Work Text:
“But... are the rumors true...?”
The old man stopped with his hand raised, just before pushing the door open. He waited, listening to the subdued voices coming from inside the room.
“Some people say that he poisoned him...”
“That's ridiculous, why do you listen to such kind of voices?”
“They say it's because Mozart was becoming more famous than him, and so he was envious of his success...”
“It makes no sense. And you shouldn't talk about this here, anyway.”
“Well, if it's not true...”
Antonio Salieri let out a disconsolate sigh, then he coughed loudly, waited a couple of seconds, then pushed the door to his studio open. He entered, barely glancing at the two young men who straightened their back to greet him, their cheeks as red as if they had been caught with their hands in the jam, and who then quickly busied themselves again with taking books and sheets from the shelves and stacking them into neat piles, to tie them up with strings.
The old composer noticed the book on top of one pile. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the name on the cover, Sonate n. 41 für Pianoforte und Violine. His eyes narrowed a little. So that was what brought the topic up. He took the score.
“You can have some rest now, go to the kitchen and ask the butler for something to eat,” he said. “I need to have a look at these. I have no use for some of the older books, no sense in wasting time with them. You can pack up the rest later.”
The two young men exchanged a glance, then they nodded and left the room. As the door closed Salieri could hear one of them starting to scold the other. He shook his head, sitting down with the score still into his hands.
He knew they were good, although apparently quite impressionable, kids. Pupils of one of his old students who now had become a renown composer and teacher, and who had sent them to help Salieri pack up his instruments with all due care, before he left the city. His health had been deteriorating, and a physician had advised him to move to the countryside for summer. The thought made him scoff. As if that could make him any good... He was old, and no change of scenery could be a remedy to that kind of illness. Still, there were no obligations keeping him in Wien those days, he hadn't been teaching for a while, and the trip would have been at least a distraction...
Some people say that he poisoned him.
Because he was envious...
He closed his eyes.
Sometimes the rumors made him angry. Sometimes they made him desperate.
Sometimes, and lately more often than not, they just made him feel very tired.
The young man had said something true, though. He had been envious. He had wrapped the feeling in self-righteous indignation for such a novel style of music that seemed to bear no respect for the old traditions. He had refused to acknowledge how those traditions were indeed present and transfigured in Mozart's music, helped in his harsh judgment by the man's own insolence. But as foolish as he had been to let all those years (how many? Five, six, at least?) pass before seeing his envy for the petty feeling that it was, he was now wise enough to know that it would have amounted to nothing. Mozart's works would have been remembered for centuries to come. His own... sometimes he wasn't so sure.
He opened his eyes and glanced down at the date on the cover. 1786. He only bought the work in 1791, he remembered. It had been late October...
-
(1791)
“Where have you found this? I thought it was out of print.” Mozart picked up the score from the desk and browsed it quickly.
“Schüss's bookshop. They still have a good selection of your works.”
“I hope to put something new out next year, February at the latest. As soon as I'm done with the work for hire I was telling you about.”
“The one for the anonymous commissioner?”
“Yes.” The younger composer smiled. “It will be a masterpiece. I've been... it never leaves me, that music. I need to give it shape and let it out, it needs to be heard. Even if it won't be under my name...”
Mozart looked very tired, even a little sick. Salieri knew he had been overworking himself, to finish The Magic Flute, and now with this mysterious Requiem. But it had been worth it. The opera, that had opened just a few weeks ago, had been deemed already a success unheard of before, and now the name of Mozart was again on the mouth of everybody in Wien. Salieri had not hold back from voicing his appreciation of the work either. After the past two years, when the Austrian composer's work had been scarce, listening to such majesty had felt like rain signaling the end of a long, merciless drought. Salieri had found himself embarrassed by how he couldn't stop himself from muttering praises under his breath, even as they were watching it sitting next to each other in the theater, one evening when Mozart was not directing. Of course, Mozart had been delighted by such enthusiasm, literally beaming at every compliment in Italian.
That evening at the theater had been the first time they happened to see each other in a while, and Salieri had taken advantage of the occasion to invite Mozart for dinner the next day. After eating, they were sitting in Salieri's music room, sipping some wine, when the score had grabbed Mozart's attention. After putting it back down, Mozart glanced over the other sheets cluttering Salieri's desk. He tapped his finger on another score.
“Is this the aria you played at Lady Harmann's reception, last month?”
“Yes. It was almost three months ago, though.”
“Really? Time flies...” Mozart replied absent-mindedly, as he read the music.
“It is a little thing, really...”
“I agree.” Mozart had to hear Salieri's offended silence, because he looked up at him and burst in laugher. “Sorry... but what I mean is, you could make much more from its theme. Listen, take it from here...” He started humming the theme, raising a finger and moving it in the air following the melody, as he changed it just a little in rhythm and pitch. He then glanced at Salieri's questioningly.
Salieri hummed the new melody too. “I see...”
“Then let's try it!” Mozart exclaimed, merrily. He moved to the fortepiano in the room and placed the score on the stand. He played a few accords. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”
Salieri shook his head, amused by such enthusiasm. He came closer, bringing their two glasses of wine and placing them on a small table next to the instrument. He listened as Mozart started playing, nodding along, then he frowned.
“No, wait...” He touched Mozart's arm to stop him, and placed his own fingers on the keys. He played a few notes experimentally, then went back and played the whole phrase again.
