Requiem (Mozart)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote the Requiem mass in D minor (K. 626) in 1791. It was Mozart's last composition and is also, perhaps, one of his most powerful and recognised works.

Composition and completion

The work is scored for soprano, alto, tenor and bass soloists and choir, and a small classical orchestra comprising two basset horns (a type of tenor clarinet), two bassoons, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, organ, violins, viola, cello and bass. At Mozart's death on 5 December 1791 he had only completed the opening movement (Requiem aeternam) in all of the orchestral and vocal parts (although recent evidence suggests that a few bars of orchestration were added in by someone else). The following Kyrie (an immensely difficult double fugue), and most of the Sequence (from Dies irae to Confutatis), are complete only in the vocal parts and the continuo (the figured organ bass), though occasionally some of the prominent orchestral parts have been briefly indicated, such as the violin part of the Confutatis and the musical bridges in the Recordare. The last movement of the Sequence, the Lacrymosa, breaks off after only eight bars and was unfinished. The following two movements of the Offertorium were again partially done -- the Domine Jesu in the vocal parts and continuo and the Hostias in the vocal parts only. In the 1960s a sketch for an Amen fugue was discovered, which would have concluded the Sequence after the Lacrymosa (a few scholars dispute that this Amen fugue was intended for the Requiem, but the majority of Mozart scholarship believes that it was).

Related Topics:
Basset horns - 5 December - 1791 - Dies irae - Continuo - 1960s

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Mozart had been commissioned anonymously to write the Requiem (by intermediaries acting for the eccentric Count Walsegg von Stuppach) and received half of the payment in advance, so his widow Constanze was keen for the incomplete work to be finished (probably in order to receive the other half of the payment). Josef 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, at which point he felt unable to complete the remainder, and gave the manuscript back to Constanze Mozart.

Related Topics:
Count Walsegg von Stuppach - Josef von Eybler

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The task was then given to another junior composer, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who borrowed some of Eybler's work in making his completion. Süssmayr added his own orchestration to the movements from the Kyrie onward, completed the Lacrymosa, and added several new movements which would normally comprise a Requiem: 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. Whether or not that is true, some people consider it unlikely that Mozart would have repeated the opening two sections if he had survived to finish the work completely.

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There is some possibility other composers may have helped Süssmayr, or that he might have discovered sketches by Mozart amongst the papers for the Requiem. The elder composer Maximilian Stadler is suspected of having completed the orchestration of the Domine Jesu for Süssmayr. The Agnus Dei is also suspected by some scholars to have been based on instruction or sketches from Mozart because of its similarity to a previous Mass by Mozart. 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. A frequent meta-debate is whether or not this is a fair way to judge the authorship of the parts of the work.

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Many Mozart scholars also agree that had Mozart lived to finish the work, he would have composed new music for the cum sanctis conclusion to the Requiem instead of simply recycling the Kyrie fugue sequence from the beginning and using new text.

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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 did not leave unambiguous statements on record as to how they were involved in the affair.

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Despite the controversy over how much of the music is actually Mozart's, the quality of the music itself has overridden many concerns - particularly the opening 7 bars for orchestra alone, the powerful Dies irae, the stark contrast between pure power and sublime harmony in the Confutatis, and the speed and wonder emoted by the Kyrie.

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