Mozart’s Requiem - Shrouded in Mystery
TCS performed Mozart’s mysterious Requiem, one of our favourite baroque pieces, in another stellar concert on May 25th 2022.
Did you know that Mozart was on his deathbed when he began composing his Requiem? He only managed to complete the orchestral and vocal parts of two movements – ‘Requiem aeternam’ and ‘Kyrie’ – before he died on December 5, 1791.
Other movements were drafted in skeleton and left with notes for completion to one of his students, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, which included instructions for accompaniment, inner harmonies, and orchestra doubling to the vocal parts.
If you’ve seen the exceptional 1984 film Amadeus, based on Peter Schaffer’s play, you’ll recall that all of this is deeply shrouded in mystery…
Composed by a man on the edge of consciousness... Tom Hulce as Mozart and F. Murray Abraham as Salieri in the 1984 film Amadeus.
Despite the mystery, Beethoven said it best, “If Mozart did not write the music, then the man who wrote it was a Mozart.” Some feel the real mystery of the piece is not so much who wrote it, but the music that Mozart did manage to write – breathtaking and otherworldly. We cannot agree more…
Stay tuned…and in the meantime, here is a delightful piece from The Guardian by Annilese Miskimmon, Artistic Director of the English National Opera.
Mozart's Requiem: It's about life, not death
NY Philharmonic in Mozart’s Requiem, featuring soloists (L-R) Joélle Harvey, Megan Mikailovna Samarin, Ben Bliss and Matthew Rose.