“Oh, nice...” Mozart grinned. “But hear this now...” A quick succession of accords, culminating in dissonance that made Salieri grimace.
“What is that, for Heaven's sake...”
Soon they were taking turns, taking the simple theme of the sonata and elaborating on it, playing with it. Eventually Salieri went to fetch more wine, and pen and ink, and they started to jot down their combined variations on the score.
Maybe the wine was helping, but Salieri found himself growing bolder in his improvising, more careless about the rules. More free. Neither him nor Mozart led the way, instead they took hints from each other, turning what had been an occasional composition into something that felt not quite a symphony, not quite something that had its place between the cantato parts of an opera... something different.
Salieri finished writing the last notes of the final movement on the draft, now completely covered by their combined scribbling, then he stretched. It had felt like a very short time, but the clock on the mantelpiece told him more than three hours had gone by. He turned to Mozart, who had moved to sit on a chair leaving the fortepiano's stool to Salieri as he played the whole piece start to finish, about to say something, but he stopped.
Mozart was sitting with his head reclined forward, arms wrapped around himself, as if huddling for warmth. Under the candlelight, Salieri could see how thin his face had become, how pale. The past few months had taken a heavy toll on him, and the older composer felt a pang of guilt for having kept him there until so late.
As if he had felt the other's gaze, Mozart lifted his head to look back at him, smiling tiredly.
“It needs some more work, but it's already quite good, this nachtmusik,” he said.
“A serenade?” Salieri glanced at the draft. “I would hardly call it such...”
“A serenade, yes. Notturno per due compositori. It's night, and we're composers, and we've been serenading each other with this. It all makes sense.” Mozart looked very convinced.
Salieri chuckled. “Very well. Notturno per due compositori it is.” They looked at each other, and then they yawned at the same time.
“Come visit me and Constanze, when she's back from Baden, so we can finish this,” Mozart said to Salieri, as they went to the door. He wrapped his scarf around, covering almost all of his face, and they bid each other farewell. Salieri waited on the doorstep to see him turn the corner of the road, a small dark figure in Wien's cold autumn night.
-
There never was another occasion to work together like that.
Where had that draft gone?
-
“Salieri. Maestro Salieri.”
Someone was calling him, in a tone of gentle teasing. Salieri opened his eyes. He must have been dozing off. He looked around, still drowsy, and saw a figure standing next to his desk, leaning to examine all the notebooks stacked on it.
That voice...
Mozart...?
Salieri must have voiced the name aloud without realizing it, because the young man turned to look at him, a wide grin on his face.
“Don't sleep too long, my old friend, you have yet a lot of work to do!” He picked a few sheets from the pile. “Here, I was wondering where you put it. Whatever they say, in the studio you have always been a much messier person than me.” Mozart looked at the score with fondness, before placing it on top of the stack. “I had a lot of fun composing with you that night, you know? Even if you criticized everything too much...”
“I had to rein down your penchant for needlessly complicating a perfectly fine melody. Sometimes simplicity is the best course of action...”
“Tell that to your pompous Italian opera,” Mozart laughed. “But we achieved a balance in the end, didn't we?”
“Yes.” Salieri suddenly realized he was silently crying, tears rolling down his cheeks. So embarrassing... Why was he crying like that, and even in front of his friend?
Mozart didn't seem to be bothered by his tears, or to find them strange. “I must go, now,” he said, a little sadly. “It was good to see you again.”
“Wait...” Salieri reached up. There was something he had to tell him, something important, but he couldn't remember...
“...it was good. Making music together,” he said, finally. “I... had fun too.”
Mozart nodded, then he bowed.
“Good-bye, my friend...”
-
The noise of horses neighing, of a carriage rolling down the street, under his window, shook Salieri up from his sleep. He looked around, confused. The room was empty. He had thought that he had seen... that he had heard...
It had been a dream, of course.
He blinked, waking up completely, then he sighed. He stood up, moving slowly because the short sleep in the uncomfortable position had pained his back. As he was about to leave the room, his attention was caught by the corner of something peeking out from inside one of his old music theory book, just put down from the shelf to be packed up. He took the piece of paper between thumb and finger, lifting the pages with his other hand, and pulled it out. His eyes narrowed, as he read the crammed writing on it with some effort, then they widened in surprise. He opened the book, to find more sheets of paper folded between the pages.
It was the old serenade him and Mozart had composed together, all those years ago. The composition had been left on the table in the studio for weeks, after the funeral, until one day Salieri looked at it and couldn't bear to see that writing anymore, so he put it away. Later, he had sometimes thought about playing that music again. But he couldn't do it, the memories, the emptiness Mozart had left, still hurt too much, and the next time he remembered about it the piece seemed to have disappeared. Wondering if maybe that was for the best, he had not given it another thought to it for years. For so many years...
He read it all, his right hand unconsciously moving in the air as if directing an invisible orchestra. It was good, it barely needed more work at all...
At the end, there were his and Mozart's signatures.
“Maestro Salieri?” the voice calling him from the door now belonged to one of the young pupils, the other peeking up from behind his friend. “Should we start working again?”
“No.” Salieri felt the sudden urge to sit down at the piano, and play. Old ideas, half-created melodies he never worked on, crowded into his mind, as if asking to be hear. The trip to the countryside could wait, he decided.
He looked up at the pupils, who were gazing at him with curiosity, and felt himself smiling. “I need you to copy this for me.”
He would have that old serenade published.
His and Mozart's names would be written together, in elegant type, on its cover.