The ability to recognise creative genius is of fundamental value
Elsewhere in this issue we wax lyrical about Amadeus, and rightly so. As well as having the biggest wig budget in movie history (yes, my brain is a treasure-trove of useless trivia), it also got many people interested in classical music. But which composer is the film actually about?
You probably answered Mozart. Controversially, I disagree. The composer who narrates the movie, whose terrible decline from imperial court to madhouse we witness, and whose mental turmoil is most profoundly captured by Peter Shaffer’s brilliant script, isn’t Mozart. It’s his overshadowed, humiliated and embittered rival, Antonio Salieri.
Yes, Amadeus may be an examination of genius. But it’s also an examination of not being a genius – yet being painfully reminded every day of the gulf that exists between genius and talent.
In Amadeus, Salieri is literally driven crazy with jealousy. But he is also the one with enough musical perception to analyse how Mozart’s creativity exists on a plane that his second-rank mind will never achieve. And the odd thing is that creative geniuses need such second-rankers – discerning patrons, quick-witted assistants, supportive publishers and even, dare I say it, astute critics. By definition, geniuses produce work that, initially at least, bewilders ordinary minds. The work needs championing. That can only be done by those who understand it, though unable to create it themselves. By the second-rankers.
It’s not easy being one of those, and not only because it involves recognition of your own limitations when compared with the towering intellect standing next to you. It also involves possibly being the target of the ugly personality traits that often seem to go hand in hand with genius (and which Shaffer, rightly or wrongly, incorporates into his portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus). Arrogance. Rudeness. Egotism. Selfishness. Impatience. Manic depression…
Mark Ravenhill’s new play for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon offers a fascinating take on all that. Called Ben and Imo, it explores the relationship between Benjamin Britten – under intense stress as he tries to complete his Covent Garden-commissioned opera Gloriana in time for Coronation week in June 1953 – and Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav, whom Britten engages as his assistant. Imogen was an accomplished conductor, composer and teacher. Yet when she entered Britten’s Aldeburgh domain it’s as if she sublimated all her own ambition in order to serve his.
