At the End of the Day Opus Ultimum Mozart/Sussmayr Requiem Mass in d minor, KV 626 223 years ago today marks the last full day of Wolfgang Mozarts life. Mozart died at 5 minutes to 1 oclock in the morning on December 5th, 1791. By Vincent DeLuise For many, there is a profound sense of incompleteness in Mozarts life and work, in what some have termed his premature death, even though we should not feel that way at all. As we gaze here below at the Joseph Lange portrait of Mozart, which conveys to many in the group these notions of incompleteness and loss (the face was completely finished in 1782 within a small frame, but then, for some reason, was cut and pasted into a larger compositional space in 1789, where we see it as “unfinished”), we at times feel that the death of Wolfgang Mozart, was one of civilization’s great tragedies. I have argued here often that we should rejoice, and not be sad, that Mozart lived as long as he did, and during those extraordinary 35 years and ten months, he composed a universe of over 800 works of such exquisite, luminous, radiant and sublime beauty that it leaves us as posterity speechless, and at once with a lifetime of joyous listening and performance pleasure. Yet, of the many ineffable compositions birthed from the genius that was Johannes Chrystostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, none has engendered more lasting fascination and such a profound degree of wistfulness than one such unfinished work, his Opus Ultimum, the Requiem Mass in d minor, KV 626. The reasons for the Requiem’s commission, the tragic end of Mozart’s life while he was in the process of writing it, and the strange and unlikely trajectory subsequently taken by this haunting and wondrous piece of music are still being debated today, two hundred and twenty-three years after its conception. The chronology and musicology of this enduring legacy in the musical firmament, from its most brilliant star, is itself a remarkable narrative, which I describe in detail in the essay I wrote for a performance of the Mozart Requiem in the vast and contemplative space that is St Bart’s (St. Bartholomew’s) Church on Park Avenue in NYC, in November 2012. This was a collaborative effort by the Weill Cornell Medical College Music and Medicine Orchestra and the Juilliard School (SATB soloists). (I participated on clarinet in one of the basset horn parts) Our conductor for that performance, Maestro David Leibowitz, wisely chose the Franz Beyer completion of 1901 of the Requiem. Beyer assiduously excised everything from the various autographs and manuscripts of the Requiem (see essay for details) that was not either in the hand of Wolfgang Mozart or of Franz Xaver Sussmayr. After Eybler and Freistadler tried but did not complete the work, it was indeed Sussmayr who accepted the task from Constanze and completed it. (We know that some parts of this completion are in Sussmayr’s hand because he made mistakes in the basset horn parts, mistakes which the genius Mozart, who adored the sound of the basset horn and all the clarinet family and understood them intimately from his friendship with the Stadlers, would never have made). One thing the Beyer completion does not contain is the other-worldly Amen Fugue, discovered by Wolfgang Plath in Vienna in 1962, as the only extant zettl of the Zettlchen Constanze repeatedly insisted existed. Below, I offer the Mozart Requiem in a performance by the estimable John Eliot Gardiner with the exquisite Mozartean soprano Barbara Bonney and the exquisite Mozartean mezzo Anne Sophie von Otter, the wonderful tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson and the orotund bass Alastair Miles, at the Palau in Barcelona, using the Franz Beyer completion, which, to me, is the very best way to hear and feel the Requiem, as it is purely from the mind and heart of two late 18th century composers, Mozart and Sussmayr, and no one else. I also offer the Amen Fugue in the Richard Maunder completion, which sounds to me a bit more “Mozartean” than the other excellent completion, that of the musicologist and pianist Robert Levin. Here are two Maunder completions of the Amen Fugue, the second correctly interpolated right after the Lacrymosa, as was custom in 18th century Requiem masses. At the end of the day, what do we really have left in our lives? The money we have accumulated and sequestered? Or, the Art we have enjoyed and in which we have been awash during our lives? It is the Art, the memories of Art and Music and Sculpture and the Dance and Poetry and Prose that have defined our days, our nights, our dreams, our hopes and our aspirations. Ars longa, vita brevis Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (January 27, 1756- December 5, 1791). Sic transit Gloria mundi. Vincent DeLuise amusicalvision.blogspot.ro/2012/09/a-most-sublime-torso-unraveling-threads.html
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 08:21:43 +0000
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