A history of the Mozart Requiem

Q. I thought performing Mozart was straightforward, and now you tell me there are all of these things in my Requiem score which are wrong? What’s up with that?

A. Let me answer that with another question;

Do the pages of your score look like this?

[Click for a larger image of this facsimile of the last page written by Mozart]

If you answered "Yes, that's my score!", then you are performing the definitive Mozart version. (You may have noticed many of the staves are blank.)

If you answered "No, I have a printed score", then you are almost certainly performing someone else’s completion of what Mozart left undone at his death.

The Bad News

Unfortunately Mozart did not complete the Requiem – in one of life’s supreme ironies, death took the quill from his hand – so there are a variety of competing versions which claim to be authentic to Mozart’s style and vision of the work, and the chorus music is slightly different (or sometimes, wildly at variance) in each. The traditional completion is in fact the work of between three and five composers! In addition to Mozart, the others are Freystädtler (possibly), Eybler (certainly), Stadler (probably), and Süssmayr (definitely). The latter did the bulk of the work, but compared to the genius of Mozart he was unfortunately a composer of quite limited technique. However, it should be noted that the movements Mozart did compose have all of the voice parts and the orchestral bass line fully scored, with occasional accompanying motifs written here and there in the other instruments.

The example above, the last page of the Hostias, demonstrates this. The top two staves are for the violins, with gaps for five more instrumental staves before we find the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass staves and the orchestral bass line completely filled in. At the top of the page eleven bars of the first violin part is written out, whereas there are only two bars of the second violin part which has an independent rhythm (and as the choir falls silent here Mozart felt a more detailed indication of the accompaniment was necessary).

The publication history of the Requiem is also complicated because the principal sources were not available for many years; protracted difficulties with the patron led to considerable secrecy. This led to many discrepancies between what was published, and what Mozart actually wrote.

Click here to skip a long, boring aside...

The commissioning of the Requiem

On 14 February 1791, Anna née Flammberg, the young wife of Graf Franz von Walsegg, died. Walsegg was an eccentric nobleman living at Stuppach near Vienna, and as a dual memorial to his late wife he planned for a statue to be sculpted, and for a composer to write a Requiem mass which would be performed annually on the anniversary of her death. Walsegg was also an amateur musician and dilettante who often affected the guise of a composer (a “notorious raven who dressed himself in peacock’s feathers” [1]) by pretending to be the author of quartets or other compositions which he had in fact had written for him. From one particular document we know enough of Walsegg’s eccentricities to be fairly certain he arranged for the mass to be commissioned in a particularly secretive way, which would allow him to pass the music off as his own [2].

The task of commissioning the statue and the Requiem mass was delegated to Walsegg’s business representative and lawyer in Vienna, Dr Johann Sortschan [3]. Presumably acting directly on Walsegg’s instructions, Sortschan sent a messenger to Mozart to enquire how soon he could write a Requiem, and negotiate a fee. Part of these instructions must have been to preserve Walsegg’s anonymity (by invoking Mozart not to attempt to find out who wanted the work done), which later gave rise to one of the many well-known myths surrounding Mozart’s death – that the “grey messenger” was a supernatural harbinger of impending death.

We have Constanze Mozart’s testimony [4] to gather Mozart’s enthusiasm for composing a requiem, so presumably Mozart told Sortschan’s messenger he would compose the work for 50 ducats – this is the most frequently encountered sum in the various written sources, and it is also approximately half of the amount for one of his opera commissions. Mozart would also have told the messenger that the composition would have to wait until he had finished various other commitments; just the small matter of two operas, a concerto, a cantata, conducting engagements in Prague... The composition of La clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte, the clarinet concerto, and the Masonic cantata occupied Mozart for much of the second half of 1791, so that it is credible that the messenger might have visited again later in the year to ascertain what progress he had made on the Requiem, at which time Mozart might have received payment of half of the fee.

