Music in History Historically Informed Critique
Mozart’s Requiem, Glasgow Sinfonia Orchestra 22nd October 2017
On the 22nd of October, the Glasgow Sinfonia Orchestra and the Ceciliani Chorus performed one of the most celebrated choral pieces of all time, ‘Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor K. 626’. Described as “a choral masterpiece whose genesis is shrouded in mystery” by Classic FM, Mozart’s requiem is a piece with a great deal of mystery and folklore surrounding it, the irony of a Requiem mass being the composer’s final work, and left unfinished. In this essay, I plan to discuss this performance of Mozart’s Requiem, with particular emphasis on the orchestration of the piece and the Glasgow Sinfonia Orchestra’s interpretation of said orchestration.
‘Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor’ was partially composed in 1791, and was written for SATB choir, orchestra and Soprano, contralto, tenor and bass soloists. Mozart began writing this requiem mass in Vienna, but died before he completed the work. The piece was later finished in 1792 by Franz Xavier Süssmayr, as a commission for Count Franz von Walsegg’s requiem mass for his late wife. Sussmayr is thought to have been a great friend of Mozart, assisting him in the writing of his operas “La clemenza di Tito” and “Die Zauberflote”. It is also thought that Sussmayr may have studied under Mozart, but many argue this was fabricated by Mozart’s wife Constance to legitimise his finishing of the Requiem mass. There have been many alternate completions of the piece, however Sussmayr’s is the most commonly performed, and is the score the Glasgow Sinfonia Orchestra and Ceciliani Chorus used on the 22nd of October. Even though the piece was unfinished by Mozart himself, it has arguably become one of his most celebrated pieces. There is a myth that Beethoven himself commented on Süssmayr’s completion of the piece, stating “If Mozart did not complete the music, then the man who wrote it was a Mozart” (Bambarger, 1995).
A “Requiem” originates from the Catholic Church, often referred to as a Mass for the dead (Missa pro defunctis), and is a mass to remember the departed souls of the deceased (Knight, 2012). Musical settings of the Requiem include many of the “propers” or parts of the liturgy of the mass, and are musical dedications to the dead and the idea of loss, despite the majority lacking any religious weighting.
Despite both the performances being 224 years apart, one can draw several similarities between the Glasgow Sinfonia concert on the 22nd of October and the first performance of the completed Requiem on the 2nd January 1793. The 2nd of January marked the first performance of Süssmayr’s completed version of Mozart’s score, but there were several brief passages of the work performed at Mozart’s own requiem mass held in St. Michael’s church in Vienna the previous December (FN FKN GREAT BOOK). On the 2nd however, the fully completed piece was performed in Vienna in the Jahn-Saal (Jahn Hall), a music hall which held “400 at the most”. (Deutsch, 1965) The 1793 premiere was arranged by Baron von Swieten, patron of many musicians including Haydn and Beethoven, as a benefit evening to raise money for Mozart’s wife and his six young children. The performance on the 22nd of October by the Glasgow Sinfonia Orchestra was also a charitable event, in aid of the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice. The RSNO New Auditorium, where the concert was performed, is “a purpose-built home” for the RSNO Orchestra, and can be manipulated in many ways in order to get the right acoustic for the pieces performed within it (McQuiggan, 2015). The maximum capacity for the hall is 600 seated, and although there were discussions of making the hall slightly smaller for the performance to make it more historically accurate, it was decided to keep the room at maximum capacity in order to raise the most money for the charity. (MacLean, 2017).
In the scoring of the Requiem, Mozart writes for two basset-horns, an instrument developed a mere 20 years before Mozart began writing the piece. The basset horn is part of the clarinet family, and sounds a 4th lower than the Bb clarinet. However, in many modern performances of Mozart’s Requiem, and other pieces of the time, orchestras opt for the Alto Clarinet. The Glasgow Sinfonia performance stayed with this tradition and featured two alto clarinets rather than two basset-horns.
