The Writer's Almanac for Friday, August 18, 2017

Today is the birthday of Italian-born Viennese composer Antonio Salieri, born in Legnago, in the Republic of Venice (1750). Although he was quite popular in the 18th century, he probably wouldn't be well known today were it not for the movie Amadeus (1984). The movie was based on Peter Shaffer's play by the same name (1979), which was in turn based on a short play by Aleksandr Pushkin, which was called Mozart and Salieri (1830). These stories all present Salieri as a mediocre and uninspired composer who was jealous of Mozart's musical genius; Salieri tried to discredit Mozart at every turn, and some versions of the story even accuse him of poisoning his rival.

But Salieri was a talented and successful composer, writing the scores for several popular operas. He had a happy home life with his wife and eight children. And because he had received free voice and composition lessons from a generous mentor as a young man, he also gave most of his students the benefit of free instruction. Some of his pupils included Beethoven, Franz Liszt, and Franz Schubert. He was the Kapellmeister — the person in charge of music — for the Austrian emperor for 36 years. He and Mozart were competitors, but their rivalry was usually a friendly one; Salieri visited Mozart when he was dying, and was one of the few people to attend his funeral.

After the turn of the 19th century, Salieri's music began to fall out of fashion. "I realized that musical taste was gradually changing in a manner completely contrary to that of my own times," he wrote. "Eccentricity and confusion of genres replaced reasoned and masterful simplicity." He stopped composing operas and began to produce more and more religious pieces. He suffered from dementia late in his life and died in 1825. He had composed his own requiem 20 years earlier, and it was performed for the first time at his funeral.

Today is the birthday of Margaret Murie (books by this author ), born in Seattle, Washington (1902). She was the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska, which she did in 1924, when it was known as the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines. That's also where she met her future husband, Olaus Murie; they married in 1924 and spent eight months — a period they called their honeymoon — traveling around Alaska by boat and dogsled, researching caribou. Murie wrote a memoir of their early days together: Two in the Far North (1957).

Murie was instrumental in the formation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the passage of the Wilderness Act, each of which protected millions of acres of wilderness. She received the Audubon Medal, the John Muir Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 2003, at the age of 101.

Among the many written observations of geography, Indian customs, and flora and fauna, Lewis also sent back specimens to Thomas Jefferson of the most interesting things he'd found. Among the varied items were several living animals: four magpies, one sharp-tailed grouse, and one black-tailed prairie dog. The prairie dog and one of the magpies arrived in good health, and they spent the rest of their days in the nation's capital.
For his work, Lewis was paid a handsome salary, received 1,600 acres of land, and was made governor of the Louisiana Territory. But he was prone to depression and alcoholism, and he died in 1809, probably by his own hand.