Post Mozart Requiem

Completed:The opening movement (Requiem aeternam)

Completed in all of the orchestral and vocal parts

KyrieMost of the Sequence

Complete only in the vocal parts and the continuo (the figured organ bass)

Confutatis Violin part

RecordareMusical Bridges

Offertoriumpartially done

Domine Jesu Christe the vocal parts and continuo

The Hostias the vocal parts only

The Story

• The eccentric count Franz von Walsegg commissionedthe Requiem from Mozart anonymously throughintermediaries acting on his behalf. The count, anamateur chamber musician who routinelycommissioned works by composers and passed themoff as his own, wanted a Requiem mass he could claimhe composed to memorialize the recent passing of hiswife. Mozart received only half of the payment inadvance, so upon his death his widow Constanze waskeen to have the work completed secretly by someoneelse, submit it to the count as having been completedby Mozart and collect the final payment.

Joseph von Eybler

Additions: worked on the movements from the Dies irae

up until the Lacrimosa

• In addition, a strikingsimilarity between theopenings of the DomneJesu Christe movementsin the requiems of thetwo composers suggeststhat Eybler at least lookedat later sections.Following this work, hefelt unable to completethe remainder, and gavethe manuscript back toConstanze Mozart.

Franz Xaver Süssmayr

Additions: added his own orchestration to the

movements from the Dies Irae onward completed the Lacrimosa added several new movements which a

Requiem would normally comprise: Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei

Lux aeterna

• Other composers may have helpedSüssmayr. The elder composer MaximilianStadler is suspected of having completedthe orchestration of the Domine Jesu forSüssmayr. The Agnus Dei is suspected bysome scholars to have been based oninstruction or sketches from Mozartbecause of its similarity to a section fromthe Gloria of a previous Mass (K. 220) byMozart, as was first pointed out byRichard Maunder. Many of the argumentsdealing with this matter, though, centeron the perception that if part of the workis high quality, it must have been writtenby Mozart (or from sketches), and if partof the work contains errors and faults, itmust have been all Süssmayr's doing. Afrequent meta-debate is whether or notthis is a fair way to judge the authorship ofthe parts of the work.

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. Despite the controversy over how much of the music is

actually Mozart's, the commonly performed Süssmayr version has

become widely accepted by the public.

Constanze

Constanze had a difficult task in front of her.She had to keep secret the fact that theRequiem was unfinished at Mozart's death, soshe could collect the final payment from thecommission. For a period of time, she alsoneeded to keep secret the fact that Süssmayrhad anything to do with the composition ofthe Requiem at all in order to allow CountWalsegg the impression that Mozart wrote thework entirely himself. Once she received thecommission, she needed to carefully promotethe work as Mozart's so she could continue toreceive revenue from the work's publicationand performance. During this phase of theRequiem's history, it was still important thatthe public accepted that Mozart wrote thewhole piece, as it would fetch larger sumsfrom publishers and the public if it werecompletely by Mozart.