28 August, 2017

Walking with Giants (2): "Music to make you believe in God"

Amongst my classical CD collection there are a number of works which are performed by different orchestras, conductors or soloists. For example, I have three versions of Bach’s Goldberg Variation – two played by the great Bach pianist Glenn Gould (one in 1955 and one in 1983) and one by Angela Hewitt, several versions of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony played by different orchestras under the direction of different conductors, and several versions of Handel’s Messiah. This duplication of discs is not an error, it is intentional – these (and others) are very great works all of which have been interpreted differently by different artist and at different times. One such work is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s mighty Requiem. I have four different copies of the Requiem, each one special and “right” in its own way but there is one that I instinctively turn to when I want to listen to the work rather than just have it as background music. I thought about this recently as we continued our musical “pilgrimage” along the Danube and stood in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna – one of the great cathedrals of the world.
St Stephen's Cathedral

From the outside St Stephen’s is magnificent – imposing, wonderful architecture, soaring spire, wonderfully and beautifully decorated roof – truly, a majestic and superlative building; a mighty place of worship  steeped in centuries of Christianity and history. It is a place that has witnessed a thousand years of  great events, royal weddings and funerals: the history of Austria and much of middle Europe is writ large in the fabric of this great building. Step inside and one is overwhelmed by an awareness of this great past but two weeks ago as I stood in the nave of this great place I felt something else; something more personal and searching, something to make one feel introspective, vulnerable and uncertain of one's place in the great scheme of things. Inside this magnificent church the glories of the outside structure become a vast brooding space, almost intimidating; soaring columns, a heavy sense not only of royal and political power and of history but also of godly power; it is a cloying atmosphere that seems to press down and remind one of the smallness of mankind in the mighty sweep of heaven and earth. This is a place to remind us mere mortals of the power of an omnipotent God; not a place, I thought, to sing modern “happy clappy” hymns, nor a place to reflect upon its architectural beauty, or upon the compassion of a benevolent God. It is a serious place, yes, a place of great majesty but at the same time a place to instil fear in the hearts of those who would stray from the path of righteousness. Standing there I got the feeling that it must be like this to stand condemned in the Old Bailey Courtroom and face the bewigged judge and the whole fearful panoply of the mighty legal profession as some terrible sentence is passed. It is a place to reflect upon and be forcefully reminded of one’s relationship with our maker and indeed, our ultimate judge.

And as I stood there, the music of Mozart’s mighty Requiem rang through my brain – it was the only music befitting of this place - and not just any version of the Requiem, but that made by Sir Georg Solti, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Choir. This is the version to which I turn when I want to listen to the Requiem and is one of the definitive recordings of the work.  Significantly, it was recorded in 1991 in St Stephen’s on the two hundredth anniversary of Mozart’s death. Solti’s rendering of the work is, like the Cathedral, imposing, intimidating, dramatic and seems to peer into the very soul of the listener exposing every fault line and mortal weakness of our inner selves. And as the Cathedral does, the Requiem forcibly reminds one of the smallness of mankind in the face of an omnipotent God - and, terrifyingly, of the eternity that awaits us all when the gossamer thread upon which we all hang finally snaps.
Inside the vast commanding space

But the Requiem  and St Stephen’s is more tangibly connected with Mozart. If you walk out of the Cathedral and take a few steps down the narrow street that runs along the side of the church then within a matter of seconds you will come to Mozart’s home – where he lived and composed for much of his life. Mozart was married to Constanze in the Cathedral and upon his death his funeral service took place there; powerful are the links between the Cathedral, the musician and his final great work, the Requiem.

Of all the stories about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart the tale of the Requiem  is without doubt the most mysterious and arresting – and for me explains Solti’s powerful rendering of this supreme work in the Cathedral. Separating the myth, the mystery and the facts of the Requiem’s story has fascinated Mozart fans and musicologists since the composer’s death in 1791 at the age of 36. Any study of Mozart and his life is filled with superlatives and quite unimaginable tales – the story of the Requiem was the final twist in the story of this wonderful composer’s life.

