Requiem (Mozart)

Structure

Süssmayr’s completion divides the Requiem into fourteen movements:

I. Introitus

Requiem (choir and soprano solo) (D minor)

II. Kyrie (choir) (D minor)

III. Sequentia (text based on sections of the Dies Irae)

Dies irae (choir) (D minor)

Tuba mirum (soprano, contralto, tenor and bass solo) (B-flat major)

Rex tremendae (choir) (G minor–D minor)

Recordare (soprano, contralto, tenor and bass solo) (F major)

Confutatis (choir) (A minor–F major, last chord V of D minor)

Lacrymosa (choir) (D minor)

IV. Offertorium

Domine Jesu (choir with solo quartet) (G minor)

Hostias (choir) (E-flat major–G minor)

V. Sanctus (choir) (D major)

VI. Benedictus (solo quartet and choir) (B-flat major)

VII. Agnus Dei (choir) (D minor–B-flat major)

VIII. Communio

Lux aeterna (soprano solo and choir) (B-flat major–D minor)

All sections from the Sanctus onwards are not present in Mozart's manuscript fragment. Mozart may have intended to include the Amen fugue at the end of the Sequentia, but Süssmayr did not do so in his completion.

The Introitus is in D minor and finishes on a half-cadence that transitions directly into Kyrie. The Kyrie is a double fugue, with one subject setting the words "Kyrie eleison" and the other "Christe eleison". The movement Tuba mirum opens with a trombone solo accompanying the bass. The Confutatis is well known for its string accompaniment; it opens with agitated figures that accentuate the wrathful sound of the basses and tenors, but it turns into soft arpeggios in the second phrase while accompanying the soft sounds of the sopranos and altos.

Details

The following table shows for the eight movements in Süssmayr's completion with their subdivisions the title and incipit, the type of movement, the vocal parts soprano (S), alto (A), tenor (T) and bass (B) and four-part choir SATB, the tempo, key and time.

Composition

At the time of Mozart's death on 5 December 1791, only the first two movements "Requiem aeternam" and "Kyrie" were completed in all of the orchestral and vocal parts. The "Sequence" and the "Offertorium" were completed in skeleton, with the exception of the "Lacrymosa", which breaks off after the first eight bars. The vocal parts and the continuo were fully notated. Occasionally, some of the prominent orchestral parts were briefly indicated, such as the first violin part of the Rex tremendae and Confutatis, the musical bridges in the Recordare, and the trombone solos of the "Tuba Mirum". What remained to be completed for these sections were mostly accompanimental figures, inner harmonies, and orchestral doublings to the vocal parts.

Constanze Mozart and the Requiem after Mozart's death

The eccentric count Franz von Walsegg commissioned the Requiem from Mozart anonymously through intermediaries. The count, an amateur chamber musician who routinely commissioned works by composers and passed them off as his own, wanted a Requiem Mass he could claim he composed to memorialize the recent passing of his wife. Mozart received only half of the payment in advance, so upon his death his widow Constanze was keen to have the work completed secretly by someone else, submit it to the count as having been completed by Mozart and collect the final payment. Joseph von Eybler was one of the first composers to be asked to complete the score, and had worked on the movements from the Dies irae up until the Lacrymosa. In addition, a striking similarity between the openings of the Domine Jesu Christe movements in the requiems of the two composers suggests that Eybler at least looked at later sections. After this work, he felt unable to complete the remainder, and gave the manuscript back to Constanze Mozart.

The task was then given to another composer, Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Süssmayr borrowed some of Eybler's work in making his completion, and added his own orchestration to the movements from the Kyrie onward, completed the Lacrymosa, and added several new movements which a Requiem would normally comprise: Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. He then added a final section, Lux aeterna by adapting the opening two movements which Mozart had written to the different words which finish the Requiem Mass, which according to both Süssmayr and Mozart's wife was done according to Mozart's directions. Some people consider it unlikely, however, that Mozart would have repeated the opening two sections if he had survived to finish the work.