Mozart also wrote used three trombones within the orchestra, which mostly double the lower vocal parts, reinforcing the sound. This was a custom which had stemmed from later Renaissance composers such as Montiverdi, Heinrich Schutz and others (MacLean, 2017). However, Mozart also writes the trombones independent sections, in sections such as the ‘Tuba Mirum’ movement, in which there is a trombone solo and lower independent trombone lines.
In every edition of the Requiem, the solo within this movement is written as tenor trombone, even specifically stating in one edition that the solo is for “Trombone Tenore Solo” (Blume, 1986). However, Mozart himself only wrote ‘Trombone solo’, and did not specify which type of trombone it was to be played on. There has been much discussion as to what instrument the solo should be played on, the confusion lying in the fact that the trombone solo is written in the tenor clef. Despite the more popular choice of the tenor trombone, in the performance on the 22nd of October, the Glasgow Sinfonia featured an alto trombone as the soloist.
“The trumpet will send its wondrous sound throughout earth's sepulchres and gather all before the throne” (Christer, 2011).
Despite the English translation of the text of Tuba Mirum, and even though Mozart had two trumpets at his disposal within the orchestra, he chose to feature the fuller, more lyrical trombone for this piece. Arguably, the solo within this movement is one of the most famous trombone solos in the instrument’s repertoire.
In many reinterpretations of the Tuba Mirum trombone solo, including its inclusion in numerous orchestral excerpt books, the piece is written in 4/4. However, in Mozart’s original scoring of the movement, the piece is written definitively in 2/2 (Yeo, 2016).
Fig. ? Mozart’s original manuscript of the Requiem
The “cut time” symbol is clearly seen on Mozart’s original manuscript. However, in the Süssmayr completion which the Glasgow Sinfonia orchestra used on the 22nd of October, the solo is written in 4/4.
PICTURE
It was interesting however, that the conductor Des MacLean did in fact conduct the orchestra beating 2/2. Upon conversing with Des MacLean later, I discovered he has a great interest in historically informed performance practice, and upon looking at Mozart’s original scoring of the entire piece, found he wanted to follow Mozart’s uncompleted score as much as he could, including following the original time signature set by Mozart.
In conclusion, I believe that the Glasgow Sinfonia orchestra performance of Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor was a success, and was very accurate in historical influences. It is challenging to define a performance of a piece like this as “historically accurate or informed”, as one must first define what accuracy means in this context; was the performance accurate to Mozart’s original manuscript which has very limited information, or Süssmay’s completion of the piece, or any other subsequent completions and editions of the piece? However, due to the musical director Des MacLean’s deep interest in the historically informed practice movement, I believe the performance featured inspiration from a range of different sources, birthing an interesting and effective performance.
References
• Bambarger, Bradley. 1995. Billboard. [ONLINE] Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1g0EAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1
[Accessed 1st December 2017]
• Blume, 1986. Requiem, K. 626: in D minor (Edition Eulenburg) Paperback – February 1, 1986
by Friedrich Blume (Author), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Composer)
• Christer, Katie. 2011. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.sheffieldphil.org/docs/Requiem_translation.pdf [Accessed 30 November 2017]
• Deutsch, Otto Erich. 1965. Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Knight, 2012. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12776d.htm
• MacLean 2017. Email from Des MacLean, conductor and Director of Music for the concert.
• McQuiggan, Kate. 2015. [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.rsno.org.uk/cool_timeline/the-new-rsno-centre/. [Accessed 4 December 2017]
• Yeo, Douglas. 2016. [ONLINE] Available at: https://thelasttrombone.com/2016/10/14/rethinking-mozarts-tuba-mirum/ [Accessed 4 December 2017]
Bibliography
http://www.rsno.org.uk/cool_timeline/the-new-rsno-centre/
http://www.britishtrombonesociety.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_(Mozart)
https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2011/dec/16/mozart-s-requiem-mysteries
http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/text/mozartreq.html