select group of individuals who actually took humanity to the highest peaks of its ability. Salieri is all of us at the end of the film; he feels sorry for himself and for all mankind. In that scene he is calling all the people in the dark cinema a sad group of mediocrities, but few people notice it.
100% this.

Talent is absolutely everything. If you're not immediately good at something from the get-go, dedicating your entire life to it is foolish. One should know their place. If you're meant to be a slave, be a good one.

>>15842884
>misrepresents the nature of genius
elaborate on this you talentless retard

>>15843028
Based

>>15841778
Griffith had no prior framework for intertextuality. What he did was more significant and transcends the barrier of
"film." Griffith utilized all of history and facets of representation to make his parallels. Griffith united all arts
under one moniker, and in doing so, exceeded all arts. Intolerance is the largest celebration of mankind and the
harshest vindication of its existence, the grandest expression of its futile virtue. When divine intervention reveals
itself at the end, Griffith is cementing the greatest irony of all time. He is showing the ultimate peace is an
impossibility through the illusion of editing and recorded reality. It is dual-edged irony. With Bobby Herron's
rescue against storming civilizations, he reveals that through the deified action of choice, man can become God,
man can change history, man can change time, all this lingering on the notion of capability.

"For many critics and scholars — myself among them — D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance is the greatest film ever made. A century later we are as close to its subject as we are distant from its art. Political specifics, moral arguments, and movie styles may look different today, yet the only real difference is Griffith’s still-daring ingenuity, which calls for a more open-minded reception than in our simplistic habits we are accustomed to: It calls for an optimistic, united popular audience, which Griffith took for granted. When Intolerance premiered on September 5, 1916, its opening intertitles introduced silent-movie viewers to an extraordinary narrative device: “Our play is made up of four separate stories, laid in different periods of history, each with its own set of characters.” Employing a prologue and two acts, Griffith called it “a sun-play,” marked by florid melodramatics developed from Emersonian Transcendentalism, which film scholar Bill R. Scalia has described as “calling for an original American literature,” for “poets with the ability to ‘see’ past the material, apparent world to the world of eternal forms, which shaped nature in accordance with a divine moral imperative. Through this connection, man-as-poet would discover God in himself."

>>15839649
Talent. IS. EVERYTHING.

>>15843053
>o god, you dweller of Parnassus, please shower me with the manna of sweet Inspiration, so as to make me a little bit more like you.
Nice try, AntSal of the spirit, but no.

>>15843104
Griffith had already, in the over four hundred movies he had made — from the one-reelers on up to THE BIRTH OF A NATION — founded the art of screen narrative; now he wanted to try something more than simply telling the story of bigotry in historical sequence. He had developed discontinuity and crosscutting in his earlier works, and in INTOLERANCE, he attempted to tell four stories taking place in different historical periods, crosscutting back and forth to ancient Babylon, sixteenth-century France, the modern American slums, and Calvary. He was living in an era of experiments with time in the other arts, and although he worked in a popular medium, the old dramatic concepts of time and unity seemed too limiting; in his own way he attempted what Pound and Eliot, Proust and Virginia Woolf and Joyce were also attempting, and what he did in movies influenced literary form as much as they did. INTOLERANCE is a film symphony. No simple framework could contain the richness of what Griffith tried to do in this movie.

>>15843109
i win yet again.

this board is too easy.

>>15842016
>>15842709 <- He's not wrong

>>15843029
>>15843107

This is nonsense. Tchaikovsky displayed no real compositional aptitude until he was well into adulthood. Bruckner didn't start producing artful compositions until he was nearly fucking 40 and no man can deny that this man's symphonic output, if it has to be second to someone, is only second to Beethoven, and in my estimation, he symphony 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 surpass Beethoven's best symphonies. Bruckner is a perfect example of reaching the heights of supreme genius by sheer willpower alone.
Brahms might seem like a typical case of child genius, and granted, his contrapuntal sensibility was innate, do you have any idea how much effort was put into polishing his compositional and orchestrational craft? It was almost anal to the point of him academically studying the strong and weak beats of obsolete musical forms. Literally no one other than a musicologist would do that.