Other composers may have helped Süssmayr. The Agnus Dei is suspected by some scholars to have been based on instruction or sketches from Mozart because of its similarity to a section from the Gloria of a previous Mass (Sparrow Mass, K. 220) by Mozart, as was first pointed out by Richard Maunder. Others have pointed out that in the beginning of the Agnus Dei the choral bass quotes the main theme from the Introitus. Many of the arguments dealing with this matter, though, center on the perception that if part of the work is high quality, it must have been written by Mozart (or from sketches), and if part of the work contains errors and faults, it must have been all Süssmayr's doing.

Another controversy is the suggestion (originating from a letter written by Constanze) that Mozart left explicit instructions for the completion of the Requiem on "little scraps of paper." The extent to which Süssmayr's work may have been influenced by these "scraps" if they existed at all remains a subject of speculation amongst musicologists to this day.

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 left ambiguous 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. This acceptance is quite strong, even when alternative completions provide logical and compelling solutions for the work.

The confusion surrounding the circumstances of the Requiem's composition was created in a large part by Mozart's wife, Constanze. Constanze had a difficult task in front of her: she had to keep secret the fact that the Requiem was unfinished at Mozart's death, so she could collect the final payment from the commission. For a period of time, she also needed to keep secret the fact that Süssmayr had anything to do with the composition of the Requiem at all, in order to allow Count Walsegg the impression that Mozart wrote the work entirely himself. Once she received the commission, she needed to carefully promote the work as Mozart's so that she could continue to receive revenue from the work's publication and performance. During this phase of the Requiem's history, it was still important that the public accept that Mozart wrote the whole piece, as it would fetch larger sums from publishers and the public if it were completely by Mozart.

It is Constanze's efforts that created the flurry of half-truths and myths almost instantly after Mozart's death. According to Constanze, Mozart declared that he was composing the Requiem for himself, and that he had been poisoned. His symptoms worsened, and he began to complain about the painful swelling of his body and high fever. Nevertheless, Mozart continued his work on the Requiem, and even on the last day of his life, he was explaining to his assistant how he intended to finish the Requiem. Source materials written soon after Mozart’s death contain serious discrepancies, which leave a level of subjectivity when assembling the "facts" about Mozart’s composition of the Requiem. For example, at least three of the conflicting sources, both dated within two decades following Mozart's death, cite Constanze as their primary source of interview information. In 1798, Friedrich Rochlitz, a German biographical author and amateur composer, published a set of Mozart anecdotes that he claimed to have collected during his meeting with Constanze in 1796. The Rochlitz publication makes the following statements:

Mozart was unaware of his commissioner's identity at the time he accepted the project.

He was not bound to any date of completion of the work.

He stated that it would take him around four weeks to complete.

He requested, and received, 100 ducats at the time of the first commissioning message.

He began the project immediately after receiving the commission.

His health was poor from the outset; he fainted multiple times while working.

He took a break from writing the work to visit the Prater with his wife.

He shared the thought with his wife that he was writing this piece for his own funeral.

He spoke of "very strange thoughts" regarding the unpredicted appearance and commission of this unknown man.

He noted that the departure of Leopold II to Prague for the coronation was approaching.

The most highly disputed of these claims is the last one, the chronology of this setting. According to Rochlitz, the messenger arrives quite some time before the departure of Leopold for the coronation, yet there is a record of his departure occurring in mid-July 1791. However, as Constanze was in Baden during all of June to mid-July, she would not have been present for the commission or the drive they were said to have taken together. Furthermore, The Magic Flute (except for the Overture and March of the Priests) was completed by mid-July. La clemenza di Tito was commissioned by mid-July. There was no time for Mozart to work on the Requiem on the large scale indicated by the Rochlitz publication in the time frame provided.

Also in 1798, Constanze is noted to have given another interview to Franz Xaver Niemetschek, another biographer looking to publish a compendium of Mozart's life. He published his biography in 1808, containing a number of claims about Mozart’s receipt of the Requiem commission:

Mozart received the commission very shortly before the Coronation of Emperor Leopold II, and before he received the commission to go to Prague.

