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CHOICE Review

An actual, honest-to-goodness factual biography of the notorious Salieri would be of interest at any time, but particularly now with the coming of Mozart's bicentennial year. And this book, by Beethoven's great classic biographer Alexander Thayer, has an intriguing history of its own. While Thayer was in the midst of his Beethoven researches he submitted his Salieri biography in some 20 serial installments to the Boston periodical Dwight's Journal of Music around 1864. It caused little stir then and has remained essentially unknown since. (Indeed, Thayer is not mentioned in the copious bibliography for the Salieri article in New Grove.) Hence, we have here the quite unexpected and very welcome second appearance of what editor Albrecht rightly calls the "most extensive biography of composer Antonio Salieri in the English language," even though it is now a century and a quarter old. Albrecht has supplemented Thayer's original text with several appendixes containing short writings by Salieri himself and some remembrances of him by contemporaries. Though not published through the usual commercial channels, this is a professionally produced book and can certainly be recommended for libraries having more than the basics for Mozart or late 18th-century music.