Mozart Requiem
Mozart Requiem Analysis
Mystery has
shrouded the story of Mozart's Requiem since the composer's death on
December 5, 1791: the figure of the "Grey Messenger" who delivered the
commission to Mozart; the anonymity of the person on whose behalf the
messenger was sent; the promise of a significant sum offered as payment
for the composition; the contractual agreement that the work become the
exclusive property of the anonymous commissioner and that the composer
of the work remain unknown; and the stirrings of superstition roused
within Mozart at the request to write a mass for the dead.
The young and beautiful Countess Anna von Walsegg had died on February 14, 1791, in Stuppach, near Wiener Neustadt, about fifty miles southwest of Vienna. She was twenty one years old. Her grieving husband, Count Franz von Walsegg, wanting to commemorate her memory in a fitting manner, commissioned two works: a marble and granite monument from the renowned sculptor, Johann Martin Fischer, and a musical setting of the Roman Catholic mass for the dead from Mozart. For the monument, Von Walsegg paid 3,000 florins, and for the Requiem, 225 florins. Some two hundred years later, the monument no longer exists; it has somehow been destroyed. The Requiem setting remains a cornerstone of Western classical music.
The reason Walsegg wanted the work written anonymously was to satisfy a curious and harmless past time of his own. Himself an amateur musician, he commissioned works from several composers under the same conditions as the requiem. He would then copy these in his own hand and, at performances at Schloss Stuppach, pass them off as his own compositions.
Mozart received the commission during the summer of 1791. The sum offered was significant for a composer: as much as he might be paid for an entire opera. And a down payment of half was given at the outset. Mozart accepted the commission eagerly and not just for the financial reward. In his Salzburg days, he had written a prodigious amount of sacred music; while living in Vienna, he had written almost none. In part he was pre-occupied with the Viennese taste for opera and with concerti for his own public performances. But also, he was discouraged by the strictures imposed on the writing of sacred music by the ruling emperor. Under the ten-year rule of the more liberal Joseph II, these strictures were lifted.
Mozart had recently accepted the unpaid position of assistant Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's, in the hopes that the elderly and ailing Kapellmeister, one Josef Hoffmann, would soon be indisposed and that he, Mozart, would then have a secure and paid position. So, when the commission for the Requiem came, he saw this as an opportunity, under the new freedoms allowed sacred music, and unfettered from any strictures of expressivity, to prove himself as a composer worthy of the office at the most important cathedral in Vienna.
Mozart was busy completing Magic Flute and Il Clemenza di Tito when he accepted the requiem commission. It is thought that he began to sketch ideas for the Requiem during the summer, but he soon left for Prague, to launch Il Clemenza. Franz Xavier Süssmayr, a young composer and Mozart's student and assistant, accompanied him, to assist with meeting deadlines by taking on tasks relating to score realizations and production of orchestral parts.
Mozart turned his full attention to the Requiem commission on his return to Vienna in early November. But very soon, he felt ill. Constanze, his wife, took the score away from him at times, as he became fretful that fate was at work against him. He is said to have feared he was writing his own requiem. In fact, he worked on the Requiem on his sick bed. And he continued to work in this way for some weeks. On December 4, friends gathered to sing parts of the Requiem for the composer. The last notes he wrote were the first eight measure of the Lacrymosa movement of the Requiem. He remained lucid until just a few hours before his death in the early hours of December 5, 1791. Constanze, beside herself with despair, was in the next room. Sophie, her sister, was with Mozart when he died, and she reports that he was mouthing parts of the Requiem in his last hours. Mozart was buried on December 6.
A funeral service for Mozart was held on December 10 at St. Michael's Church. Two movements of the Requiem were performed: the completed Introitus: Requiem and the Kyrie. It seems that Süssmayr finished the colle parte (orchestral parts doubling vocal parts) scoring of the Kyrie for the service.
The completion of the full Requiem is another chapter in the saga of its composition. Within days of Mozart's death, Constanze approached several young composers to finish the work. Finally Süssmayr completed the Requiem: several movements are a combination of Mozart's thematic and harmonic material and Süssmayr's orchestrations. Some are Süssmayr's own. Before Constanze delivered the completed Requiem to Von Walsegg, she had two more copies made and one of these was sent to the King of Prussia. Were it not for this very smart move on Constanze's part, it is well possible that the Requiem might have been lost for a very long time: the score in Von Walsegg's library lay unrecognized for years after Mozart's death. Süssmayr died years later, maintaining the silence surrounding his illicit completion of the work.