He did not accept the messenger's request immediately; he wrote the commissioner and agreed to the project stating his fee, but urging that he could not predict the time required to complete the work.

The same messenger appeared later, paying Mozart the sum requested plus a note promising a bonus at the work's completion.

He started composing the work upon his return from Prague.

He fell ill while writing the work

He told Constanze "I am only too conscious...my end will not be long in coming: for sure, someone has poisoned me! I cannot rid my mind of this thought."

Constanze thought that the Requiem was overstraining him; she called the doctor and took away the score.

On the day of his death he had the score brought to his bed.

The messenger took the unfinished Requiem soon after Mozart's death.

Constanze never learned the commissioner's name.

This account, too, has fallen under scrutiny and criticism for its accuracy. According to letters, Constanze most certainly knew the name of the commissioner by the time this interview was released in 1800. Additionally, the Requiem was not given to the messenger until some time after Mozart's death. This interview contains the only account from Constanze herself of the claim that she took the Requiem away from Wolfgang for a significant duration during his composition of it. Otherwise, the timeline provided in this account is historically probable. However, the most highly accepted text attributed to Constanze is the interview to her second husband, Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. After Nissen's death in 1826, Constanze released the biography of Wolfgang (1828) that Nissen had compiled, which included this interview. Nissen states:

Mozart received the commission shortly before the coronation of Emperor Leopold and before he received the commission to go to Prague.

He did not accept the messenger's request immediately; he wrote the commissioner and agreed to the project stating his fee, but urging that he could not predict the time required to complete the work.

The same messenger appeared later, paying Mozart the sum requested plus a note promising a bonus at the work's completion.

He started composing the work upon his return from Prague.

The Nissen publication lacks information following Mozart's return from Prague.

Modern completions

In the 1960s a sketch for an Amen fugue was discovered, which some musicologists (Levin, Maunder) believe belongs to the Requiem at the conclusion of the sequence after the Lacrymosa. H. C. Robbins Landon argues that this Amen fugue was not intended for the Requiem, rather that it "may have been for a separate unfinished Mass in D minor" to which the Kyrie K. 341 also belonged. There is, however, compelling evidence placing the "Amen Fugue" in the Requiem based on current Mozart scholarship. First, the principal subject is the main theme of the requiem (stated at the beginning, and throughout the work) in strict inversion. Second, it is found on the same page as a sketch for the Rex tremendae (together with a sketch for the overture of his last opera The Magic Flute), and thus surely dates from late 1791. The only place where the word 'Amen' occurs in anything that Mozart wrote in late 1791 is in the sequence of the Requiem. Third, as Levin points out in the foreword to his completion of the Requiem, the addition of the Amen Fugue at the end of the sequence results in an overall design that ends each large section with a fugue.

Since the 1970s several composers and musicologists, dissatisfied with the traditional "Süssmayr" completion, have attempted alternative completions of the Requiem. Each version follows a distinct methodology for completion:

Franz Beyer – makes revisions to Süssmayr's orchestration in an attempt to create a more Mozartian style and makes a few minor changes to Süssmayr's sections (i.e. lengthening the Osanna fugue slightly for a more conclusive sounding ending).

H. C. Robbins Landon – orchestrates parts of the completion using the partial work by Eybler, thinking that Eybler's work is a more reliable guide of Mozart's intentions.

Richard Maunder – dispenses completely with the parts known to be written by Süssmayr, but retains the Agnus Dei after discovering an extensive paraphrase from an earlier Mass (Sparrow Mass, K. 220). Recomposes the Lacrymosa from bar 9 onwards, and includes a completion of the Amen fugue.

Duncan Druce – makes slight changes in orchestration, but retains Eybler's ninth and tenth measures of the Lacrymosa, lengthening the movement substantially to end in the "Amen Fugue". He also completely rewrites the Benedictus, only retaining the opening theme.