Robbins Landon speculates that Mozart must have only had 20 or so days from the end of October to devote to the composition of the Requiem [5]. His health was not wonderful after the stress of the previous months, but neither was it so bad that he was in fear for his life; he was well enough to go out for a drive with Constanze on one of the few pleasant late autumn days. Robbins Landon notes that the weather in Vienna in November and December 1791 was particularly bad, so that when Mozart succumbed to fever around November 20 it would not have immediately been thought that the illness would prove to be fatal. Allegedly Mozart took to his bed and put aside work on the Requiem in order to recuperate; had Mozart expected to live only another fortnight, it is easy to imagine him taking to his bed, but to stop composing on the other hand?

We can thus dismiss the various stories regarding Mozart’s premonitions of death as being inventions conceived with the benefit of hindsight; however, by the start of December his health had drastically worsened. He may have done some last minute work on the score at this point, as well as making the suggestion to repeat the Kyrie fugue at the end of the work. At any rate, an 1826 letter from a close friend of Mozart’s, Max Stadler, to the publisher Johann Anton André, states that Mozart was bedridden only a few days before his death, effectively the first or second day of December [6].

It cannot be proved from what chronology we know, but my feeling is that one of Mozart’s last efforts was the completion of the orchestration of the opening Introït. Judging by the evidence of the rest of the manuscript, it is likely that Mozart’s initial draft would have had the opening 7 bars of the introduction fully scored, but after the entry of the chorus Mozart would not have bothered to fully notate the subordinate orchestral parts at that stage. The evidence for this in the facsimile is that these later orchestral parts tend to be written with ink tending towards brown in colour rather than the darker brown-black of the vocal parts and instrumental bass.

By the fourth of December Mozart felt death was near, and lamented that his life’s work would be so drastically cut short, and that he had not provided better for his wife and children. In the afternoon several singers from the opera sang through the Requiem with him, and at the point where they reached the incomplete Lacrymosa, Mozart was moved to tears [7]; it is possible he would have recognised the bitter irony that the first performance of his Requiem might be the occasion of his own obsequies, his life being cut short like the Requiem itself. Mozart died just after midnight on 5 December 1791.

The completion of the Requiem

For many years it was thought that there was no formal memorial to Mozart after his death aside from the immediate funeral and burial, which occurred on 6 December. No one amongst the mourners accompanied the coffin to St Marx’s cemetery and hence the precise location of the grave has been lost to posterity. However in the early 1990s several reports were uncovered which confirm that a requiem mass was sung at the church of St Michael on 10 December 1791 (not quite the octave of Mozart’s death, when such memorials are traditionally appropriate) at the instigation the impresario Emanuel Schikaneder. One of these reports indicates that some portions of the Requiem were indeed sung, as the dying composer had anticipated, though it is impossible to establish exactly which parts of the fragment were performed, and with what forces [8].

We may guess that this initial performance organised by Schikaneder might have had orchestral accompaniment for the Introït, but it is also possible that much of the remaining music could have been performed by soloists or chorus, simply accompanied by organ, as numerous musicians would have been able to improvise the accompaniment from Mozart’s figured bass part and the indications of the orchestral motifs given here and there in the manuscript.

At the time of Mozart’s death, the manuscript of the Requiem consisted of 46 leaves, or 92 pages, 80 of which contained what music Mozart had managed to set down in draft. Only the 48 bars of the opening Introït had been fully scored, and the rest was written out in his customary particello, with the voice parts and instrumental bass complete in themselves, and the occasional detail in the other orchestral parts to indicate the general form of how these were to be completed. Mozart had left the Lacrymosa as an unfinished 8 bar fragment, and no music had been written to follow the Offertorium; it is certain the overall plan of the music was already formed in Mozart’s mind, but death robbed him of the time to write it down except in fragmentary sketches.

It is important to distinguish between a musical draft or a sketch, and Mozart’s particular method of working. The particello is a full score, but one in which only the essential musical parts have been put down. By starting to write out in full score Mozart had finalised the structure or form of his music, but had not filled in all of the written detail (except for the fully scored Introït, the incomplete Lacrymosa, and the continuation after the Offertorium). Mozart usually did not need to draft his ideas, as he could do most compositional tasks mentally; he did however use sketches to clarify particularly difficult or significant work, which were kept separate of the full score.

