<p>Others probably know more about this, but from what I have read on the subject (once did a research paper on it many years ago, got ****ed off when a humanities teacher in HS passed Salieri murdering Mozart off as ‘fact’ because she had seen the play Amadeus…</p>
<p>From what I remember, when Mozart died some people who knew of the rivalry between himself and Salieri, half heartedly suggested Mozart might have been poisoned. Later on this was fanned by more rumors, where Salieri, who spent his later years suffering from dementia among other things, supposedly confessed to killing mozart and attempted suicide, as shown in Amadeus. Some physicians, reputedly including Mozarts own physician, reputedly also said the symptoms Mozart had when he died were symptomatic of poisoning (though written accounts of his own physician suggest he believed it was kidney failure)</p>
<p>There is also a story that Salieri, at Rossinis request, took him to see Beethoven (Beethoven studied with Salieri and considered him one of his primary teachers) and Beethoven supposedly yelled at Rossini “How dare you bring the murderer of Mozart here”…it is likely either the story was made up, or that Beethoven did so in jest, since Beethoven otherwise seemed to have not believed the tale, and it is unlikely that Beethoven would have dedicated music, as he did for Salieri, to mozart, a composer Beethoven respected. </p>
<p>Other rumors claimed that Costanze said Salieri killed Mozart, but that is belied by the fact that she had their son study with Salieri, doesn’t make any sense. And the people who knew both Salieri and Mozart all said that though Salieri was jealous of Mozart, was a rival, that his rivalry was limited to writing Italian operas to try and match mozarts, and that both of them both admired and were jealous of each other (in part because despite popular myth, Salieri in Mozart’s lifetime was more popular then Mozart and more importantly, had an easier time with the rich court patrons who commissioned pieces in getting them to do so). Though Salieri is a cypher compared to Mozart in most people’s minds, he was probably more respected then Mozart and also was a teacher of great renown to composers, so it is unlikely he would have been jealous enough to kill mozart, why would someone more popular then his rival kill him? </p>
<p>I suspect it is like any conspiracy theory, you have someone dying under weird circumstances (Mozart was still young), you have a known rivalry and people have this need to try and make it more then it is, much as with any conspiracy theory, they can’t believe in Mozart’s case that a genius like that died so young, and thus graps unto a juicy story. This is added to because in our own day Salieri is an afterthought in an entertaining play, while Mozart is known to most people as “a genius”, so it is easy to believe that Salieri was a hack who hated Mozart, because if Salieri was so great, how come he doesn’t have his picture on a chewing gum card? (Sorry, couldn’t resist that one…:)</p>