Robert D. Levin and Simon Andrews – each retain the structure of Süssmayr while adjusting orchestration, voice leading and in some cases rewriting entire sections in an effort to make the work more Mozartean.

Pánczél Tamás – makes revisions to Süssmayr's score in a manner similar to Beyer, but extends the Lacrymosa significantly past Süssmayr's passages and rewrites the Benedictus's ending leading into the Osanna reprise.

Clemens Kemme – orchestration rewritten in a style closer to Eybler's, emphasing the basset horns in particular, with a reworked Sanctus, Benedictus and extended Osanna fugue.

Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs – provides an entirely new instrumentation, based on Eybler's ideas, new elaborations of the Amen and Osanna fugues, and a new continuity of the Lacrymosa (after b. 18), Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei, following those bars of which Dr. Cohrs assumes Mozart might have sketched himself.

Masato Suzuki – follows a methodology similar to Robbins Landon, but with further stylistic elaboration on Süssmayr's sections.

Marius Flothuis – revision of Süssmayr's version via removal of vocal doubling, rewriting of the trombone parts and the harmonic transition to the Osanna reprise in the Benedictus.

Timothy Jones – reworking of the Lacrymosa, composition of an extensive Amen fugue modeled on the 'Cum sancto spiritu' fugue from the Great Mass, and a long elaboration on Sussmayr's Osanna fugue.

Michael Finnissy – takes the Süssmayr completion as its basis and adheres to Mozart's scoring. Of the five movements newly completed by Finnissy the 'Lacrymosa' has been written in Mozartian style while the four final movements represent an exploration of musical styles since Mozart's death in 1791.

Knud Vad – follows Süssmayr's completion until the Sanctus and Benedictus which are noticeably rewritten in places (i.e. Osanna turned into a double fugue played adagio)

Gregory Spears – includes a new “Sanctus,” “Benedictus” and “Agnus Dei” designed to replace the Süssmayr completion of those movements. Spears’s completion recognizes the juxtaposition of old and new sources common in liturgical music of the period, and incorporates two cadential fragments from Süssmayr’s completion into the end of his “Benedictus” and “Agnus Dei”.

Letho Kostoglou (Australian musicologist) – utilises primarily music composed by Mozart. It was performed at Adelaide Town Hall on 4 September 2010. This edition was endorsed by Richard Bonynge and Patrick Thomas.

In the Levin, Andrews, Druce and Cohrs versions, the Sanctus fugue is completely rewritten and re-proportioned and the Benedictus is restructured to allow for a reprise of the Sanctus fugue in the key of D (rather than Süssmayr's use of B-flat).

Maunder, Levin, Druce, Suzuki, Tamás, Cohrs and Jones use the sketch for the Amen fugue discovered in the 1960s to compose a longer and more substantial setting to the words "Amen" at the end of the sequence. In the Süssmayr version, "Amen" is set as a plagal cadence with a Picardy third (iv - I in D minor) at the end of the Lacrymosa: the Andrews version uses the Süssmayr ending. Jones combines the two, ending his Amen fugue with a variation on the concluding bars of Süssmayr's Lacrymosa as well as the aforementioned plagal cadence.

Supplementary works by other composers

For a performance of the Requiem in Rio de Janeiro in December 1819, Austrian composer Sigismund von Neukomm constructed a further movement based on material in the Sussmayr version. Incorporating music from various movements including the Requiem aeternum, Dies irae, Lacrymosa and Agnus Dei, the bulk of the piece is set to the Libera me, a responsory text which is traditionally sung after the Requiem Mass, and concludes with a reprise of the Kyrie and a final Requiescant in pace. A contemporary of Neukomm and a pupil of Mozart's, Ignaz von Seyfried would compose his own Mozart-inspired Libera me for a performance at Ludwig van Beethoven's funeral in 1827.

Before 1791

January 2, 1772: Mozart participates in the premiere of Michael Haydn's Requiem in C minor.

September 21, 1784: Birth of Mozart's older son, Karl Thomas Mozart.