Mendelssohn possessed arguably more musical talent than Mozart and certainly more than Beethoven and supremely more than Bruckner or Tchaikovsky. The scope of his gifts and intellectual capacity can really not be exaggerated enough. Same with Saint-Saens and Korngold, but no amount of talent can compensate for hard work. When you're so talented and blessed that you do not know adversity or struggle, you will never reach the height of true artistic accomplishment. Neither Korngold, Saint-Saens or Mendelssohn can even begin to compete with Bruckner on a symphonic level, it's not even close. Neither Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens or Korngold can even be considered Tchaikovsky's equal, who is much more than just a seasonal favourite tune-smith but possessed compositional craft far more refined than any of the aforementioned musical Wunderkinder. The Manfred Symphony might not be a fan favourite, but it is superior to any symphony written by them and I needn't even mention his sixth. Or the sheer creative brilliance of Carabosse's dance, which outshines Mendelssohn's Midsummer's night Overture or Saint Saens symphonic poems in its orchestral ingenuity. Tchaikovsky, I would argue, really was not naturally talented, but attained brilliance nonetheless.

>>15843290
>Mendelssohn possessed arguably more musical talent than Mozart
u absolutely wot m8

>>15843290
all this fucking cope. just stop man. you'd know if you were talented and meant to pursue something.

>>15843307
And I mean raw talent. Much of Mozart's youth is padded with fluff, but we know for a fact that Mendelssohn wrote his A minor concerto when he was 11, wrote the string symphonies between the ages of 12-14, was unbelievable musically sophisticated at a teenager to the point that his teacher, who was an accomplished musician and theorist, didn't feel like he had anything to teach him. Even Goethe, who saw Mozart perform himself admitted that young Mendelssohn was more impressive at his age than Mozart was. You have to remember that this man single-handily revived, studied and arranged for performance Bach's entire St Matthew Passion at the age of 20, wrote one of the absolute best String Octets of all time, not for a young man, not for a Romantic composer, but of all time when he was 16 years old and displayed works of musical maturity with his Midsummer Night's Overture when he was 17. Arguably, Mozart reached musical maturity after his 25th and 29th symphony, not much later but at 18 but more definitely at 22.

>>15843312
I'm not even coping. This is not in defense of myself. This are actual facts. People laughed at Bruckner during the entire performance of his 3rd symphony.

>>15843290
>underrating Mendelssohn
Stopped reading right there

>>15843376
these*

>>15843381
Mendelssohn is mediocre as fuck

>>15843381
Are you honestly going to argue that Mendelssohn as a composer and not musician and prodigy actually surpassed Tchaikovsky, or Brahms, whom he vastly surpassed in musical talent? Or that his symphonic output can even hold a candle to Bruckner or Mahler? Are you really going to be that intellectually dishonest?

>>15839383
>The moment when Salieri says: "I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes - at an absolute beauty." always makes me burst into tears.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

>>15843365
>talent is measured as a single dimension
a shiggy diggy, but yes, Mend's piano concerto is more impressive as a single composition than anything in Mozart's oevre at that age (when he was travelling and enduring great hardship). Another difference is that Mozart was not learning to imitate a single other composer like Mendelssohn was

>>15843631
>talent is measured as a single dimension
When do I imply this. I discuss Mendelssohn's performing, conducting and composing in relation to Mozart, and moreover the overarching argument ties in to the fact that even this almost unparalleled raw talent does not make him a better composer than other less talented composers in an attempt to debunk the delusional notion that talent is the be all end all, or as the two anons put it 'everything'.

>>15843631
Moreover, he was. All of 'his; piano concerto before his 5th are arrangements and collages for piano and orchestra of the sonatas of other composers and before he reached musical maturity, he, like literally any other composer imitated composers he admired like J.C. Bach and his father.

>>15843706
Which is why we say Mozart wrote 23 piano concertos even though he numbered 27.

>>15843290
Bruckner's 5th symphony is very nice, dat adagio.

>>15843706
>implying you have any knowledge of Leopold's works

>>15843741
It really is, but my favourite Adagios are 7, 8, and 9. The opening of 7 gets me everything. It's like the sigh of the entire universe.

