Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) - Mozart Requiem (Levin Edition) / Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K546 Studio Master

Mozart's Requiem—the composer's last and unfinished work—was commissioned by Count Franz von Wallsegg, who wished to have it performed in memory of his departed wife as his own composition. In order not to forfeit the handsome commission fee, Mozart's widow Constanze decided to have the work completed in secrecy, so that the finished version could be presented as her husband's final effort. The Requiem is known to the general public in the version undertaken by Mozart's pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Süssmayr based his completion on Mozart's virtually complete score of the INTROITUS and drafts of all sections from the Kyrie fugue to the Hostias. These contain the completed vocal parts (solo and chorus) and the orchestral bass line, with occasional motives for the orchestral accompaniment. However, the Lacrimosa breaks off after the eighth bar. To these Mozartean materials Süssmayr added settings of the SANCTUS/Hosanna, Benedictus, AGNUS DEI and COMMUNION (Lux aeterna —Cum sanctis tuis). (The COMMUNION is merely a newly texted version of part of the INTROITUS and of the Kyrie fugue.)

In making his completion Süssmayr could draw on the partial completion of the SEQUENCE done by Joseph Eybler soon after Mozart's death. He may have had access to a further important source—a sketch leaf which includes contrapuntal studies for the Rex tremendae as well as the beginning of an Amen fugue to close the Lacrimosa. However, Süssmayr did not include a realization of this fugue in his version; he set the Amen with two chords at the end of the Lacrimosa.

The key question about Süssmayr's version is whether any of the portions of the Requiem that are not in Mozart's hand were based on his ideas. Although Süssmayr claimed to have composed these alone, they display the tight motivic construction of Mozart's fragment, in which a small number of themes recurs from movement to movement. (Süssmayr's own music lacks such motivic interrelationships.) Perhaps, then, the "few scraps of music" Constanze Mozart remembers giving to Süssmayr together with Mozart's manuscript contained material not found in Mozart's draft. Mozart also may have suggested certain ideas to Süssmayr on the piano.

A clear evaluation of the movements Süssmayr claimed to have composed is clouded by unmistakable discrepancies within them between idiomatically Mozartean lines and grammatical and structural flaws that are utterly foreign to Mozart's idiom. First attacked in 1825, these include glaring errors of voice leading in the orchestral accompaniment of the SANCTUS and the awkward, truncated Hosanna fugue. Furthermore, Süssmayr brings back this fugue after the Benedictus in B-flat major rather than the original D major—in conflict with all church music of the time.

The version heard in this evening’s performance seeks to address the problems of instrumentation, grammar and structure within Süssmayr's version while respecting the 200-year-old history of the Requiem. A clearly drawn line of separation, in which everything except the contents of Mozart's autograph was to be considered spurious per se, was explicitly rejected. Rather, the goal was to revise not as much, but as little as possible, attempting in the revisions to observe the character, texture, voice leading, continuity and structure of Mozart's music. The traditional version has been retained insofar as it agrees with idiomatic Mozartean practice. The more transparent instrumentation of the new completion was inspired by Mozart's other church music. The Lacrimosa has been slightly altered and now leads into a non-modulating Amen fugue. (Other completions of the fugue modulate extensively.) The second half of the SANCTUS resolves the curious tonal discrepancies of Süssmayr's version, and the revised Hosanna fugue, modeled after that of Mozart's C-minor Mass K.427/417a, displays the proportions of a Mozartean church fugue. The second half of the Benedictus has been slightly revised and is connected by a new transition to a shortened reprise of the Hosanna fugue in the original key of D major. The structure of the AGNUS DEI has been retained, but the infelicities of Süssmayr's version have been averted in the second and third strophes. In the final Cum sanctis tuis fugue, the text setting has been altered to correspond to the norms of the era.

It is hoped that the new version honors Mozart's spirit while allowing the listener to experience Mozart's magnificent Requiem torso within the sonic framework of its historical tradition. Robert D. Levin: 1995

Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K546
Mozart neither disparaged Bach, nor considered it in any way retrogressive to be influenced by Bachian counterpoint. In 1782, as director of Baron van Swieten’s Sunday concerts in Vienna, he played Bach fugues, made transcriptions of Bach fugues, and wrote fugues of his own in tribute to his connoisseur patron’s enthusiasm for baroque music. In 1789, en route to Berlin, he visited Bach’s Thomaskirche in Leipzig where he improvised for an hour on the chorale Jesu meine Zuversicht. Bach’s Leipzig successor, Cantor Doles, sat beside him at the organ, pulling the stops and saying ‘old Sebastian Bach has risen again.’ The visitor, it was observed, was ‘a young, modishly dressed man of medium height,’ who played ‘beautifully and artfully for a large audience.’ The choir sang Bach’s fine motet, Singet den Herrn, in his honour, and Mozart examined Bach’s autographs, ‘the parts spread all around him, held in both of his hands, on his knees, and on the adjoining chairs.’ Two years later, in The Magic Flute, he would give the two Armed Men stern, beautiful, hauntingly Bachian music to sing.