So if Schikaneder indeed organised for the Requiem to have instrumental accompaniment, then the first task required before the 10th of December would have been a transcription of orchestral parts for the Introït from the manuscript; it would have required a reasonably skilled musician to then complete the Kyrie to round off the opening section. Although Mozart had fully written out the chorus parts of the Kyrie fugue, and these were complete in themselves, it is not possible to directly transfer the vocal music straight to the instruments without modifications (although conceivably the Kyrie might have been performed with organ and continuo only). In particular the range of the soprano part goes too high for the basset horns. Otherwise, to end the Introït with the half-close at bar 48 on the dominant A major, and not perform the Kyrie, would have been against the normal classical tradition of finishing a section of a work in the same key that it began with. We will probably never know how much was performed, and by what forces.

Franz Beyer first raised the authenticity of the orchestration of the Kyrie in the 1970s, after which the editor of the Requiem for the New Mozart Edition, Leopold Nowak, suggested that this almost routine mechanical task of orchestration was done by F. J. Freystädtler with help from F. X. Süssmayr [4]. In fact there is considerable doubt about both of these assignations, especially where Süssmayr is concerned (in this movement at least). Therefore let us consider the main contributor to the Kyrie as being Freystädtler; there are good reasons to believe Süssmayr did not initially contribute to the Kyrie.

It is possible then that the 10 December 1791 Requiem might have had orchestral accompaniment for the opening Introït & Kyrie; the orchestral cues in the remainder of the work are sufficiently scarce that it could only have been rendered with continuo (organ and bass strings). The Offertorium, consisting of Domine Jesu Christe and Hostias, would have been most easily performable in this fashion. The justification for this arises solely from Mozart’s style of composition in this work: there is little else aside from the voice parts and the figured bass which is essential to a minimal performance of each movement, and in these sections, such as the 13-bar introduction to the Recordare, we find some instrumental scoring to compensate.

The Sequence as a whole, I would surmise as less likely to have been sung, as firstly it was textually incomplete from the words “huic ergo parce Deus” onwards, and secondly the five extant movements would have involved substantially more work in transcribing copies for the singers. However, individual movements might have been sung out of their proper liturgical place, essentially as though they were funeral motets.

The work would probably have been left in its unfinished state for some time had it not been urgent for Mozart’s widow to take advantage of the situation: as half of the money for the Requiem had already been paid, Constanze Mozart would have been most keen for it to be completed so that she could collect the remainder of the fee (rather than having to return the advance). It is understandable she would have turned to Mozart’s friends for this, and we may surmise the people in his immediate circle who might have been offered the task:

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (1736–1809) was next in line, after Mozart, to be appointed as adjunct to the ailing Kapellmeister of St Stephen’s Cathedral; had Mozart outlived the incumbent (i.e. lived just another 2 years until 1793) he would have had the promotion instead. It is fairly certain Albrechtsberger was contacted immediately after Mozart’s decease, but if he was offered the task of completion, he turned it down. Süssmayr’s letter to Breitkopf & Härtel of 8 February 1800 testifies to the possible reasons for such a refusal: possibly the pressure of work, or the risk of one’s work being compared unfavourably alongside Mozart’s.

Franz Jakob Freystädtler (1761–1841) was a Salzburg musician and friend who was living in Vienna in 1791, and as he was the eldest of Mozart’s pupils at the age of 30, it is indeed plausible that the widow Mozart turned to him next after the refusal of Albrechtsberger. However, if Nowak’s identification of his handwriting is correct, Freystädtler’s work appears to begin and end with the Kyrie, so that perhaps he was motivated only to complete that movement for the performance on 10 December 1791, and then subsequently refused the remainder of the task of completion.

Joseph Leopold von Eybler (1765–1846) was next in seniority amongst Mozart’s pupils, and we have written documentation dated 21 December 1791 that he accepted Constanze’s appeal to complete the work by the middle of the following Lent (which was a fact Constanze overlooked some 35 years later, perhaps proving the fallibility of belief in some protagonists’ recollections after many years). As Ash Wednesday of 1792 fell on February 21, the deadline would have been early in March, allowing two to three months. Eybler made a fairly complete start on orchestrating the Sequence from the Dies iræ onward, but after making a false start at finishing the Lacrymosa he must have returned the manuscript to the widow, apologising that he could not go any further. Eybler’s additions are still clearly evident in these pages of the original manuscript, since he made no attempt to disguise his different style of handwriting.

