The Requiem in D minor, K. 626, is a requiem mass by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart composed part of the Requiem in Vienna in late 1791, but it was unfinished at his death on 5 December the same year. A completed version dated 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who commissioned the piece for a Requiem service to commemorate the anniversary of his wife's death on 14 February.
The autograph manuscript shows the finished and orchestrated Introit in Mozart's hand, and detailed drafts of the Kyrie and the sequence Dies irae as far as the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa movement, and the Offertory. It cannot be shown to what extent Süssmayr may have depended on now lost "scraps of paper" for the remainder; he later claimed the Sanctus and Agnus Dei as his own.
Walsegg probably intended to pass the Requiem off as his own composition, as he is known to have done with other works. This plan was frustrated by a public benefit performance for Mozart's widow Constanze. She was responsible for a number of stories surrounding the composition of the work, including the claims that Mozart received the commission from a mysterious messenger who did not reveal the commissioner's identity, and that Mozart came to believe that he was writing the requiem for his own funeral.
In addition to the Süssmayr version, a number of alternative completions have been developed by musicologists in the 20th century.
Video Requiem (Mozart)
Instrumentation
The Requiem is scored for 2 basset horns in F, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets in D, 3 trombones (alto, tenor & bass), timpani (2 drums), violins, viola and basso continuo (cello, double bass, and organ). The basset horn parts are sometimes played on conventional clarinets, even though this changes the sonority.
The vocal forces include soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass soloists and an SATB mixed choir.
Maps Requiem (Mozart)
Structure
Süssmayr's completion divides the Requiem into 14 sections:
All sections from the Sanctus onwards are not present in Mozart's manuscript fragment. Mozart may have intended to include the Amen fugue at the end of the Sequentia, but Süssmayr did not do so in his completion.
The Introitus is in D minor and finishes on a half-cadence that transitions directly into Kyrie. The Kyrie is a double fugue, with one subject setting the words "Kyrie eleison" and the other setting "Christe eleison". The movement Tuba mirum opens with a trombone solo accompanying the bass. The Confutatis is well-known for its string accompaniment; it opens with agitated figures that accentuate the wrathful sound of the basses and tenors, but it turns into soft arpeggios in the second phrase while accompanying the soft sounds of the sopranos and altos.
The following table shows for the eight sections in Süssmayr's completion with their subdivisions: the title, type of movement, vocal parts (solo soprano (S), alto (A), tenor (T) and bass (B) [in bold] and four-part choir SATB), tempo, key, and meter.
History
Composition
At the time of Mozart's death on December 5 1791, only the first two movements, Requiem aeternam and Kyrie, were completed in all of the orchestral and vocal parts. The Sequence and Offertorium were completed in skeleton, with the exception of the Lacrymosa, which breaks off after the first eight bars. The vocal parts and continuo were fully notated. Occasionally, some of the prominent orchestral parts were briefly indicated, such as the first violin part of the Rex tremendae and Confutatis, the musical bridges in the Recordare, and the trombone solos of the Tuba Mirum.
What remained to be completed for these sections were mostly accompanimental figures, inner harmonies, and orchestral doublings to the vocal parts.
Completion by Mozart's contemporaries
The eccentric count Franz von Walsegg commissioned the Requiem from Mozart anonymously through intermediaries. The count, an amateur chamber musician who routinely commissioned works by composers and passed them off as his own, wanted a Requiem Mass he could claim he composed to memorialize the recent passing of his wife. Mozart received only half of the payment in advance, so upon his death his widow Constanze was keen to have the work completed secretly by someone else, submit it to the count as having been completed by Mozart and collect the final payment. Joseph von Eybler was one of the first composers to be asked to complete the score, and had worked on the movements from the Dies irae up until the Lacrymosa. In addition, a striking similarity between the openings of the Domine Jesu Christe movements in the requiems of the two composers suggests that Eybler at least looked at later sections. After this work, he felt unable to complete the remainder and gave the manuscript back to Constanze Mozart.
The task was then given to another composer, Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Süssmayr borrowed some of Eybler's work in making his completion, and added his own orchestration to the movements from the Kyrie onward, completed the Lacrymosa, and added several new movements which a Requiem would normally comprise: Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. He then added a final section, Lux aeterna by adapting the opening two movements which Mozart had written to the different words which finish the Requiem mass, which according to both Süssmayr and Mozart's wife was done according to Mozart's directions. Some people consider it unlikely, however, that Mozart would have repeated the opening two sections if he had survived to finish the work.
