Throughout the many centuries of the history of music, few works have fascinated generation after generation of musicians and music-lovers and, at the same time, produced so much contrasting emotion and controversy. The work in question could be none other than Mozart’s Requiem – its origins shrouded in mystery, legend and almost sensational theories. The story of the funeral mass written by Wolfgang Amadeus begins on 14 February 1791, the date of death of the 21-year-old Countess Anna Walsegg zu Stupach. Her husband, an eccentric amateur musician, decides to honour the memory of his deceased wife by commissioning a Requiem. It should be added that it was the habit of Graf Franz von Walsegg zu Stupach to host concerts twice a week; he would present new works, known to nobody, previously commissioned with eminent composers, and pretend to be their author to his guests. Mozart received the Requiem commission in mid-July 1791, just as he was frantically rushing through the composition of The Clemency of Titus. He could properly focus on the funeral mass only in November; most of the work was created between the 8th and the 20th of that month. November 18th saw a sudden and violent onset of the composer’s disease – although Mozart’s biographers still cannot agree what it was. If one were to believe the Mozarts’ friend and first performer of the part of Tamino in The Magic Flute Benedikt Schack, the last rehearsal of the work’s fragments took place on December 4th, i.e. on the eve of the composer’s death. It is then that, after 8 bars of Lacrimosa when, after a poignant, rising progression, the melody attains the climax at the words “homo reus,” Mozart was said to burst in tears and throw away the score in a gesture of ultimate surrender. It is more probable, however, that the composer’s acute course of disease must have left him in a state of semi-consciousness, and that the dramatic rehearsal is yet another of the fantastic legends spun like a spider’s web around this famous work. Still, the manuscript indeed ends at the 8th bar of Lacrimosa.
Mozart’s design for his Requiem relates directly to the 18th-century Austrian funeral mass, with its immediate model in Michael Haydn’s Requiem in C minor composed in 1771 to commemorate the untimely death of the composer’s only daughter. Mozart borrowed the structure of the whole from the lesser Haydn, to the extent of omitting the same sections of the traditional funeral mass, such as Gradual, Tractus or Libera me. Detailed analyses of the entirety of the manuscript performed by many scholars show beyond any doubt that the composer completed the first part of the mass alone: the gloomy Introitus (Requiem Aeternam) with a contrastive soft soprano solo. Further fragments – the dynamic fugue of Kyrie, the multiple Sequence (without Lacrimosa), and Ofertorium (Hostias) with its varying texture remained in the form of vocal score with an attached figured bass part containing details of harmony. As we already know, only the first 8 bars written in Mozart’s hand, including instrumentation, are preserved of the homophonic Lacrimosa, itself a part of Sequence. The composer allegedly planned to write the final Communion (Lux eterna, Cum Sanctis tuis) to the music of Introit and the Kyrie fugue – a very frequent device in the 18th-century tradition. The remaining parts of the mass – the celebratory Sanctus with a fugue for Osanna, the cantilena of Benedictus and the meditative Agnus Dei were added – according to tradition – by Mozart’s student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who undertook to complete the work. According to some of the more recent research, Mozart’s widow Constanze first offered the job not to Süssmayr, but to Wolfgang Amadeus’s most experienced student, Franz Jacob Freystädtler, who completed the orchestral accompaniment to Kyrie and then relayed the task of reconstruction to Joseph Eybler. He, in turn, is said to have added the instrumentation to five parts of Sequence from Dies Irae through Confutatis. The next important personage in the context of Mozart’s masterpiece is Maximillian “Abbé” Stadler, Wolfgang Amadeus’s long-time friend, who started working on Offertorium, eventually taken over by Süssmayr. The version thus completed by Mozart’s students, with additional sections composed by Süssmayr, soon took on a concert life of its own and remains to this day the most frequently performed form of the work. Yet the problem of Requiem’s authenticity continued to resurface; critics had their reservations with respect to Sanctus /Osanna, Benedictus and, to a lesser extent, Agnus Dei. This is why new reconstructions of Mozart’s funeral mass appeared; the most convincing ones include those by Duncan Druce, Richard Maunder and Robert Levin.