Before we reach the last individual to have worked on the Requiem we should consider the rôle of Abbé Maximilian Stadler (1748–1833). In 1826 Stadler was able to describe in detail Süssmayr’s method of working at completing the Requiem: “He made his own [copy of the] score, very like Mozart’s. In this he copied first, note for note, everything that was in Mozart’s original manuscript, next he followed the given instructions for the orchestration meticulously..., [then] composed the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei himself. In such fashion the work was completed.” (Mary Whittall’s translation [5])

We can thus presume the older and wiser figure of Stadler to have had some sort of supervisorial oversight of the work to ensure it was completed for Constanze Mozart to give to the anonymous patron, especially following Eybler’s failure. In writing to Johann Anton André later in 1826, Stadler admits he made a copy of the Requiem from Constanze’s copies prior to the initial publication by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1800. However, at an even earlier stage after Mozart’s death – probably early in 1792 – we know he copied the Offertorium (consisting of Domine and Hostias), which are orchestrated in such a way that they appear to pre-date Süssmayr’s completion of these movements. Wolff draws attention to some slightly coarse trombone scorings which are found in more refined fashion in the Süssmayr score. The description Stadler made of Süssmayr’s methods would apply equally well to his own score of the Offertorium, since unlike Eybler he did not write directly on Mozart’s original manuscript, but copied it afresh before adding what we presume to be his own orchestration.

Finally we reach Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766–1803) and his crucial contribution to the whole affair. After the first ten folios (mostly in Mozart’s hand), the entirety of the score presented to Count Walsegg is in his handwriting, and in bringing the work into the form that is traditionally known, made a contribution to virtually every aspect of the music. Even Mozart’s signature on the initial page – “di me W. A. Mozart mppa. / 1792” – is a forgery by Süssmayr!

Süssmayr would have been under even more intense pressure of time than Eybler, as he had an opera to write for Schikaneder before May 1792; yet he must have finished the work by late February, as Constanze Mozart had at least two copies made immediately to enable the Mozart–Süssmayr manuscript to be sent to Count Walsegg. One copy was then sold to the Prussian ambassador in Vienna, Baron von Jacobi-Kloest, on 4 March 1792. Constanze kept a copy herself, enabling the work to be performed on 2 January 1793 with the financial support of Mozart’s friend, Baron van Swieten. Finally, Süssmayr himself is thought to have retained a copy, but it has never been found. The remaining 36 sheets of Mozart’s original manuscript, shorn of the opening Introït & Kyrie, were for a time retained by Constanze, but later found their way into the hands of Stadler (the Sequence up to Lacrymosa) and Eybler (the Lacrymosa and Offertorium).

As Stadler reported, after the Introït & Kyrie completed by Freystädler, Süssmayr re-wrote the Sequence copying from the original manuscript, which had been written on extensively by Eybler. Süssmayr’s orchestration of these movements frequently borrow the contributions by Eybler, either because Süssmayr failed to recognise that they were not by Mozart, or from his pragmatic decision to copy Eybler’s work rather than spend time devising an alternative orchestration. Although Wolff describes Süssmayr’s work here as making a fair copy from Mozart and Eybler, the fact is that more often than not Süssmayr coarsens Eybler’s contribution.

The Dies iræ is notorious for this, as the pointed dotted rhythms in Eybler’s trumpet and drum parts are much more effective, while the tessitura of Eybler’s basset-horns has been lowered so that we hear none of the seven notes on (written) top d'''. There is also imaginative antiphonal writing between the winds and chorus which is excised in Süssmayr’s version.

In the Tuba mirum and Rex tremendæ Süssmayr adapts most of Eybler’s work, which is solely in the violin and viola parts, but adds a couple of features of his own, such as the extension of the trombone solo at bar 24 of the former movement (some believe this to be for the worse), and all of the woodwind and brass scoring in the latter. Süssmayr made a greater contribution to the Recordare by employing the obbligato basset-horns for greater stretches of the movement and reworking the upper strings, as well as adding independent parts for the bassoons.