Program notes © Shulamit Hoffmann
Please review the original image at Scrape TV
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Entertainment/pages-3/Mozart-finally-releases-new-music-Scrape-TV-The-World-on-your-side.html
The young and beautiful Countess Anna von Walsegg had died on February 14, 1791, in Stuppach, near Wiener Neustadt, about fifty miles southwest of Vienna. She was twenty one years old. Her grieving husband, Count Franz von Walsegg, wanting to commemorate her memory in a fitting manner, commissioned two works: a marble and granite monument from the renowned sculptor, Johann Martin Fischer, and a musical setting of the Roman Catholic mass for the dead from Mozart. For the monument, Von Walsegg paid 3,000 florins, and for the Requiem, 225 florins. Some two hundred years later, the monument no longer exists; it has somehow been destroyed. The Requiem setting remains a cornerstone of Western classical music.
The reason Walsegg wanted the work written anonymously was to satisfy a curious and harmless past time of his own. Himself an amateur musician, he commissioned works from several composers under the same conditions as the requiem. He would then copy these in his own hand and, at performances at Schloss Stuppach, pass them off as his own compositions.
Mozart received the commission during the summer of 1791. The sum offered was significant for a composer: as much as he might be paid for an entire opera. And a down payment of half was given at the outset. Mozart accepted the commission eagerly and not just for the financial reward. In his Salzburg days, he had written a prodigious amount of sacred music; while living in Vienna, he had written almost none. In part he was pre-occupied with the Viennese taste for opera and with concerti for his own public performances. But also, he was discouraged by the strictures imposed on the writing of sacred music by the ruling emperor. Under the ten-year rule of the more liberal Joseph II, these strictures were lifted.
Mozart had recently accepted the unpaid position of assistant Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's, in the hopes that the elderly and ailing Kapellmeister, one Josef Hoffmann, would soon be indisposed and that he, Mozart, would then have a secure and paid position. So, when the commission for the Requiem came, he saw this as an opportunity, under the new freedoms allowed sacred music, and unfettered from any strictures of expressivity, to prove himself as a composer worthy of the office at the most important cathedral in Vienna.
Mozart was busy completing Magic Flute and Il Clemenza di Tito when he accepted the requiem commission. It is thought that he began to sketch ideas for the Requiem during the summer, but he soon left for Prague, to launch Il Clemenza. Franz Xavier Süssmayr, a young composer and Mozart's student and assistant, accompanied him, to assist with meeting deadlines by taking on tasks relating to score realizations and production of orchestral parts.
Mozart turned his full attention to the Requiem commission on his return to Vienna in early November. But very soon, he felt ill. Constanze, his wife, took the score away from him at times, as he became fretful that fate was at work against him. He is said to have feared he was writing his own requiem. In fact, he worked on the Requiem on his sick bed. And he continued to work in this way for some weeks. On December 4, friends gathered to sing parts of the Requiem for the composer. The last notes he wrote were the first eight measure of the Lacrymosa movement of the Requiem. He remained lucid until just a few hours before his death in the early hours of December 5, 1791. Constanze, beside herself with despair, was in the next room. Sophie, her sister, was with Mozart when he died, and she reports that he was mouthing parts of the Requiem in his last hours. Mozart was buried on December 6.
A funeral service for Mozart was held on December 10 at St. Michael's Church. Two movements of the Requiem were performed: the completed Introitus: Requiem and the Kyrie. It seems that Süssmayr finished the colle parte (orchestral parts doubling vocal parts) scoring of the Kyrie for the service.
The completion of the full Requiem is another chapter in the saga of its composition. Within days of Mozart's death, Constanze approached several young composers to finish the work. Finally Süssmayr completed the Requiem: several movements are a combination of Mozart's thematic and harmonic material and Süssmayr's orchestrations. Some are Süssmayr's own. Before Constanze delivered the completed Requiem to Von Walsegg, she had two more copies made and one of these was sent to the King of Prussia. Were it not for this very smart move on Constanze's part, it is well possible that the Requiem might have been lost for a very long time: the score in Von Walsegg's library lay unrecognized for years after Mozart's death. Süssmayr died years later, maintaining the silence surrounding his illicit completion of the work.
Program notes © Shulamit Hoffmann
Please review the original image at Scrape TV
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Entertainment/pages-3/Mozart-finally-releases-new-music-Scrape-TV-The-World-on-your-side.html
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