The Program
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Symphony No. 34 in C Major, K. 338
About the Composer
Although he traveled repeatedly with his family to Italy, France,
Germany, and England in his childhood, and once more to Paris with
his mother in his early manhood, Mozart was primarily a resident of
Salzburg, the city where he was born and where he and his father
were both in the service of the church. However, he grew
increasingly restive there, especially after achieving success with
his operas in other musical centers, the most important being in
Munich with Idomeneo. He left Salzburg in September 1780,
at the age of 25, to oversee the premiere of his
opera, which took place on January 29, 1781. He loved the energy of
Munich during carnival, and he wanted to live in a place where he
could write more operas. His father Leopold still tried to keep the
young man under his thumb, and Wolfgang felt increasingly eager to
achieve independence. He could not have known at the time, but
within a year he would be kicked out of the Cardinal-Archbishop's
service-a change that he largely instigated-and settled in Vienna
for the rest of his life.
About the Work
There is a bit of ambiguity attached to the Symphony No. 34. Most
of Mozart's symphonic works are in four movements, with the middle
two consisting of a slow movement (in a different key from the
first and last), followed by a dance movement, almost always a
minuet (in the home key).
In the Symphony No. 34, Mozart composed a minuet (or at least
started one) to be performed as the second movement, but then tore
it out, leaving only 14 measures on the back of the first
movement's last page. It is not clear why he left the symphony in
just three movements when the great majority of his symphonies have
four. Scholar Alfred Einstein has suggested that Mozart may have
later intended a larger minuet in C major (K. 409) for this
symphony, but since it would have called for extra instruments and
been too elaborate to balance the other movements, that seems
unlikely.
A Closer Listen
The first movement opens with a stylized fanfare similar to those
in some of Mozart's opera overtures (Così fan tutte and
La clemenza di Tito, both in the same key). But an
immediate shift to the minor key reduces the comic or festive
character of those later works. Mozart originally labeled the slow
movement Andante di molto ("very Andante"), but later
he evidently decided that performers understood that mark as
meaning a slower tempo than he liked, because he added più
tosto Allegretto ("rather Allegretto").
Mozart divides the viola section into two groups so that they
provide a richer sonority in the middle register. Sometimes the two
violin parts take the lead with the two viola parts as a lyric
echo. Other times the first violins are alone on top while the
second violin and first viola provide a moving inner life. For
climactic moments, all five parts (violins, violas, and the
foundation provided by cellos and basses together) punctuate the
activity.
The Finale is a lively jig laid out in two large sections, both of
which are marked for repeats. The oboes have an important role
here, an early example of Mozart's felicity with woodwinds, which
was to become much more varied and colorful over the next
decade.
© 2012 Steven Ledbetter
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Requiem, K. 626 (completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr)
About the Composer
Mozart's last year, 1791, was filled with great successes,
financial worry, and failing health. His largest compositions of
the year were his last two operas, the Italian opera La
clemenza di Tito, commissioned for an imperial coronation in
Prague, and the German Singspiel Die Zauberflöte, for a
popular theater in Vienna. Both enjoyed enormous success.
In autumn, the composer's health began to fail markedly. At times
he raved in delusion that he had poisoned himself, from which arose
the oft-disproved legend that his "rival" Salieri had in fact
poisoned him.
About the Work
Sometime early in the summer of 1791, Mozart received a mysterious
visitor, a "gray messenger," who offered him 50 ducats as the first
half of a commissioning fee for the composition of a Requiem.
Mozart accepted because he needed the money, but the oddity of the
incident and his own depression and ill health conspired to make
him unduly morbid. The messenger was an agent for one Count
Walsegg-Stuppach, who demanded secrecy because he intended to
perform the Requiem in memory of his wife and to pass it off as his
own composition. (He had done this previously with commissions from
other composers.)
Mozart began composing in the mid-summer period before going to
Prague late in August for the premiere of La clemenza di
Tito. In mid-September, back in Vienna, he completed Die
Zauberflöte on the 25th and the Clarinet Concerto the
following day, then worked on the Requiem until mid-October, when
his wife Constanze took the score away from him because she feared
it would damage his now-precarious health. Mozart began to be
obsessed with the notion that he was writing the work in
preparation for his own death.
A more lucid spell in November allowed him to work on the Requiem
and even to make one final public appearance to direct the
performance of his Little Masonic Cantata on November
18. Two days later, he took to the bed that he never left.
Every Mozart biography recounts an incident that supposedly took
place 11 hours before his death, when three friends joined him to
sing through some vocal parts of the unfinished Requiem, Mozart
himself taking the alto line. They sang as far as the opening
measures of the Lacrimosa when, according to one account, "Mozart
began to weep uncontrollably and laid the score to one side."
However, the recollections of his sister-in-law Sophie Haibel (née
Weber) make it clear that by December 4, he was in no condition to
sit up or sing. The still youthful composer died an hour after
midnight, early on December 5, eight weeks short of his 36th
birthday.
His fatal illness seems to have been rheumatic fever, which he had
suffered in childhood and several times in his adult years. The
symptoms have been clearly established in Mozart's life, not only
in his last days, but also on previous occasions.
After her husband's death, Constanze's first concern was that the
torso of the Requiem be brought to completion; she needed the
remainder of the commissioning fee and feared that, if the work was
not completed, she would have to return the portion already spent.
She first approached Joseph Eybler, who completed orchestration of
the finished passages of the Sequentia movements (through the
Confutatis maledictis), entering the additional instrumental parts
directly into Mozart's manuscript. But when it came to composing
entirely new material, Eybler surrendered the attempt to equal
Mozart. In the end, Constanze settled on Franz Xaver Süssmayr to
complete the work. However, if, as Sophie Haibel states, Süssmayer
was receiving instructions from Mozart immediately before his
death, it is odd that Constanze took three months to turn to him.
That is one of many still-puzzling questions about the work.
Süssmayr recopied the entire completed part of the manuscript,
wrote his own orchestration for the Sequentia movements, and
completed the rest of the Requiem, possibly-though documentation is
totally lacking-on the basis of sketches left by Mozart. The
remaining movements-Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Communio (Lux
aeterna)-seem to be Süssmayr's work, but they are close enough to
Mozart's style to make credible the assertion that Süssmayr was
working with notes from the master. It was Süssmayr's pious labors
on behalf of his "unforgettable teacher" that made it possible for
us to hear performances of Mozart's last musical conception.
A Closer Listen
Mozart composed many Mass settings, especially while working for
the church in Salzburg, though he had not previously set the
Requiem text, which omits celebratory parts of the Mass and adds
texts befitting the subject matter. He knew the conventions of
liturgical music in late-18th-century Austria inside and out-where
movements are divided into musical sections, and the text is
conventionally set as a fugue, or alternatively, in quieter
prayerful attitudes.
Compared to his earlier Mass compositions, the Requiem is a work of
somber and impressive beauty. Darker in color, it ascends to great
heights of power and drama-as in the first two lines of the
Lacrimosa, probably the last notes Mozart ever penned. It also
soars with the composer's ineffable grace, filled with the
commitment of immediate and urgent personal expression.
© 2012 Steven Ledbetter