In the Confutatis Eybler re-introduced the basset-horns, bassoons, trumpets, and drums, but Süssmayr re-orchestrates most of this aside from the strings, and as we have described, Eybler came to a halt with an abortive attempt at completing the Lacrymosa – composing only two bars of the continuation of the soprano part. The uncertain harmonic movement after bar 8 of the Lacrymosa, particularly in bars 15–16, the faulty counterpoint in bars 24–28, and the complete lack of subtlety in the final plagal cadence all point to Süssmayr’s work; yet there is a definite Mozartian element in the quotation in the soprano of the opening theme of the work at the words “dona eis requiem”.

The Offertorium, as we have already seen, was copied out at a very early stage by Max Stadler, so it is tempting to believe that as in the Sequence, here Süssmayr simply needed to make a fair copy of the work of Mozart and in this case, Stadler. If true, this would have further relieved the pressure on Süssmayr, who then only needed to compose the Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, and the Communio. The anecdote of Mozart suggesting at the last minute that the Kyrie fugue should be re-used at the conclusion of the Communio is reasonably plausible, of which the corollary is to lead into it by repeating a portion of the Introït, which sets the identical words Requiem æternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. This again had the effect of lightening the burden on Süssmayr.

Did Süssmayr have any Mozartean sketches with which to finish the work? The possibility that Mozart might have left some sketches of the remaining movements was reported by none other than – Max Stadler, quelle surprise! He mentions the possibility when writing to the journal Cäcilia in 1826 to dispel certain rumours about the Requiem’s authenticity. In the 20th Century this has been confirmed by the identification of one such page in Mozart’s sketches for Die Zauberflöte, containing two contrapuntal sketches for the Rex tremendæ and the closing Amen fugue of the Sequence. Had Süssmayr known of the sketch for the Amen fugue, it is very likely he would have ignored it anyway, as he lacked the contrapuntal technique to be able to realise it. Nevertheless there are various ideas in the music he claimed to be his own work, which are more likely to have originated with Mozart than him:

Lacrymosa: as above, bars 26–27 of the soprano directly quote the main theme of the Requiem, and Maunder(?) points out a possible quotation in the tenor in retrograde; much else in the movement is faulty however.

Sanctus: the first five bars of the soprano adapt the opening stanza of the Dies iræ from D minor to D major, and the four-part choral writing here is error-free (unlike the orchestration, with badly disguised consecutives). There is also a reminiscence by Sophie Haibl, Mozart’s sister-in-law, who described Mozart mouthing the sound of the timpani shortly before his death – possibly as rendered in bars 1–3? The c natural at bar 6 is probably in error, and the movement at only 10 bars long is far too short.

Osanna: the theme is plausibly related to the outline of the “quam olim Abrahæ” fugue in the Offertorium, but Süssmayr’s working out of the details is laughably pedestrian. There seems to be no reason for Süssmayr notating “tacet” against the basset-horns (and the trombones by implication, according to Nowak). This movement is also far too short, being only 28 bars long here, and shortened even further to 23 bars at the end of the Benedictus!

Benedictus: the movement consists of a more typical length at least, but the vaguely Mozartian subject in the first three bars is the only convincing element; otherwise, much of the remainder is boring, or utterly banal. The trumpets require a different crook to play this movement, and Süssmayr lacks the wit to modulate back to D major for the Osanna and is obliged to proceed in B flat major instead. (Mozart, on the other hand, skillfully modulated in the Hostias to finish on the dominant of G minor, ensuring an exact repetition of the quam olim fugue.)

Agnus Dei: Maunder has pointed out that the vocal parts embody an extensive quotation from the Gloria of one of Mozart’s earlier masses, K220, and which moreover, when transposed from the original context (in the relative minor of G) down a tone to the D minor of this movement, actually quotes the main theme of the Requiem in the bass part (see bars 2–6). Moreover this section of the Gloria is that which paraphrases the normal text of the Agnus Dei anyway: “qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis”. As the connection with K220 eluded scholars for well over a century, it therefore seems extremely unlikely that Süssmayr could have composed this sample of genuine Mozart himself, and thus he must have had access to a sketch for this movement. We would deduce that the sketch would have been written in four-part harmony for the voice parts; even so, the presence of errors here and there indicate Süssmayr was unable to transcribe it with complete accuracy, and lacked the insight to correct them.

