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The DeKalb Choral Guild, Inc.
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Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mary Evelyn Root, Director
Leanne Elmer Herrmann, Accompanist

Saturday 7 November, 1998, 8:00 PM
St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church
1790 LaVista Road NE
Atlanta, Georgia

This Is My Song by Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Requiem in d minor, K. 626 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

I. Introitus: Requiem
Kristen McDermott, soprano

II. Kyrie

III. Sequentia:
Dies irae
Tuba mirum
Barbara Pettitt, soprano; Michaelene Gorney, alto; Steven Asip, tenor; Bill Potter, bass

Rex tremendae
Recordare
Paula Keinert, soprano; Debra Gallo, alto; Jorge Blanco, tenor; Cliff Norris, bass

Confutatis
Lacrymosa

IV. Offertorium
Domine Jesu
Kristen McDermott, soprano; Judy Thompson, alto; Steven Asip, tenor; Charles Gabriel, bass

Domine Hostias

V. Sanctus

VI. Benedictus
Miffanwy Mistretta, soprano; Debra Gallo, alto; Jorge Blanco, tenor; Bill Potter, bass

VII. Agnus Dei

VIII. Communio: Lux Aeterna
Kristen McDermott, soprano

Orchestra
Elaine Bradley, violin
Kirsten Browning, violin
Carl Emerson, viola
Robb Chapman, cello
John Noel Wheeler, trombone

Program Notes

by Dr. Edmund Trafford & Ms. Michaelene Gorney

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Mozart is the only one of the "great" composers who is equally famous for instrumental works as well as operas. His operas and the Requiem alone would have made any composer's reputation; add to these his symphonies, concerti, and chamber music, and one is confronted with an unsurpassed accomplishment of quality and quantity.

Mozart settled in Vienna in 1781, abandoning the security (and servitude) of a court position in Salzburg to become an independent virtuoso composer in the glittering capital of the Hapsburgs, the musical center of Europe. As an entrepreneur, Mozart was clearly ahead of his time. In an age when some composers still spent the whole of their creative lives in service to royalty, Mozart took a calculated risk - and lost.

At first, Mozart prospered in Vienna, presenting a series of successful public concerts. (The idea of a "subscription" concert, largely underwritten by members of the audience, was in its infancy.) In late 1784-early 1785, at his creative peak and with a large audience for his music, he felt the need for artistic growth. But Mozart's growth coincided with the dwindling of his audience, as the public was unwilling to be drawn into the challenge of bolder, more personal works. Mozart ultimately died bankrupt and alone. Most scholars contend that Mozart was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave, on a wretched day, and that no one followed him to his grave. Nicolas Slonimsky's researches, however, reveal that the weather was fine, certainly nothing to hinder a procession to the burial plot. Only when the family was unable to pay the mandatory dues was Mozart's body moved to an unknown resting place. All that is left of his pitifully short life is the hundreds of works in his catalogue, bequeathed to an often unappreciative posterity. The final entry in this catalogue is No. 626, the Requiem.

Requiem in d minor, K. 626

The sections of the Ordinary of the Mass, those sections whose words remain the same regardless of the occasion, form the centerpiece of Roman Catholic worship. They include the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus, the Benedictus, and the Agnus Dei. The Mass for the Dead (Missa pro defunctis) opens with an Introit, part of the Proper of the Mass, sections whose words vary from day to day to suit the occasion. From the Introit's initial words (Requiem in aeternam dona eis, Domine) the Requiem Mass takes its title. The Kyrie is retained here, but the joyful portions of the Ordinary, the Gloria and the Credo, are eliminated. Replacing the Alleluia is a Tract, or Psalm verse, followed by the Dies Irae, a mournful sequence, or long poem, by Thomas of Celano of the 13th century. An Offertorium is added, followed by the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. The Mass closes with a Communio.