Other composers may have helped Süssmayr. The Agnus Dei is suspected by some scholars to have been based on instruction or sketches from Mozart because of its similarity to a section from the Gloria of a previous mass (Sparrow Mass, K. 220) by Mozart, as was first pointed out by Richard Maunder. Others have pointed out that in the beginning of the Agnus Dei, the choral bass quotes the main theme from the Introitus. Many of the arguments dealing with this matter, though, center on the perception that if part of the work is high quality, it must have been written by Mozart (or from sketches), and if part of the work contains errors and faults, it must have been all Süssmayr's doing.
Another controversy is the suggestion (originating from a letter written by Constanze) that Mozart left explicit instructions for the completion of the Requiem on "a few scraps of paper with music on them... found on Mozart's desk after his death." The extent to which Süssmayr's work may have been influenced by these "scraps" if they existed at all remains a subject of speculation amongst musicologists to this day.
The completed score, initially by Mozart but largely finished by Süssmayr, was then dispatched to Count Walsegg complete with a counterfeited signature of Mozart and dated 1792. The various complete and incomplete manuscripts eventually turned up in the 19th century, but many of the figures involved left ambiguous statements on record as to how they were involved in the affair. Despite the controversy over how much of the music is actually Mozart's, the commonly performed Süssmayr version has become widely accepted by the public. This acceptance is quite strong, even when alternative completions provide logical and compelling solutions for the work.
Promotion by Constanze Mozart
The confusion surrounding the circumstances of the Requiem's composition was created in a large part by Mozart's wife, Constanze. Constanze had a difficult task in front of her: she had to keep secret the fact that the Requiem was unfinished at Mozart's death, so she could collect the final payment from the commission. For a period of time, she also needed to keep secret the fact that Süssmayr had anything to do with the composition of the Requiem at all, in order to allow Count Walsegg the impression that Mozart wrote the work entirely himself. Once she received the commission, she needed to carefully promote the work as Mozart's so that she could continue to receive revenue from the work's publication and performance. During this phase of the Requiem's history, it was still important that the public accept that Mozart wrote the whole piece, as it would fetch larger sums from publishers and the public if it were completely by Mozart.
It is Constanze's efforts that created the flurry of half-truths and myths almost instantly after Mozart's death. According to Constanze, Mozart declared that he was composing the Requiem for himself and that he had been poisoned. His symptoms worsened, and he began to complain about the painful swelling of his body and high fever. Nevertheless, Mozart continued his work on the Requiem, and even on the last day of his life, he was explaining to his assistant how he intended to finish the Requiem.
With multiple levels of deception surrounding the Requiem's completion, a natural outcome is the mythologizing which subsequently occurred. One series of myths surrounding the Requiem involves the role Antonio Salieri played in the commissioning and completion of the Requiem (and in Mozart's death generally). While the most recent retelling of this myth is Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus and the movie made from it, it is important to note that the source of misinformation was actually a 19th-century play by Alexander Pushkin, Mozart and Salieri, which was turned into an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov and subsequently used as the framework for Amadeus.
Conflicting accounts
Source materials written soon after Mozart's death contain serious discrepancies, which leave a level of subjectivity when assembling the "facts" about Mozart's composition of the Requiem. For example, at least three of the conflicting sources, both dated within two decades following Mozart's death, cite Constanze as their primary source of interview information.
Friedrich Rochlitz
In 1798, Friedrich Rochlitz, a German biographical author and amateur composer, published a set of Mozart anecdotes that he claimed to have collected during his meeting with Constanze in 1796. The Rochlitz publication makes the following statements:
- Mozart was unaware of his commissioner's identity at the time he accepted the project.
- He was not bound to any date of completion of the work.
- He stated that it would take him around four weeks to complete.
- He requested, and received, 100 ducats at the time of the first commissioning message.
- He began the project immediately after receiving the commission.
- His health was poor from the outset; he fainted multiple times while working.
- He took a break from writing the work to visit the Prater with his wife.
- He shared the thought with his wife that he was writing this piece for his own funeral.
- He spoke of "very strange thoughts" regarding the unpredicted appearance and commission of this unknown man.
- He noted that the departure of Leopold II to Prague for the coronation was approaching.
The most highly disputed of these claims is the last one, the chronology of this setting. According to Rochlitz, the messenger arrives quite some time before the departure of Leopold for the coronation, yet there is a record of his departure occurring in mid-July 1791. However, as Constanze was in Baden during all of June to mid-July, she would not have been present for the commission or the drive they were said to have taken together. Furthermore, The Magic Flute (except for the Overture and March of the Priests) was completed by mid-July. La clemenza di Tito was commissioned by mid-July. There was no time for Mozart to work on the Requiem on the large scale indicated by the Rochlitz publication in the time frame provided.