Unfortunately no such sketch is now known to exist, and the last word we know of from Süssmayr on the subject is that he claimed to have composed the Agnus Dei wholly himself. However, the violin accompaniment starting the movement is another extremely original touch, so it is not too fanciful to suggest that at least one bar of this motif was sketched by Mozart as was his practice elsewhere. Lastly, the long modulation and cadence leading into the following movement is much more adventurous than anything Süssmayr was capable of writing, and is elaborated like the authentic Mozartian cadences we find elsewhere in the Requiem at bars 46–48, or the end of the quam olim fugue.

The publishing of the Requiem and subsequent controversy

As we noted above, Mozart’s Requiem did not lie untouched for long after its composer’s decease. The original manuscript was eventually divided into four separate bundles that were not re-united until nearly half a century later; individuals such as Eybler, Freystädtler, Süssmayr wrote all over these pages in attempting to complete the Kyrie and Sequence – or to forge Mozart’s signature; in another instance Max Stadler copied out the Offertorium for himself; then Süssmayr made his completion of the work to be bound with Mozart’s first ten folios, but before it was sent to the emissary of Count Walsegg, Constanze Mozart had at least two (possibly more) complete copies made.

We can see then that the inherent popularity of Mozart’s last composition ensured that the manuscripts almost had a life of their own. The copy retained by Constanze allowed her to beat Count Walsegg to the punch with the first full performance on 2 January 1793. Walsegg himself only performed the Requiem twice; once in Wiener Neustadt on 12 December 1793, and again in Semmering on the third anniversary of his wife’s death, after which he made no further use of the mass aside from making an arrangement for string quintet. However, further performances in Leipzig and elsewhere occurred later in the 1790s. The publishing house of Breitkopf & Härtel almost certainly came by a copy of the full score of the Requiem owing to one of these performances, and though presumably the copy was made without Constanze’s consent, by 1799 the firm was anxious to publish the work and entered into correspondence seeking her permission.

The ensuing negotiations between Breitkopf and Constanze (who had married again, to a lawyer named Georg Nikolaus von Nissen) were complicated by the way the Requiem had been commissioned in the first place. When submitting the completed Requiem to Walsegg’s intermediaries Constanze had asked for the privilege to be able to sell copies of the Requiem to royalty; selling a copy to Breitkopf for publication hardly fitted into this category. Despite this Constanze still had no idea of the identity of the Requiem’s patron, though at one stage in the negotiations she entertained the idea of advertising in the Vienna newspapers in the hope that the unknown person would make him- or herself known to her.

In the end, Breitkopf went ahead without using Constanze’s own copy, and published regardless a somewhat faulty edition which had the effect of partially flushing out the rather indignant Count Walsegg, who no doubt believed that he retained proprietorial rights over “his” Requiem, and was therefore less than pleased to see the work in print.

Almost simultaneously, it became common knowledge that Süssmayr had been responsible for completing the Requiem, and so on 8 February 1800 he wrote a letter to Breitkopf & Härtel explaining his contribution; very interestingly he does not mention Mozart having left any sketches behind. Süssmayr claims the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei as entirely his own, even though in the latter case we know this cannot be true, owing to the unmistakeable connection with the Gloria of Mozart’s K220 mass.

A considerable amount of time elapsed before instrumental parts became available, yet despite the opportunity to correct the faulty Breitkopf score before this happened, there is little evidence that the later full scores and parts were any better than the original printing; since Constanze and Walsegg retained and guarded their copies somewhat closely, it is certain that most printed or other manuscript copies must have been second or third-hand copies at best.

Later still in the 1820s, a letter to the musical journal Cäcilia by Gottfried Weber questioned Mozart’s authorship of the Requiem – not pointing out a phrase here or there as being not Mozart’s work, but alleging that nothing at all in the Requiem bore any of Mozart’s distinguishing hallmarks. These assertions generated a very great deal of activity from Mozart’s friends and supporters; Beethoven himself was known to have described Weber as a donkey. The publisher Johann Anton André, to whom Constanze had entrusted the publishing of many Mozart manuscripts, rushed out an edition of the vocal score purporting to show the precise delineation of movements composed by Mozart and those composed by Süssmayr; however in committing many errors to print, disgression might have been the better part of valour, for André did not adequately consult with the man who could have set him right on many points of detail – Abbé Maximilian Stadler.

