. . made no secret of his admiration for Salieri. Counter stories seem a bit strained in the face of the facts - and his studies with Salieri were after Mozart's death, so that thing of his slamming the door on "Mozart's killer" is patently false.
But the stories live on and on. For instance, the story of Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake". After the Revolution, this was lifted from a novel written long before her adulthood, and falsely attributed to her - as an attempt to justify having beheaded her. This was difficult to justify, particularly since she had actually made statements sympathetic to the peasants.
In any case, top teachers are given short shrift by history. For instance, Rimsky-Korsakov, who taught three of the five greatest orchestrators of all time, Respghi, Stravinsky and - well - Rimsky-Korsakov (he was self taught - and had no formal training or "book learnen" until after he was appointed professor of composition and orchestration at the St. Petersburg Conservatory).
It did piss him off a bit that several of his students, who learned everything they knew from him, worshiped Tchaikovsky (Stravinsky was one of them).
Jim Svejda, lead announcer at KUSC, was always dismissive of Rimsky-Korsakov. After all, how could a Navy officer and civil servant, who was highly successful, respected, fiscally stable, happy, non-suicidal, and in a lifelong marriage to a WOMAN for crissake, be a great artist?
But, he's come around a bit recently. Lately when he plays Shaharazad, part of his announcement is "This is the cloth from which Stravinsky's triumphs were cut".
Another of his favorite targets has been one of history's greatest teachers of music to children, Karl Orff. Of course, Jim read a book that indicated Orff might have been a Nazi sympathizer, and Svejda HATES Nazis. The author of that book has since stated he no longer believes that - but, again, the corrections and retractions are ignored if the initial version said what people wanted to believe.
But even there the cracks may be showing. Orff's Carmina Burana has always been the most requested piece of music on KUSC. Before putting it on, Svejda would always ridicule it roundly.
A couple of months ago, he announced it. Then there was some silence - after which he said, "I LOVE this piece! There, I've said it and I'm glad!" - and I'm not going to let him forget that.
Jim's an opinionated bassard, but I can't complain about that - I'm an opinionated bassard myself - but I can complain about his mistakes.