Mozart composed over 600 works in his short life, virtually all of them acknowledged as pinnacles of musical achievement and his influence upon Western music is both immeasurable and profound; Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn, upon hearing of Mozart’s death  wrote  "posterity will not see such a talent again"  But for me, perhaps Sir Georg Solti’s comment expresses best what music lovers think of Mozart and his music when he said: “Mozart makes you believe in God – it cannot be by chance that such a phenomena arrives in the world and then passes after thirty six years, leaving behind such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces.”

In simple terms Mozart was a musical genius, he did things that no-one else could do and from the earliest age. Johann Sebastian Bach once said that he (Bach)  “...was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well. There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. As a good Lutheran Bach knew all about the Christian work ethic but he was doing himself a disservice when he suggests that it took only hard work to produce such glorious music as his. Mozart, too, worked prodigiously hard  – indeed it might be argued that he died of hard work – but in the end Mozart’s creative talent and musical genius are without a doubt the deciding factors in the mighty works that he produced.
Mozart in his home town of Salzburg

Mozart showed prodigious ability from early childhood. He composed from the age of five and by the time he was eight he was touring European courts with his father, Leopold and elder sister (Maria Anna). Mozart himself was baptised in his home town, Salzburg the day after his birth. Only a few days prior to our visit to St Stephen’s Cathedral Pat and I had stood in Salzburg gazing up at the house where Mozart was born and then later that same day in the mid day heat we had taken photographs of the statue that is erected to this son of Salzburg in the main square of the town. That night we had sat in the glorious baroque Mirabelle Palace listening to the Amadeus Concert playing Mozart – truly an evening that will stay with us for the rest of our lives – mostly because of the music but also because we were listening to music that had been penned by this musical giant two centuries before in the place where he lived – it was a powerful connection.

The end of a wonderful Mozart evening in the glorious Mirabelle Palace
Mozart’s early baptism was with good cause - he was not expected to live – and he remained sickly for most of his life. At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg. Here he had many artistic successes but he grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. He was anxious to compose opera and there was little opportunity for this in Salzburg. He visited Paris but was forced to return home and resume his Salzburg employment when his mother died and, while visiting Vienna in 1781, he was finally dismissed from his Salzburg post. He chose to stay in Vienna, where at last he found fame as his operas began to be recognised - but this gave him little long term financial security.

In 1782, in St Stephen’s, he married Constanze and they spent much of their remaining years in the house near the Cathedral. They had six children but only two survived infancy. Despite their popular success and the fact that he gained steady employment with the Emperor Joseph II, storm clouds were gathering. Mozart’s debts were rising and money was tight and he had a family to feed. He worked incessantly, frequently travelling to far off places to conduct an opera, meet a possible client or seek extra work and in a sense this paid off. These years were a time of great productivity: concertos that are pinnacles of the genre, symphonies that set the pattern for symphonic composition from that day to this, operas that still fill theatres and their sublime arias bring tears to the eyes of the audience, great church music that has become integral to the Christian tradition – the list was and is endless and it all poured, seemingly effortlessly, from the pen of this brilliant young man. Other great composers tend to achieve their fame because of their great talent in single or limited areas: Bach, for example is the king of choral/religious music, Beethoven the master of the symphony, Puccini and Verdi are famed for their opera - and so on. Mozart, however, achieves perfection and world recognition on virtually every musical front - he could slip (as he did in the final weeks of his life) from composing one of the world's greatest operas - The Magic Flute - and in a trice turn out the Requiem; his like had not been seen before and has not been seen since.

Mozart and Constanze married here

But Mozart's skill and brilliance was not effortless – the work load and his sickly constitution took their toll. On September 6th 1791 while in Prague he fell ill. Despite continuing composing and conducting the premier of The Magic Flute he quickly deteriorated. He returned to Vienna and on November 20th, whilst composing the Requiem, he became bed ridden suffering from swelling, pain and vomiting.