December 1790: Mozart completes his string quintet in D (K. 593) and the Adagio and Allegro in F minor for a mechanical organ (K. 594). These are his first works in a new burst of creativity after a very low production of works in 1790.

1791

January 5: Mozart completes his last piano concerto, in B-flat (K. 595).

January 14: Mozart completes three German songs (K. 596–8).

January–March: Mozart composes mostly dance music (K. 599–611).

February 14: Anna, Count von Walsegg's wife, dies at the age of 20.

March 3: Mozart completes the Fantasia in F minor for a mechanical organ (K. 608).

March 8: Mozart completes the bass aria Per questa bella mano (K. 612).

March: Mozart completes the Variations in F on "Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding" (K. 613).

April 12: Mozart completes his last string quintet, in E-flat (K. 614).

May 4: Mozart completes the Andante in F for a small mechanical organ (K. 616).

May 23: Mozart completes the Adagio and Rondo for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello, his last chamber work (K. 617).

June 17: Mozart completes the motet Ave verum corpus (K. 618).

July: Mozart completes the cantata Die ihr des unermeßlichen Weltalls (K. 619).

mid-July: A messenger (probably Franz Anton Leitgeb, the count's steward) arrives with note asking Mozart to write a Requiem Mass.

mid-July: Commission from Domenico Guardasoni, impresario of the Prague National Theatre to compose the opera, La clemenza di Tito (K. 621), for the festivities surrounding the coronation on September 6 of Leopold II as King of Bohemia.

July 26: Birth of Mozart's younger son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart.

August: Mozart works mainly on La clemenza di Tito; completed by September 5.

August 25: Mozart leaves for Prague.

September 6: Mozart conducts premiere of La clemenza di Tito.

Mid-September – September 28: Revision and completion of The Magic Flute (K. 620).

September 30: Premiere of The Magic Flute.

October 7: Completes Clarinet Concerto in A major (K. 622).

October 8 – November 20: Mozart works on the Requiem and a cantata (K. 623).

November 15: Completes the cantata.

November 20: Confined to the bed due to his illness.

December 5: Mozart dies shortly after midnight.

December 7: Burial in St. Marx Cemetery.

December 5 through December 10: Kyrie from Requiem completed by unknown composer (once identified as Mozart's pupil Franz Jakob Freystädtler, although this attribution is not generally accepted now)

December 10: Requiem (probably only Introitus and Kyrie) performed in St. Michael's Church, Vienna, for a memorial for Mozart by the staff of the Theater auf der Wieden.

December 21: Eybler receives score of Requiem from Constanze, promising to complete it by mid-Lent (mid-March) of next year. He later gives up and returns the score to Constanze, who turns it to Süssmayr to complete.

After 1791

Early March 1792: probably the time Süssmayr finished the Requiem.

January 2, 1793: Performance of Requiem for Constanze's benefit arranged by Gottfried van Swieten.

Early December 1793: Requiem delivered to the Count.

December 14, 1793: Requiem performed in the memory of the count's wife in the church at Wiener-Neustadt.

February 14, 1794: Requiem performed again in Patronat Church Maria Schutz in Semmering

1799: Breitkopf & Härtel published the Requiem.

1800 or later: Walsegg receives leaves 1 through 10 of the autograph (Introitus and Kyrie)

Autumn 1800: Abbé Maximilian Stadler compares all known manuscript copies (including Walsegg's) and editions of the score, and noted down copying errors and determined precisely which parts of the Requiem were written by Mozart.

After 1802: Abbé Stadler receives leaves 11 through 32 (Dies irae to Confutatis) of Mozart's Requiem autograph from Constanze. Later Eybler would receive leaves 33 to 46, the Lacrymosa through Hostias.

September 17, 1803: Süssmayr dies of tuberculosis. Like Mozart, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the St. Marx Cemetery.

June 15, 1809: Requiem was performed at a memorial service for Joseph Haydn.

1825: Gottfried Weber writes article in the music journal Cäcilia calling Mozart's Requiem a spurious work.