>>15843756
I don't see why you would doubt I do. His Trumpet concerto is at least relatively known. I will not pretend that I rate his work at all or that I've heard his entire oeuvre, but it doesn't take much to know that Mozart imitated his father in his earliest works since many of Leopold's own compositions were passed off as being those of Mozart himself. If it makes you feel any better Mozart also imitated CPE Bach and Michael Haydn.

>>15843792
>Trumpet concerto
one work is not enough to define a "style"

>>15843824
I don't get why you're being so anal about this one point. The whole point is that Mozart had no real style of his own until he was an adult, which is why I say he also imitated his father. Surely you can understand something so simple. Or do you want me to arbitrarily list a bunch of Leopold's work like the Sinfonia Da Caccia or the spurious Toy Symphony or the Divertimento in D? What exactly is your point?

Name a more beautiful musical moment
You can't
https://youtu.be/Is7smVObK64?t=2094

>>15843878
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xr5nuSwwms

>>15843889
nice try at least, but surely Beethoven would have conceded to his idol Mozart in this case.

>>15843906
I don't think it matters whether Beethoven admired Mozart or not. I find the et incarnatus est more beautiful and its word painting sublime. He captures the essence of the mystery of the Virgin Birth perfectly, the Holy Spirit hovering over the rising vocal lines. I am complete whenever I hear it. Additionally it also bears some resemblance to the passage in Cosi, but here, imo, Beethoven's a good example of imitatio, aemulatio.

>>15843927
Beethoven's is*

>>15843927
>I find the et incarnatus est more beautiful
Nothing could matter less.
The point of that passage is not to be "beautiful", but to communicate spirit to spirit, and is in fact very experimental.

>>15843927
fair enough you passed the test
You have exquisite taste

>>15843958
Exactly what is your point again? Idk if you're the same anon, but you ask to name a more beautiful passage, and I do. So yes, surely, it matters.

>>15843958
Also, how exactly are experimentality and beauty mutually exclusive? I'm afraid to say your post doesn't make much sense in the context of our interaction.

>>15843365
Lots of, in fact probably the majority, of famous composers were performing and writing from an early age. Simply because Mendelssohn was best in his early years does not mean he was necessarily the most talented. By the same token you could argue that he was in fact less naturally talented than other composers but he happened to show it far earlier only to peter out far sooner and rest on his laurels as he got older.

also everyone who replied to me is a pedantic suck-up with no taste
(in b4 >/lit/ 2020)

>>15844267
This is true, and Mendelssohn's early exploits are rivalled only by Saint Saens and Korngold, perhaps Busoni and Schubert. Talent, by definition is natural innate aptitude, which he possessed in excess. In Mendelssohn's case, it just never went anywhere, and it doesn't surprise me that he didn't. His was a smooth sailing life. He never had to struggle to be better bc from the days of his infancy everyone recognised him to be supremely gifted. The only noteworthy tragedy in his life is the death of sister, after which he, and I don't think this is a coincidence, wrote his best string quartet (f minor) and soon died afterwards.

>>15839383
I don't care what the contents of this thread are, I'm just stopping by to say I fucking love this movie. Watch it

>>15844320
and ofc also rivalled by Mozart I should add.

Mendelssohn sucks.

>>15843878

I feel you, Anon (OP here, btw).

>>15843290
>Mendelssohn
>Saint-Saens
>Korngold
What a coincidence! All composers I don't like.
I pray i never again have to suffer through Mendy's octet every again, passively agreeing that it is the greatest piece of music ever written as my colleagues mindlessly hack away with a stupid, content smiles on their faces.

>>15839383
>much of what Mozart's contemporaries did, if it ended up being accidentally linked to the name of Mozart, it would be held in much greater prestige and esteem
This is almost certainly the case
>much of what Mozart produced was done in haste and it was not so remarkable, reusing common ideas and clichés of the time
This is not

Check out Glenn Gould's unfinished essay "Forgery and Imitation in the Creative Process" https://www.jstor.org/stable/25007782.. Very applicable to the first quotation, Gould's jabs at Mozart notwithstanding.

>>15843053
it attempts to say it is who you are born as, not how much work you put into it.

>>15845836

thank you

>>15841652
>I would recommend you stay away from French
cringe

>>15849395
French films are just navel gazing

>>15849459
Example?