Marcin Gmys
Introitus (Requiem)
(Chorus)
1. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
And may the perpetual light shine on them.
(Soprano)
Thou, O God, are praised in Sion,
And unto Thee shall the vow be performed in Jerusalem.
(Choir)
Hear my prayer,
Unto Thee shall all flesh come.
Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
And may perpetual light shine on them.
Kyrie
2. Lord have mercy upon us.
Christ have mercy upon us.
Lord have mercy upon us.
Sequentia (Dies Irae)
3. Day of wrath, that day
Will dissolve the age in ashes
As David and the Sibyl bear witness.
What dread there will be
When the Judge shall come
To judge all things strictly.
Tuba Mirum:
(Bass)
4. A trumpet, spreading a wondrous sound
Through the graves of all lands,
Will drive mankind before the throne.
(Tenor)
Death and nature shall be astonished
When all creation rises again
To answer to the Judge.
A book, written in, will be brought forth
In which everything is contained,
According to which the world will be judged.
(Contralto)
When therefore the Judge takes His seat
Whatever is hidden will reveal itself.
Nothing will remain unavenged.
(Soprano)
What then shall I say, wretch that I am?,
What advocate entreat to speak for me,
When even the righteous may hardly be secure?
(All Soloists)
When even the righteous may hardly be secure?
Rex Tremendae:
5. King of great majesty,
Who freely savest the redeemed,
Save me, O fount of mercy.
Recordare
(Soloists)
6. Remember, blessed Jesus,
That I am the cause of Thy pilgrimage,
Do not forsake me on that day.
Seeking me Thou didst sit down weary,
Thou didst redeem me, suffering death on the cross.
Let not such toil be in vain.
Just and avenging Judge,
Grant remission
Before the day of reckoning.
I groan like a guilty man.
Guilt reddens my face.
Spare a suppliant, O God.
Thou who didst absolve Mary
And didst hearken to the thief,
To me also hast Thou given hope.
My prayers are not worthy,
But Thou in Thy merciful goodness grant
That I burn not in everlasting fire.
Place me among Thy sheep
And separate me from the goats,
Setting me on Thy right hand.
Confutatis
7. When the accursed have been confounded
And given over to the bitter flames,
Call me with the blessed.
8. I pray in supplication on my knees.
My heart contrite as the ashes,
Safeguard my fate.
Lacrimosa
Mournful that day
When from the dust shall rise
Guilty man to be judged.
Therefore spare him, O God.
Merciful Jesu Lord
Grant them rest.
Offertorium
Domine Jesu:
9. Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory,
Deliver the souls of all the faithful departed
From the pains of hell and from the bottomless lake.
Deliver them from the lion’s mouth.
Neither let be swallowed by the abyss,
Nor fall into the darkness.
(Soloists)
And let St. Michael, Thy standard-bearer,
Lead them into the holy light
(Choir)
Which once Thou didst promise to Abraham and his seed.
Hostias
10. We offer unto Thee this sacrifice of prayer and praise.
Receive it for those souls
Whom today we commemorate.
Allow them, O Lord, to cross from death into the life
Which once Thou didst promise to Abraham and his seed.
Sanctus
11. Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of Sabaoth.
Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Benedictus
(Soloists)
12. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
(Choir)
Hosanna in the highest.
Agnus Dei
13. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
Grant them rest.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
Grant them everlasting rest.
Communio Lux Aeterna
(Soprano, then the Choir)
14. May the eternal light shine on them, O Lord.
With Thy saints for ever,
Because Thou art merciful.
(Choir)
Grant the dead eternal rest, O Lord,
And may the perpetual light shine on them,
With Thy saints for ever,
Because Thou art merciful.