Franz Xaver Niemetschek
Also in 1798, Constanze is noted to have given another interview to Franz Xaver Niemetschek, another biographer looking to publish a compendium of Mozart's life. He published his biography in 1808, containing a number of claims about Mozart's receipt of the Requiem commission:
- Mozart received the commission very shortly before the Coronation of Emperor Leopold II and before he received the commission to go to Prague.
- He did not accept the messenger's request immediately; he wrote the commissioner and agreed to the project stating his fee but urging that he could not predict the time required to complete the work.
- The same messenger appeared later, paying Mozart the sum requested plus a note promising a bonus at the work's completion.
- He started composing the work upon his return from Prague.
- He fell ill while writing the work
- He told Constanze "I am only too conscious... my end will not be long in coming: for sure, someone has poisoned me! I cannot rid my mind of this thought."
- Constanze thought that the Requiem was overstraining him; she called the doctor and took away the score.
- On the day of his death, he had the score brought to his bed.
- The messenger took the unfinished Requiem soon after Mozart's death.
- Constanze never learned the commissioner's name.
This account, too, has fallen under scrutiny and criticism of its accuracy. According to letters, Constanze most certainly knew the name of the commissioner by the time this interview was released in 1800. Additionally, the Requiem was not given to the messenger until some time after Mozart's death. This interview contains the only account from Constanze herself of the claim that she took the Requiem away from Wolfgang for a significant duration during his composition of it. Otherwise, the timeline provided in this account is historically probable.
Georg Nikolaus von Nissen
However, the most highly accepted text attributed to Constanze is the interview to her second husband, Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. After Nissen's death in 1826, Constanze released the biography of Wolfgang (1828) that Nissen had compiled, which included this interview. Nissen states:
- Mozart received the commission shortly before the coronation of Emperor Leopold and before he received the commission to go to Prague.
- He did not accept the messenger's request immediately; he wrote the commissioner and agreed to the project stating his fee but urging that he could not predict the time required to complete the work.
- The same messenger appeared later, paying Mozart the sum requested plus a note promising a bonus at the work's completion.
- He started composing the work upon his return from Prague.
The Nissen publication lacks information following Mozart's return from Prague.
Influences
Mozart esteemed Handel and in 1789 he was commissioned by Baron Gottfried van Swieten to rearrange Messiah (HWV 56). This work likely influenced the composition of Mozart's Requiem; the Kyrie is based on the "And with His stripes we are healed" chorus from Handel's Messiah, since the subject of the fugato is the same with only slight variations by adding ornaments on melismata. However, the same four-note theme is also found in the finale of Haydn's String Quartet in F minor (Op. 20 No. 5) and in the first measure of the A minor fugue from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2 (BWV 889b) as part of the subject of Bach's fugue, and it is thought that Mozart transcribed some of the fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier for string ensemble (K. 404a Nos. 1-3 and K. 405 Nos. 1-5), but the attribution of these transcriptions to Mozart is not certain.
Some believe that the Introitus was inspired by Handel's Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline, HWV 264. Another influence was Michael Haydn's Requiem in C minor which he and his father heard at the first three performances in January 1772. Some have noted that Michael Haydn's Introitus sounds rather similar to Mozart's, and the theme for Mozart's "Quam olim Abrahae" fugue is a direct quote of the theme from Haydn's Offertorium and Versus. In Introitus m. 21, the soprano sings "Te decet hymnus Deus in Zion". It is quoting the Lutheran hymn "Meine Seele erhebet den Herren". The melody is used by many composers e.g. in Bach's cantata Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10 but also in Michael Haydn's Requiem.
Timeline
Modern completions
In the 1960s, a sketch for an Amen Fugue was discovered, which some musicologists (Levin, Maunder) believe belongs to the Requiem at the conclusion of the sequence after the Lacrymosa. H. C. Robbins Landon argues that this Amen fugue was not intended for the Requiem, rather that it "may have been for a separate unfinished mass in D minor" to which the Kyrie K. 341 also belonged.