March 24, 1826: Constanze's second husband Georg Nikolaus von Nissen dies. Her younger son Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart conducts Mozart's Requiem at the service.

December 5, 1826: On the 35th Anniversary of his father's death, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart conducts Mozart's Requiem at St. George's Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral in Lviv (Lemberg).

November 11, 1827: Count Walsegg dies. Karl Haag, a musician formerly in Walsegg's service, receives his score (Mozart's autograph of the Introitus and Kyrie; the rest a copy by Süssmayr) and when he dies, he wills it to Katharina Adelpoller.

1831: Abbé Stadler gives the leaves of the Requiem autograph in his possession to the Imperial Court Library.

1833: Eybler suffered stroke while conducting a performance of Mozart's Requiem. The leaves of the Requiem autograph in his possession are turned over to the Imperial Court Library.

November 8, 1833: Abbé Stadler dies.

1838: Count Moritz von Dietrichstein asks Nowack, formerly an employee of Walsegg, to search among Haag's possessions for six Mozart string quartets that may have been given to Walsegg. Nowack does not find them, but discovers Walsegg's score of Mozart's Requiem. The Imperial Court Library pays Adelpoller 50 ducats for the score.

September 21, 1839: Gottfried Weber dies.

December 15, 1840: François Habeneck conducts the Paris Opera in a performance of the Requiem at the reburial of Napoleon I.

March 6, 1842: Constanze Mozart dies.

July 24, 1846: Eybler dies.

October 30, 1849: Requiem was performed at Frédéric Chopin's funeral.

January 19, 1964: Requiem was performed as a memorial Mass for President John F. Kennedy by Cardinal Richard Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, MA.

December 5, 1991: Sir Georg Solti conducted the Requiem with the Vienna Philharmonic at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna at a memorial Mass for the dead performed by Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the bicentenary of his death.

July 19, 1994: Zubin Mehta conducted Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra in the ruins of The Great Counsel Hall in Sarajevo giving an extraordinary concert with participation of José Carreras, Ruggero Raimondi, Cecilia Gasdia and Ildikó Komlósi. It was filmed and transmitted by TV to popularise a charity aid for victims of Siege of Sarajevo.

1999: Claudio Abbado conducted the Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic at the Salzburg Cathedral at a memorial concert on the 10th anniversary of the death of Herbert von Karajan.

2001: Poznań, Poland, special Tridentine Mass was celebrated during the night of 210th anniversary of Mozart's death, with full usage of the Requiem. This mass is repeated every year on December 4.

Use of the Requiem in other funerals and memorial services

19th-century musicians whose funerals or memorial services used Mozart's Requiem included Carl Fasch (1800); Giovanni Punto (1803); Joseph Haydn (1809); Jan Ladislav Dussek (1812); Giovanni Paisiello (1816); Andreas Romberg (1821); Johann Gottfried Schicht (1823); Carl Maria von Weber (1826); Ludwig van Beethoven (1827); Franz Schubert (1828); Alexandre-Étienne Choron (1834); Mme Blasis (1838); Ludwig Berger (1839); Frédéric Chopin (1849); Luigi Lablache (1858); Gioacchino Rossini (1868); Hector Berlioz (1869); and Charles Hallé (1895).

19th-century artists whose funerals or memorial services used Mozart's Requiem included Friedrich Schiller (1805); Heinrich Joseph von Collin (1811); Johann Franz Hieronymous Brockmann (1812); Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1832); and Peter von Cornelius (1867).

Among other 19th-century figures whose funerals or memorial services used Mozart's Requiem included Carl Wilhelm Müller (1801); Jean Lannes, 1st Duc de Montebello (1810); Princess Charlotte of Wales (1817); Maria Isabel of Portugal (1819); August Hermann Niemeyer (1828); Thomas Weld (1837); Napoleon (1840); John England (1842); John Fane, 11th Earl of Westmorland (1860); and Nicholas Wiseman (1865).

