SALTER!, ANTONIO (1750-1825), Italian composer, was born at Legnano, on Aug. 19, 175o. In 1766 he was taken to Vienna by F. L. Gassmann, who introduced him to the emperor Joseph. His first opera, Le Donne letterate, was produced at the Burg-Theater in 177o. Others followed in rapid succession, and his Armida (1771) was a triumphant success. On Gassmann's death in 1774, he became Kapellmeister and, on the death of Bonno in 1788, Hofkapellmeister. He held his offices for fifty years, though he made frequent visits to Italy and Paris, and composed music for many European theatres. His chef d'oeuvre was Tarare, later called Axur, re d'Ormus (1787), a work which was pre ferred by the Viennese public to Mozart's Don Giovanni. His last opera was Die Neger, produced in 1804. After this he devoted himself to the composition of church music, for which he had a very decided talent. Salieri lived on friendly terms with Haydn, but was a bitter enemy to Mozart, though the wild suggestion that he actually poisoned him (albeit made the basis of Rimsky Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri) has long been scouted. He retired from office on his full salary in 1824, and died at Vienna on May 7, 1825. Salieri gave lessons in composition to Cherubini and to Beethoven, who dedicated to him his three sonatas for pianoforte and violin, op. 12.
See also Albert von Hermann, Antonio Salieri, eine Studie (1897) ; J. F. Edler von Mosel, tJber das Leben and die Werke des Antonio Salieri (Vienna, 1827).
procession on certain days of the year, in March (Mars' month) and October (end of the campaigning season under early condi tions), singing a very ancient hymn or hymns (axamenta, in honour of all the gods, and separate hymns to single deities, called by their names). They were assisted by women similarly dressed and called saliae virgines; these were hired for the occasion in historical times. The whole performance was accompanied with dancing.
All this suggests a war-dance, and can easily be paralleled from the customs of uncivilized peoples. But the matter is complicated by a statement of Johannes Lydus, a late and untrustworthy author, that on March 15 a man clad in goat-skins and called Mamurius was driven out with rods. This person Lydus identifies with Mamurius Veturius, said to have been the smith who made the ancilia after a pattern fallen from heaven. (See Lydus, de mensibus, p. 105, 19 Wiinsch.) But the name may mean "old Mars," hence it has been plausibly conjectured that the ritual is at least in part connected with vegetation, the "old Mars" or worn out spirit of fertility being yearly driven away. As, however, we have no proof that the Salii were connected with this ceremony, it is open to us to suppose, with Wissowa, that it is a mere dence of date, and that the name of the skin-clad figure was a popular one only, made up from the unintelligible words mamuri veturi in the Saliar hymn. The balance of evidence certainly is in favour of supposing the ritual of the Salii to have been purely war-magic, in its origin at least. There were also Salii at Tibur, of whom nothing is known (Servius on Aen, 285) .