Stadler himself responded to Weber’s letter with a fascinating reply which illuminated much that would otherwise have remained murky about the whole affair even to this day. However, not even Stadler was prepared to be candid about the vexed question of authorship, and as his letter is pitched at the level of general discourse rather than specific details it can only take us so far.

Events since 1850

By 1850 all of the individuals intimately associated with the completion of the Requiem had passed away, and various of those concerned had left statements on the record which cannot be reconciled with the facts as we now know them. Stadler was possibly the most knowledgeable of the composers in terms of identifying which parts of the Requiem were Mozart’s, and the manuscript of the Sequence in particular reveals these instrumental passages, which Stadler circled in black pencil. Unfortunately the Walsegg score was recovered too late for Stadler to similarly document the Kyrie.

Editing the Requiem for the complete Mozart edition in 1877, Brahms was able to refine some details of the Süssmayr completion by adding marks of “M.” and “S.” to his score, and to introduce corrections to the vocal parts where Süssmayr had made mistakes in his transcription. Yet Brahms did not acknowledge that some of the “S.” marks really ought to have been labelled “E.” – for Eybler. Brahms also ascribes the orchestration of the Kyrie completely to Mozart despite the clef problem of the basset horn parts and evidence of multiple styles of handwriting, as Leopold Nowak was to do nearly a century later.

In brief: (details to be fleshed out later)
1910s: Black and white facsimile edition of Mozart fragment first published; the facsimile has been newly republished by Bärenreiter, but now in colour, and including all of the Mozart and Süssmayr manuscripts in their post-1840 contexts.
1960s: Herzog’s account of the commission by Walsegg, discovered by Otto Erich Deutsch
1960s: New Mozart Edition volumes published, containing on the one hand Mozart’s fragment and the sketches for the Rex tremendæ and Amen fugue, and on the other hand, Eybler’s attempted completion of the Sequence with Süssmayr’s completion of the Requiem.

As touched on briefly, in the 1970s Franz Beyer pointed out a number of unsatisfactory aspects of the New Mozart Edition’s Requiem, and produced his own realisation of the Süssmayr completion to remove some clear examples of Süssmayr’s inabilities in counterpoint and writing of cadences, as well as addressing other non-Mozartean deficiencies, such as the lack of closing ritornelli in the Osanna fugue.

Beyer’s initial work therefore gave confidence to musicologists and composers that the work could be brought closer to Mozart’s original intentions, insofar as could be attempted nearly two centuries after the fact. In the 1990s Christoph Wolff amended the New Mozart Edition to provide what is claimed to be an urtext edition of Mozart’s fragment, also including part of Süssmayr’s completion stripped down, but even this does not address all of the issues associated with Süssmayr’s probable incorporation of Mozart sketches (certain in the case of the Agnus Dei).

I have the "Blah-de-Blah-de-Blah" edition. What's wrong with it?

First of all, turn to the front page of your score, and find out who the publisher is, and who the editor is, if one is mentioned:

Bärenreiter-Verlag: Neue Mozart Ausgabe (New Mozart Edition), edited by Leopold Nowak, vocal score by Heinz Moehn (1964/5). This is essentially the “traditional” Süssmayr version, however it is not quite definitive.

Breitkopf und Härtel: Alte Mozart Ausgabe (Old Mozart Edition), edited by Johannes Brahms, 1877. Again, this is essentially the Süssmayr version.

Dover: Requiem K626 in Full Score – these editions reprint the Old Mozart Edition by Breitkopf und Härtel [Süssmayr].

Novello: "original" version by J. Alfred Novello (c.1850) [Süssmayr];
Novello: "revised" version with accompaniment by W. T. Best (c.1870) [Süssmayr];
Novello: new completion by Duncan Druce (1992)

Oxford University Press: new completion by Richard Maunder. This is the first edition to radically dispense with the Süssmayr parts of the Requiem.

Other publishers: new completions by Franz Beyer, H.C. Robbins Landon, Robert D. Levin.