There is, however, compelling evidence placing the Amen Fugue in the Requiem based on current Mozart scholarship. First, the principal subject is the main theme of the Requiem (stated at the beginning, and throughout the work) in strict inversion. Second, it is found on the same page as a sketch for the Rex tremendae (together with a sketch for the overture of his last opera The Magic Flute), and thus surely dates from late 1791. The only place where the word 'Amen' occurs in anything that Mozart wrote in late 1791 is in the sequence of the Requiem. Third, as Levin points out in the foreword to his completion of the Requiem, the addition of the Amen Fugue at the end of the sequence results in an overall design that ends each large section with a fugue.
Since the 1970s several composers and musicologists, dissatisfied with the traditional "Süssmayr" completion, have attempted alternative completions of the Requiem.
Autograph at the 1958 World's Fair
The autograph of the Requiem was placed on display at the World's Fair in 1958 in Brussels. At some point during the fair, someone was able to gain access to the manuscript, tearing off the bottom right-hand corner of the second to last page (folio 99r/45r), containing the words "Quam olim d: C:" (an instruction that the "Quam olim" fugue of the Domine Jesu was to be repeated da capo, at the end of the Hostias). The perpetrator has not been identified and the fragment has not been recovered.
If the most common authorship theory is true, then "Quam olim d: C:" might very well be the last words Mozart wrote before he died. It is probable that whoever stole the fragment believed that to be the case.
Selected recordings
In the following table, large choirs and orchestras are marked by red background, ensembles playing on "period instruments" in "historically informed performance" are marked by a green background under the header Instr..
Other recordings
- Ralf Otto, Bachchor Mainz (Levin completion), L'arpa festante München, Julia Kleiter, Gerhild Romberger, Daniel Sans, Klaus Mertens, NCA
- Christoph Spering, Chorus Musicus, Das Neue Orchester, Iride Martinez, Monica Groop, Steve Davislim, Kwangchul Youn, Opus 111 (2002)
- Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Concentus Musicus Wien, Christine Schäfer, Bernarda Fink, Kurt Streit, Gerald Finley, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
- Carl Czerny transcription for soli, coro and piano four hands: Antonio Greco, Coro Costanzo Porta, Diego Maccagnola, Anna Bessi, Silvia Frigato, Raffaele Giordani, Riccardo Demini. Discantica (2012)
- John Butt conducting the Dunedin Consort on the Linn Records label. The first recording to use David Black's new critical edition of the Süssmayr version, it attempts to reconstruct the performing forces at the first performances in Vienna in 1791 and 1793. It won the 2014 Gramophone Award for Best Choral Recording.
- Zden?k Ko?ler conducting the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, with Magdaléna Hajóssyová, Jaroslava Horská, Jozef Kundlák and Peter Mikulá?, Naxos, 1989: recorded at the Reduta, Bratislava, March 1985.
Arrangements
The Requiem and its individual movements have been repeatedly arranged for various instruments. The keyboard arrangements notably demonstrate the variety of approaches taken to translating the Requiem, particularly the Confutatis and Lacrimosa movements, in order to balance preserving the Requiem's character while also being physically playable. Karl Klindworth's piano solo (c.1900), Muzio Clementi's organ solo, and Renaud de Vilbac's harmonium solo (c.1875) are liberal in their approach to achieve this. In contrast, Carl Czerny wrote his piano transcription for two players, enabling him to retain the extent of the score, if sacrificing timbrel character. Franz Liszt's piano solo (c.1865) departs the most in terms of fidelity and character of the Requiem, through its inclusion of composition devices used to showcase pianistic technique.
References
Bibliography
- C. R. F. Maunder (1988). Mozart's Requiem: On Preparing a New Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-316413-2.
- Christoph Wolff (1994). Mozart's Requiem: Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07709-1.
- Brendan Cormican (1991). Mozart's death - Mozart's requiem: an investigation. Belfast, Northern Ireland: Amadeus Press. ISBN 0-9510357-0-3.
- Heinz Gärtner (1991). Constanze Mozart: after the Requiem. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. ISBN 0-931340-39-X.
- Simon P. Keefe (2012). Mozart's Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion. Canmbridge UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19837-0.
- Requiem (2005) Decca Music Group Limited. Barcode 00028947570578
External links
- Article on the Requiem at h2g2
- Michael Lorenz: "Freystädtler's Supposed Copying in the Autograph of K. 626: A Case of Mistaken Identity", Vienna 2013
- Mozart's Requiem, new completion of the score by musicologist Robert D. Levin, live concert
- Requiem: Score and critical report (in German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
- Eybler's and Süssmayr's amendments: Score in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
- Free scores of Requiem, KV 626 in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
- Requiem in D minor, K. 626: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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