The circumstances surrounding the composition of Mozart’s Requiem are remarkable, fascinating and dramatic; it is, in short, the stuff of legends. Composed on his death bed, it is a work that many regard as the finest piece of music ever written – that is an arguable claim, but it cannot be disputed that the Requiem is without doubt one of the greatest of musical works. Even today, no matter how many times I have heard it, it still has the capacity to make the hairs on my neck stand out and my heart race when the opening bars are played. I know that I am not alone in that. It is also one of the greatest paradoxes of music that this work, one of (if not the) greatest of Mozart's works is the one of which he actually composed the smallest percentage!

The story of the Requiem began a few weeks before Mozart’s death when he was approached by a gentleman – some say masked - acting on behalf of an anonymous patron who wished to commission from him a Requiem Mass. This patron was Count Franz von Walsegg-Stuppach, whose wife had died earlier that year. The Count, who was a keen amateur musician, wished to be regarded as a major composer and saw an opportunity to pass off the Requiem as his own.  He therefore conducted all business transactions with Mozart in secrecy to preserve his anonymity and sent an agent to act on his behalf. The Count’s offer was substantial, and Mozart, ever financially troubled, accepted 250 florins (half of what he got for an opera). There were to be no rehearsals or conducting of performances involved – it was a secret work. A substantial deposit was paid but before he could begin work on the Requiem, Mozart had to complete several other commissions, including The Magic Flute, and also had to travel to Prague to produce a season of Figaro. So he entered the Autumn of 1791 with a heavy workload and declining health.

Mozart set to work on the Requiem in October 1791, but had completed only a fraction of the work before taking to his bed in mid-November. He was terminally ill. Legend has it, too, that the secrecy surrounding the work perhaps played on Mozart’s ailing mind – he began to fear that this was not just any Requiem, it was to be his own Requiem. At the time of his death, only the opening Aeternam  was fully finished. Of the Kyrie and the Offertory, he had completed only the vocal parts, a bass line and occasional fragments of instrumental sketches. The remaining movements—Sanctus, Benedictus, Osanna, Agnus Dei, and Lux Aeterna – were only lightly sketched out. We know that in the last few days of his life, as Mozart faced death one of his students, Franz Süssmayr, assisted the composer in scribing Mozart’s ideas – he was by now too ill to hold a pen. We also know that local Viennese singers were brought to Mozart’s bedside to sing parts that he had sketched out in order that he could hear them before finally putting the notes on the manuscript. He died aged 35 on December 5th 1791, survived by his wife and two sons – the Requiem only sketched out and partially complete.
Mozart's house - in the shadow of St Stephen's

Desperate for funds, Mozart's wife, Constanze, was anxious to have the work completed and took it upon herself to find someone to complete the Requiem so that she could sell it as Mozart's. Eventually Constanze approached Franz Süssmayr who had been the composer’s closest musical confidante.  He undoubtedly knew what Mozart’s intentions were in respect of the complete Requiem. He had not been Constanze’s first choice – that had been  Joseph von Eybler but Eybler was unable to make satisfactory progress. When she eventually turned to Süssmayr, it was because there was a deadline to meet in order that she received the final payment; and only Süssmayr with his greater knowledge could meet that deadline!

Whatever the reason, thanks to his efforts, the Requiem was completed by February 1792 and  the final score dispatched to Count Walsegg complete with a counterfeited signature of Mozart. Shortly afterwards Constanze was paid the full amount owed. The Count presented the music as his own at a memorial service to his wife in 1793 and a little over a year later it was played - attributed to Mozart - in Vienna, at a concert about which Walsegg knew nothing.  
One of the rooms in the house

Süssmayr's work has often been harshly criticized - the Requiem is full of errors in harmony, and his musical ideas were no match for Mozart's. However, despite its detractors, the Süssmayer completion of the Requiem has remained the standard version. Despite any shortfalls the Requiem scholars are united that it remains purely Mozartean and one of, if not the greatest setting of the Requiem text in history.