Prior to his death, Mozart completed the Requiem in either vocal sketches or full score, up to, and including, the Offertorium. Constanze, his wife, turned to several of Mozart's pupils to complete the unfinished score: Franz Jacob Freistädtler, who wrote colla parte instrumentals for the Kyrie, Joseph Eybler, who did much work on the settings of the sequence texts; and Abbé Stadler, who wrote instrumentals for the Offertorium. She turned last to Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1706-1803), a student and a scribe whose handwriting closely resembled Mozart's. Scholars agree that Sussmayr probably composed the Sanctus and Benedictus himself and that he set the Communio to music composed by Mozart for the Introit and Kyrie. But authorship of the Agnus Dei is debatable. Sussmayr claimed to be its composer, but many believe that the artistic skill displayed in this movement was beyond his talents. It is likely, though, that he had access to sketches of Mozart's and that the Agnus Dei is based on those. A few 20th Century musicians have attempted to complete the Requiem in a style supposedly more in keeping with Mozart's. Sussmayr's version, heard in this concert, is most often performed.

The Requiem is a legendary work, surrounded by much conjecture. Some claim that the "mysterious stranger" who commissioned this work never existed except as a figment of Mozart's imagination. Others see the figure as a personification of Death coming to claim the infirm composer. Peter Shaffer, in his play Amadeus, interprets the stranger as Mozart's manipulative father, Leopold, who marketed Mozart unmercifully as a child prodigy, whom Mozart both revered and feared, and whose memory continued to haunt him. In the play, an unscrupulous and jealous rival, Antonio Salieri, exploits Mozart's state of mind, disguising himself in cloak and mask, pushing the sick and exhausted Mozart to completion of the Requiem and thus to his death. Both Constanze and a friend of Mozart's related the composer's firm belief that he was slowly poisoned, adding flame to the fire of unverifiable suspicions and suppositions.

The truth is probably less dramatic. A requiem was commissioned from Mozart by a Count Franz Walsegg in memory of his belated wife. The Count was known to commission works which he would then attempt to pass off as his own. Considering the covert nature of these attempts, it would not have been surprising for Walsegg to disguise himself in mask and cloak while negotiating a commission. And there is no evidence whatsoever that the much-maligned Salieri - envious though he may have been - was anywhere near the scene of the "crime." Be the facts as they may, Mozart came to believe that he was being systematically poisoned and that he was indeed writing the Requiem for himself.

Excerpt from Program Notes by Dr. Jane Perry-Camp, Professor of Music Theory, Flonda State University Wntten for a Concert in Memory of Clayton Henry Krehbiel, January 21, 1989

In Mozart's case, certain external and internal circumstances coalesce which explain the Requiem's remarkable and seminal position more completely than ever before. Well known is Mozart's May 1791 appointment as assistant to the Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's; though not a paying job, it promised him succession to the Kapellmeister post itself and offered Mozart the opportunity to write church music (which now was relieved of the restrictions imposed by Joseph II in 1783 and lifted by Joseph's successor, Leopold II). (Landon, 1791.) To these facts scholar Wolff adds his observation of extant evidence from Mozart's hand to demonstrate that with the Requiem, as with his Ave verum Corpus, K. 618, from June 1791, Mozart was establishing new standards for four-part vocal writing. Mozart was asserting the equality of voice parts as each unfolds in a transparent and coherent whole to which the accompanying orchestral instruments -- unlike those in Mozart's operas, even those of 1791, and unlike those in Mozart's earlier sacred music, even in his great C-Minor Mass, K. 427/417a -- must remain subordinate. Any bolstering of the instrumental forces flies in the face of the vision Mozart saw; and certainly the wholesale rejection of Sussmayr's completion (full as it is of problems) rejects simultaneously any traces left from Mozart's now lost sketches and now silent instructions. This assertion rests on the primary of interest, for Mozart, in the vocal parts in his Requiem for he treated them with the newness and centrality that he had treated the string parts in his quartets from the set dedicated to Haydn onward. Mozart was not merely writing sacred music but was exploring an entirely new language for sacred music; he was establishing new frontiers. Thus, "archaic greatness" (Beyer) was far from his goal; rather, a splendid new language was to emerge.