Concert Notes

Mozart: Requiem

Countless listeners have been bemused by the story of the doomed young Mozart embarking on his great setting of the Mass for the Dead, only to be interrupted by death itself. The work was a commission from one Count Franz von Walsegg in memory of his beautiful young wife. Walsegg was an eccentric figure who often bought new works of chamber music outright and had them performed at his country esatate, pretending half in jest that they were his own. Early biographers reported in suspiciously romantic terms that the mysterious commission, delivered by an "unknown messenger," induced in Mozart a morbid fascination with thoughts of his own death and a self-destructive frenzy of compositional effort.

Mozart's last illness is now thought to have been kidney failure associated with a streptococcal infection, but at the time there were rumors of poisoning--perhaps by the steadily employed composer Antonio Salieri, who was known to be intensely jealous of Mozart; Alexander Pushkin based a play on this supposition in 1830. It was left for Peter Shaffer in Amadeus (1981) to conflate Salieri with Walsegg, imagining that Salieri himself commissioned the Requiem with the express purpose of unbalancing Mozart's mind (rather than resort to such grossly mechanical means as poison).

In any case, Mozart died with only part of the Requiem completed, but his widow Constanze sood to collect the balance of Walsegg's commission if she could conceal that fact. Accordingly, Mozart's student Franz Xaver Suessmayr was drafted to complete the orchestration where Mozart had only sketched it in, and write complete movements where these were called for. Suessmayr later studied with Salieri and went on to succeed as an opera composer, but posterity's verdice on his work as a Mozart impersonator has been mixed. As Anthony Tommasini has written, "A performance of the Suessmayer edition can often seem like an inexorable descent from the sublime to the ordinary." Professor Robert Levein of Harvard states the case in more precise and technical terms: "Suessmayr commits serious flaws which are foreign to Mozart's idiom. These errors . . . encompass grammatical and compositional issues, e.g., glaring parallel fifths in the orchestral accompaniment of the Sanctus . . . the Hosanna fugue's clumsy voice leading and insufficient length, and the reprise of the fugure after the Benedictus not in the original key of D major, but in B-flat major," as well as "the use of an overly thick orchestral texture" throughout.

These remarks are found in Levin's foreword to the completion of the Requiem presented tonight. An acclaimed fortepianist as well as a musicologist, Levin has devoted some twenty-five years to studying the Requiem and concluded that for all the flaws of Suessmayr's work, it reflects significant information about Mozart's intentions for the piece as a whole, whether passed on to Suessmayr by Mozart in person or in sketches later lost or destroyed. (In this, Levin differs from Richard Maunder, who has also published a reconstruction of the Requiem but omits the Sanctus and Benedictus movements on the theory that they bear no trace of Mozart's inspiration.) Levin's goal, accordingly, was "to revise not as much, but as little as possible, attempting in the revisions to observe the character, texture, voice leading, continuity, and structure of Mozart's music."

Requiem. The only movment substantially completed by Mozart himself, this brooding introduction mingles elements of learned counterpoint and operatic style. The canonic texture of its opening introduces an intentionally archaic atmosphere that recurs throughout the piece.
Kyrie. From here through movement 10, with the exception of movement 8 (Lacrimosa), Mozart wrote the choral and vocal parts, the orchestral bass line, and occasional phrases for the upper orchestral parts. In these movements Levin has revised Suessmayr's orchestration to create more transparent textures.
Dies irae. This brief but effective choral introduction to the Sequence, that section of the Requiem liturgy depcting the Day of Wrath, has reminded some hearers of the Queen of the Night's aria "Der Hoelle Rache" from The Magic Flute.
Tuba mirum. This vocal quartet in B-flat major provides a moment of relief from the prevailing minor tonalities. Mass settings in the Viennese court chapel tradition often employed a trombone solo, as here, to illustrate the description of the "Last Trumpet" in the text.
Rex tremendae. Levin achieves a notable improvement in the orchestral accompaniment to this choral movement by eliminating the parallel thirds from the string parts, clarifying the canonic structure of Mozart's writing.
Recordare. Another interlude in major mode for the quartet of soloists, this movement is strongly characterized by canonic repetition that could be taken as a musical illustration of the plea addressed to the Savior: "Remember. . . ."
Confutatis. In this brilliant dramatic vignette, the lower choral voices sing in terror of the flames of hell, while the upper voices, first in a hopeful C major and then despairingly in the relative minor, ask to be reckoned among the blessed ones.
Lacrimosa and
Amen. Mozart's draft of the Lacrimosa comprises only the first eight bars. Levin retains most of Suessmayr's continuation but then addes a substantial fugure on the final word "Amen," based on a preliminary study by Mozart discovered in 1963. In his foreword Levin comments: "Such an Amen fugue reflects the practice of 18th century Requiem settings . . . and would have created an overall structure in which a fugue ends each major section. . . . Because Mozart's sketch prescribes an intricate, 'difficult' counterpoint . . . a voice leading with considerable friction between the voices was intentionally chosen. This solution, with its prominent dissonances, seemed structurally and dramatically justified for the torment and anguish of the Last Judgment." Richard Maunder's edition of the Requiem also includes an Amen fugue based on the same sketch; Levin's version differs in that it remains in the same key throughout, a feature he considers essential to the practice of eighteenth-century composers in this tradition.
Domine Jesu. This movement and the next consitute the Offertory section of the Requiem liturgy. Here Levin's accompanimental writing for the strings is intentionally more flamboyant than Suessmayr's, perhaps more Mozartean as well.
Hostias. Here a choral invocation in E-flat major projects a moment of optimism, then gives way to a repeat of the fugue on "Quam olim Abrahae" introduced in the preceding movement.
Sanctus. From here to the end, the presence of Mozart's ideas in the Suessmayr completion is a matter of conjecture. Levin has reworked the harmony of Suessmayr's Sanctus and composed a new Hosanna fugue, based on the same subject as Suessmayr's but closer to Mozart's other church fugues in character. (He further adds an initial "H" to Suessmayr's spelling of "Osanna" on the grounds of Mozart's practice elsewhere.)
Benedictus. Levin retains Suessmayr's quartet for solo voices but alters the orchestral portion of the Benedictus. Suessmayr wrote a recurring passage for trombones and trumpets that referred indirectly to a motive played by the same instruments in the Introitus; Levin makes the musical quotation more explicit, but at the same time reassigns the material to bassett horns and bassoons. The shortening of the Hosanna fugue on its reappearance is modeled on Mozart's procedure in the C Minor Mass.
Agnus Dei. Here as in the Santus, Levin adopts the overall shpae of Suessmayr's version but changes the harmonic logic, to allow better part writing and a smoother transition to the opening chord of the next movement.
Lux Aeterna. Constanze affirmed in a letter to Mozart's publishers that it was Mozart's own idea to repeat the music of the Kyrie fugue for the final movement. As a lead-in to the fugue, Suessmayr also repeated the middle and end of the Introitus music. Levin proposes a different placement of the "Cum sanctis tuis" text in relationship to the notes, disagreeing with Suessmayr's decision to reserve the concluding words "quia pius es" ("for thou art merciful") until the final cadence.