In the years following, the Requiem gained its place in musical history and folklore and began to develop  a life of its own. In 1809 it was performed at the memorial service for Joseph Haydn and, adding to the many myths about the piece, in 1833 Joseph von Eybler suffered a stroke while conducting the Requiem. He never conducted again. In December 1840 it was performed at the reburial of Napoleon and in 1849 at Chopin's funeral. And so it continued to establish itself as one of the very great Masses and choral works. In modern times the Requiem was performed in 1964 as the Memorial Mass for President Kennedy. In 1994 Zubin Mehta conducted Sarajevo Philharmonic in the ruins of Sarajevo to mark the end of the Siege of Sarajevo and the ending of the Bosnian/Serb conflict. In 1999 Claudio Abbado conducted the Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic in Salzburg on the 10th anniversary of the death of Herbert von Karajan and, in churches and concert halls throughout Austria (and many other places), it is common for the Requiem to be performed each December to commemorate Mozart’s untimely death on December 5th.
Some of the original score of the Requiem. The bottom five staves are in the hand of Mozart himself. The top half is the work of Süssmayr. When the whole Requiem was finished Süssmayr made a copy all in his own hand, imitating Mozart's so that it would look a unified piece of work. Mozart's signature was the forged by Constanze. The rest is history so to speak!

Whatever its history, whatever its strange convoluted tale and mythology, whatever the involvement of Süssmayr, it cannot be denied that the work stands at the very epicentre of western music. It is filled with exquisite and achingly beautiful sections but at the same time its raw power, majesty, drama  and mystery can make both performer and listener sit back in awe and wonder. It is not only much loved and popular but is one of the world’s defining musical works and one which has not only has stood the test of time but becomes more loved, more wondered at and more performed as each year passes.

As I stood in the tourist crowds in St Stephen’s Cathedral the mighty music of the Requiem rang in my brain and a few minutes later, when Pat and I spent a wonderful hour in Mozart’s house in the shadow of St Stephen’s, we listened through headphones to it’s great and powerful message.  And as we walked through the rooms looking at the artefacts of his life in the place where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, had given the world some of its very greatest music, other works by this young but blighted genius flooded through the building: the magically haunting Queen of the Night’s Aria from The Magic Flute, the achingly beautiful Dove Sono  from The Marriage of Figaro,  Soave sia il Vento from Cosi fan Tutti and many others. We stopped at one stage – mesmerised by the wonders of modern technology. In front of us were an array of small screens, each showing an extract from one of the great Mozart operas. At first we were a little confused but then realised that each screen related to one of the world’s great opera houses: La Scala, Covent Garden, La Fenici, the Vienna Staatoper, the New York Met, the Bolshoi.....and others – and through the sound system came the singing, synched to the screens. So one could see different productions of the same opera, the same aria as performed at each of these great musical palaces all at the same time. Press the button and immediately a different opera and aria came up on all of the screens! What would Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have thought of that? – in the end his quest for fame has succeeded. This creative musical genius would, I am sure, have loved it. As I watched the flickering screens - Mozart's great music coming from every part of the world I wondered what he would have thought of it and of my CD of Solti conducting the Requiem; a little silver disc that I can slip in my pocket (or even now put on a tiny memory stick) enabling me if I wish to carry around with me so much of his great music. As I sit writing this blog at the side of me Mozart is playing – my complete Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Haydn,..............and many, many more great classical works – several days non-stop of the greatest music to pour from the minds of the greatest composers - all stored on a memory chip smaller than the nail on my finger. Yes, Mozart would, I think, have been in awe to think that his scribblings, his genius and his hard work over those few short years have become such a worldwide phenomena. Fame indeed - at last.
A contemporary likeness (so we are told) - and a sight one sees 
replicated throughout Salzburg & Vienna.

And yet, the ultimate irony is that when this supreme musician died his body was, as was the custom of the time in Vienna for those not of aristocratic pedigree, not buried in some magnificent tomb with due honour and recognition but simply put in an unmarked common grave. Like his Requiem and like that mighty St Stephen's Cathedral Mozart’s end forcibly reminds us of the smallness, the insignificance and the transience of mankind in the great scheme of things - and of the eternity that awaits us all when the gossamer thread upon which we all hang finally snaps
                              
As we stood in St Stephen's brooding and awe inspiring vastness and the mighty and haunting music of the Requiem filled my mind I knew that we were almost touching the past as we trod in the footsteps of musical giants.

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