Requiem, K. 626

By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

BORN : January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria

DIED : December 5, 1791, in Vienna

Ω COMPOSED : 1791, completed by Franz Xaver

Süssmayr

Ω WORLD PREMIERE : January 2, 1793, at Vienna’s Jahn Hall in a performance sponsored by Mozart’s long-time patron and friend, Baron Gottfried van Swieten.

Ω CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA PREMIERE : November 19, 1964, in a series of performances led by Robert Shaw

Ω ORCHESTRATION : 2 basset horns, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, organ, and strings, in addition to soprano, alto, tenor, and bass soloists, as well as mixed chorus

Ω DURATION : about 50 minutes

THE STORY BEHIND Mozart’s Requiem is well known. In 1791, the final year of his life, Mozart received a commission from an Austrian aristocrat to write a Requiem in memory of his wife. The commission was delivered by a messenger, who did not reveal its source to the composer. Whether or not Mozart knew the commissioner to be Count Franz von Walsegg-Stuppach, whose young wife Anna died earlier that year at the age of 20, is a mystery. However, we do know that the Count offered a considerable sum of 225 florins — paying half upfront and promising the rest when the work was completed. Opinions differ as to whether the Count also intended to pass it off as his own creation.

Mozart set about finishing his operas La clemenza di Tito and The Magic Flute before turning his attention to the Requiem, based on the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, in the fall. By November of that year, he had fallen ill, and, on December 5 at 1 a.m., he died with the work still unfinished.

Constanze Mozart, his widow, was anxious to see the completion of her husband’s last composition. She approached the composer Joseph Eybler to undertake this task, but he soon gave up. Constanze next asked Franz Xaver Süssmayr, one of her husband’s pupils. Süssmayr proceeded to carry out the instructions Mozart is said to have provided on his deathbed, singing his instructions to Constanze and colleagues including Süssmayr. Ever since, the musical world has been trying to establish exactly who wrote what. This endeavor has not been made easier by Süssmayr’s forgery of Mozart’s signature on the autograph score.

How much of the Requiem, as we know it from the Süssmayr version, is actually Mozart’s work? It is impossible to give a definitive answer to this question. What we do have in Mozart’s handwriting is the first-movement Introitus, the vocal parts and bassline of the Kyrie fugue, most of the Sequenz section (including the Dies irae, Tuba mirum, Rex tremendae, Recordare, and Confutatis; while the Lacrimosa breaks off after the eighth measure), as well as the Offertorium. Süssmayr claimed sole authorship of the remainder of the Lacrimosa, as well as the Sanctus, Benedictus, and the Agnus Dei. In the final section, the Communio’s Lux aeterna, Süssmayr recycled music from the opening Introitus and Kyrie movements, adapting them to a different text. Although Mozart probably never intended the first and last movements to be identical, Süssmayr’s decision has some merit, as it gives the work a wellrounded, unified musical design.

In our current secular times, it’s easy to disregard how closely Mozart followed the conventions of 18th-century church music behind the abounding innovation in the Requiem. Although he had not written a major sacred work since the unfinished C-minor Mass (K. 427) of 1782–83, he had been active in church music since the age of 12 and wrote no fewer than 17 masses and numerous other sacred works during the following decade. He built upon the tradition cultivated by Salzburg composers such as Michael Haydn and others, a tradition he took into account even in 1791. But in the Requiem, Mozart enriched this inherited tradition by many personal stylistic elements, as demonstrated through many similarities with his contemporaneous opera, The Magic Flute.

The opening Introitus, the only section we know to be entirely written by Mozart, begins with the Chorus’s plaintive request to grant eternal rest followed by the soprano soloist singing the first psalm text setting. The full chorus joins in the Kyrie, a fugue based on a common Baroque motif. Mozart incorporates an unusual gesture in its final statement, sung by the entire chorus: The last sonority is not a triad but a perfect fifth, which makes for an austere ending.

The most crucial part of a Requiem is the Sequenz, which Mozart set as a cantata in six movements, with chorus and solo voices alternating. The powerful Dies irae brings the Day of Judgement into terrifying relief. The following Tuba mirum offers one of the earliest great trombone solos in classical symphonic literature invoking the trumpet of scripture and its “wondrous sound” that summons those who are to be judged. Each of the four soloists voices nuanced feelings around the unfolding of the Day of Wrath, before joining together as a quartet. Throughout the Sequenz, the monumental aspect of the Judgement is expressed by the chorus, while the soloists give voice to the anguish of individual souls. The Sequenz culminates in the Lacrimosa, a gripping lament for humanity at the moment when its fate is about to be decided.

In the Offertorium, Mozart paints the horrors of hell and the attainment of eternal light in equally vivid colors; the promise made to Abraham is represented by a magnificent choral fugue.

In the subsequent movements, Süssmayr did his best to prevent the intensity of the music from flagging. He mostly succeeded, aside from a few awkward moments, which, from more than 200 years of the work’s performance history, have nevertheless become almost hallowed, though new editions published over the past few decades have offered alternative solutions to Süssmayr’s rendering.

A newspaper in Salzburg reported that Mozart said as he was furiously working on the composition: “I fear that I am writing a Requiem for myself.” Yet, at the same time, the Requiem in many ways represented a new beginning. It contains many stylistic elements that Mozart would no doubt have developed further had he not died just weeks before his 36th birthday. Baroque counterpoint meets an almost Romantic sensitivity here in a completely novel way, a tantalizing glimpse of where his musical genius would have led. Instead, this masterpiece was left to others to draw upon its power and sublime beauty ever since.

— Peter Laki

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