The Fugue in C minor dates from six years earlier, when Mozart was first immersed in contrapuntal studies. Originally written for two pianos, it was arranged in 1788 for strings and given the slow, sombre introduction which so strikingly adds to its intensity, yet which Mozart described as no more than ‘a short adagio for two violins, viola, and bass, for a fugue I wrote a long time ago.’ The adagio is filled with bold, expressive harmonic progressions. The fugue, once set in motion, rolls on relentlessly to its close. The music, playable by string quartet or string orchestra, has a hard-edged severity quite uncommon in Mozart, but confirming how the baroque and the rococo could co-exist in classical Vienna. A dark, somewhat spooky, conductorless performance of it was given at Herbert von Karajan’s funeral in 1989. Conrad Wilson

08 June 2003
The Sunday Times
Hugh Canning

First criticised as long ago as 1825, Süssmayr's completion of Mozart's unfinished mass for the dead may have stood the test of time, but it remains susceptible to fluctuating fashions in scholarship. William Christie and Philippe Herreweghe rehabilitated the work of Mozart's maligned pupil on the grounds that he was closer than modern scholars to the composer and may have had access to material that may have since gone astray. Although Mackerras uses a modern-instrument band, he has long been interested in period style, but has elected to use Robert D Levin's edition, which aims to "address the problems of instrumentation, grammar and structure" of Süssmayr's version, while respecting the 200-plus years of its performance tradition. Whatever one thinks of Levin versus Süssmayr, Mackerras's performance is as thrilling as one would expect from this great Mozart conductor, and with a good quartet of British soloists (Susan Gritton's soprano is glorious) and the chorus singing their hearts out, he makes the strongest possible case for the newer completion.


02 June 2003
The Guardian
Andrew Clements

If the regular arrival of new recordings is any kind of accurate guide, Robert Levin's version of Mozart's Requiem, which remained unfinished at the composer's death, is beginning to supplant the traditional Süssmayer completion.

Charles Mackerras's account makes the best case so far for the effectiveness of Levin's editorial decisions: his canny hybrid approach, combining elements of period performance with the modern instruments of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, is wonderfully telling.

The string lines carry all the expressive weight one could want, and the woodwind and brass have a sovereign authority. The choral singing is acutely responsive, while the soloists, led by Susan Gritton's silvery, pure soprano, are first rate.

The Adagio and Fugue in C minor K546 is more than a makeweight too, for Mackerras gives it a such a muscular strength the work emerges as if a precursor of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge.


02 July 2002
The Observer
Anthony Holden

If you've always shared the general unease about his pupil Sussmayr's completion of Mozart's sublime Requiem, you will share my enthusiasm for its wholesale reworking by the American academic Robert Levin, which smoothes out all the dubious passages while adding fugues and other details, often strikingly dissonant, based on Mozart's own sketches. The results ... are breathtaking.

Linn contuinues its association with Sir Charles Mackerras and the SCO in a ravishing recording made in Dundee's Caird Hall, boasting stellar soloists led by mezzo Catherine Wynn-Rogers and soprano Susan Gritton (available at www.LinnRecords.com complete with the Adagio and Fugue in C minor K. 546).

01 - Introitus Requiem aeternam.flac
02 - Kyrie.flac
03 - Dies irae.flac
04 - Tuba mirum.flac
05 - Rex tremendae.flac
06 - Recordare.flac
07 - Confutatis.flac
08 - Lacrimosa.flac
09 - Amen.flac
10 - Domine Jesu.flac
11 - Hostias.flac
12 - Sanctus.flac
13 - Benedictus.flac
14 - Agnus Dei.flac
15 - Lux aeterna.flac
16 - Cum sanctis tuis.flac
17 - Adagio Fugue in C minor - K546 - Adagio.flac
18 - Adagio Fugue in C minor - K546 - Fugue.flac

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