Use of the Requiem in popular culture and movies

Various parts of the Requiem have been used in several movie soundtracks, including the 1984 biography film of Mozart, Amadeus, The Big Lebowski (1998), Elizabeth (1998), The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), Primal Fear (1996), X2 (2003), and in the 2005 Pixar short film Jack-Jack Attack.

Some movements of the Requiem were also used in TV commercials such as a Nike sneakers commercial in 2007.

Influences

Mozart esteemed Handel and in 1789 he was commissioned by Baron Gottfried van Swieten to rearrange Messiah. This work likely influenced the composition of Mozart's Requiem; the Kyrie is probably based on the And with his stripes we are healed chorus from Handel's Messiah (HWV 56), since the subject of the fugato, in which Handel was a master, is the same, with only slight variations by adding ornaments on melismata.

Some believe that the Introitus was inspired by Handel's Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline (HWV 264), and some have also remarked that the Confutatis may have been inspired by Sinfonia Venezia by Pasquale Anfossi. Another influence was Michael Haydn's Requiem in C minor which he and his father heard at the first three performances in January 1772. Some have noted that M. Haydn's "Introitus" sounds rather similar to Mozart's, and the theme for Mozart's 'Quam olim Abrahae' fugue is a direct quote of the theme from Haydn's Offertorium and Versus.

Myths surrounding the Requiem

With multiple levels of deception surrounding the Requiem's completion, a natural outcome is the mythologizing which subsequently occurred. One series of myths surrounding the Requiem involves the role Antonio Salieri played in the commissioning and completion of the Requiem (and in Mozart's death generally). While the most recent retelling of this myth is Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus and the movie made from it, it is important to note that the source of misinformation was actually a 19th-century play by Alexander Pushkin, Mozart and Salieri, which was turned into an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov and subsequently used as the framework for Amadeus.

The autograph at the 1958 World's Fair

The autograph of the Requiem was placed on display at the World's Fair in 1958 in Brussels. At some point during the fair, someone was able to gain access to the manuscript, tearing off the bottom right-hand corner of the second to last page (folio 99r/45r), containing the words "Quam olim d: C:" (an instruction that the "Quam olim" fugue of the Domine Jesu was to be repeated da capo, at the end of the Hostias). The perpetrator has not been identified and the fragment has not been recovered.

If the most common authorship theory is true, then "Quam olim d: C:" might very well be the last words Mozart wrote before he died. It is probable that whoever stole the fragment believed that to be the case.

Selected recordings

In the following table, large choirs and orchestras are marked by red background, ensembles playing on "period instruments" in "historically informed performance" are marked by a green background under the header Instr..

Ralf Otto, Bachchor Mainz (Levin completion), L'arpa festante München, Julia Kleiter, Gerhild Romberger, Daniel Sans, Klaus Mertens, NCA

Christoph Spering, Chorus Musicus, Das Neue Orchester, Iride Martinez, Monica Groop, Steve Davislim, Kwangchul Youn, Opus 111 (2002)

Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Concentus Musicus Wien, Christine Schäfer, Bernarda Fink, Kurt Streit, Gerald Finley, deutsche harmonia mundi

Carl Czerny transcription for soli, coro and piano four hands: Antonio Greco, Coro Costanzo Porta, Diego Maccagnola, Anna Bessi, Silvia Frigato, Raffaele Giordani, Riccardo Demini. Discantica (2012)

New completion of the musical score of Mozart's Requiem by the musicologist Robert Levin. Live concert.

John Butt (musician) conducting the Dunedin Consort on the Linn Records label. It is the first recording to use David Black's new critical edition of the Süssmayr version, and it attempts to reconstruct the performing forces at the first performances in Vienna in 1791 and 1793. It won the 2014 Gramophone Award for Best Choral Recording.

Scores of Mozart's Requiem

Requiem: Score and critical report (German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe

Eybler's and Süssmayr's amendments: Score in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe

Free scores of Requiem, KV 626 in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

Requiem in D minor, K.626: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project