Post Description

Produced by Tim Oldham


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Requiem in D minor, K626 ed. R. Levin 

Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chorus
Sir Charles Mackerras – conductor 

Susan Gritton – soprano
Catherine Wyn-Rogers – contralto
Timothy Robinson – tenor
Peter Rose – bass 

Recorded at Caird Hall, Dundee, UK 14-16 December 2002 

Mozart's Requiem—the composer's last and unfinished work—was commissioned by Count Franz von Wallsegg, who wished to have it performed in memory of his departed wife as his own composition. In order not to forfeit the handsome commission fee, Mozart's widow Constanze decided to have the work completed in secrecy, so that the finished version could be presented as her husband's final effort. The Requiem is known to the general public in the version undertaken by Mozart's pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Süssmayr based his completion on Mozart's virtually complete score of the INTROITUS and drafts of all sections from the Kyrie fugue to the Hostias. These contain the completed vocal parts (solo and chorus) and the orchestral bass line, with occasional motives for the orchestral accompaniment. However, the Lacrimosa breaks off after the eighth bar. To these Mozartean materials Süssmayr added settings of the SANCTUS/Hosanna, Benedictus, AGNUS DEI and COMMUNION (Lux aeterna —Cum sanctis tuis). (The COMMUNION is merely a newly texted version of part of the INTROITUS and of the Kyrie fugue.) 

In making his completion Süssmayr could draw on the partial completion of the SEQUENCE done by Joseph Eybler soon after Mozart's death. He may have had access to a further important source—a sketch leaf which includes contrapuntal studies for the Rex tremendae as well as the beginning of an Amen fugue to close the Lacrimosa. However, Süssmayr did not include a realization of this fugue in his version; he set the Amen with two chords at the end of the Lacrimosa. 

The key question about Süssmayr's version is whether any of the portions of the Requiem that are not in Mozart's hand were based on his ideas. Although Süssmayr claimed to have composed these alone, they display the tight motivic construction of Mozart's fragment, in which a small number of themes recurs from movement to movement. (Süssmayr's own music lacks such motivic interrelationships.) Perhaps, then, the "few scraps of music" Constanze Mozart remembers giving to Süssmayr together with Mozart's manuscript contained material not found in Mozart's draft. Mozart also may have suggested certain ideas to Süssmayr on the piano. 

A clear evaluation of the movements Süssmayr claimed to have composed is clouded by unmistakable discrepancies within them between idiomatically Mozartean lines and grammatical and structural flaws that are utterly foreign to Mozart's idiom. First attacked in 1825, these include glaring errors of voice leading in the orchestral accompaniment of the SANCTUS and the awkward, truncated Hosanna fugue. Furthermore, Süssmayr brings back this fugue after the Benedictus in B-flat major rather than the original D major—in conflict with all church music of the time. 

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