Mozart Requiem

Mozart Requiem... His Greatest Sacred Work?

Mozart wrote only three sacred works during his Vienna years after leaving the services of the Archbishop of Salzburg -  the Great Mass in C Minor, the wondrous Ave Verum Corpus and the Requiem.  It is hard to say, but one could argue Mozart's Requiem is his greatest sacred work.  It is a matter of opinion.  Both the Mass in C Minor and the Requiem were left unfinished at his death, and are both therefore noble torsos of what might have been.  Still, there are several complete movements from each of these pieces. 

Both pieces contain fugues - the ingenious double fugue in the "Kyrie" section of the Requiem.  The double fugue "Cum Sanctus Spiritus" of the Mass in C Minor.  Both are intensely passionate and personal.  One written in celebration of his marriage, the other a monument to himself, or so he believed. It may be hard to choose one over the other.  Although a mere miniature compared to the two large masses, the Ave Verum Corpus motet for chorus, strings, and organ is no less moving than the two larger works.  It could be argued to be the most serene and wondrous of all Mozart's works for its simplicity, yet passionate and deeply moving expression.  It never ceases to amaze me hearing after hearing...

Mozart Requiem... A Personal Work

Mozart lived in a time when music's accepted function was to please the nobility or the clergy, not to offer personal statements about the human condition that became personified in the music of Beethoven just a generation later than Mozart's.  Still, Mozart always went well beyond competance because he was a genius transcending the boundaries of accepted norms, as all great artists do.  In his day, his music was often critisized as audacious, too heavily flavored, and too complex for the ordinary listener to follow. 

While the Requiem is not personal to the extent Beethoven's symphonies are, it is nevertheless a highly personal work, as can be found in his own words when he told his wife he was writing the Requiem for himself.  Instead of simply setting the Sequentia, for example, in an uninspired, functional way which would have been perfectly acceptable to the establishment at the time, he composed several masterful pieces to portions of this long text.  The Recordare in particular is a luminously beautiful setting.  It is hard not to conclude upon listening to this music that Mozart was making a personal statement about the text, ... to me also hast Thou given hope."

Mozart Requiem... His Greatest Sacred Work?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was expected to compose sacred music often while in the employment of the Archbishop of Salzburg. During that time he composed over 50 works for liturgical use. But after Mozart left the services of the Archbishop and settled in Vienna, he had little call to compose sacred music.  He composed only three, and completed only one, the otherworldly motet, Ave Verum Corpus.  Besides the Requiem and the motet, he composed the Great Mass in C Minor of 1783, which he left unfinished as he did the Requiem. 

The reason behind the composition of the C Minor Mass was to fulfill a vow Mozart made to his wife to compose a mass in celebration of their marriage.  Mozart's wife, Constanze, was herself a soloist for the completed parts of the Mass premeired in Salzburg.  Still, for reasons unknown, Mozart left the work unfinished even though he had completed much of it eight years before his death.  This work, arguably his greatest sacred work alongside the Requiem, was the main sacred work he composed during his Vienna years. 

The Requiem Mass was commissioned by Count Franz Walsegg-Stuppach, whose wife had died earlier in 1791.  This was unknown to Mozart, who interpreted the terms of secrecy for the commission as a kind of beckoning from the Grim Reaper himself.  While it is nearly impossible to know for sure precisely how much of the completed Requiem is Mozart's, just as it is impossible to know the exact location of his burial site, much of it is unmistakably Mozart such as the opening "Requiem aeternam," the gorgeous "Tuba mirum," and the heavenly "Recordare." 

Mozart Requiem... How Much of the Requiem did Mozart Complete?

This question of how much of the Requiem Mozart actually wrote is a bit complicated since there are several composers, including Franx Xaver Sussmayr, a pupil of Mozart's, whose handwriting bore a striking resemblance to Mozart, who had a part in completing the work.   Mozart's creative process, from the autograph  manuscripts left behind of the Requiem reveal that Mozart began by writing the choral parts and figured bass line, with some indications to scoring.  Later, he would fill in the other orchestra parts. 

Mozart appears to have completed in full score the opening "Requiem aeternam" and the "Kyrie" while sketching in choral parts with figured bass the "Dies irae," "Tuba mirum," "Rex tremendae," "Recordare," "Confutatis," "Domine Jesu," and "Hostias."  The last music Mozart is known to have written is the eighth bar of the "Lacrimosa," translated as "Mournful Day."  Sad that would be the title of his last music written, as so much of his music uplifted, bringing sunshine, hope, and happiness to every day...

Mozart Requiem

In the summer of 1791, a messenger clad in gray paid a visit to Mozart's flat and had a message for the composer.  It was an offer to compose a Requiem Mass, a mass for the dead,  for an unknown person.   Mozart, who had been frail all his life, was deeply moved by this strange visit, but agreed to the commission.  He needed the money.

For about three years running prior to this commission, Mozart was not quite as productive as he had been during the mid 1780s, at least by his standards.  But 1791 saw a resurgence of his creative prowess, and things appeared to be looking up for Mozart.   He had several commissions, including ones for two operas - La Clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflote, or The Magic Flute.  Mozart also completed a Clarinet Concerto for his clarinettist friend Stadler.

In between working on these projects, Mozart worked on the Requiem, and related to his wife that he believed he was writing the work for himself.  Watching death all around him, losing his mother in Paris when he was just 22, losing four of his six children in infancy, and losing his father in 1787, combined with countless illnesses of his own and his wife's, Mozart knew all too well first hand the frailty and and transient nature of life. 

Still, Mozart pushed forward to complete the work, but was ultimately claimed by death's hand on December 5, 1791.