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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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The end of a wonderful Mozart evening in the glorious Mirabelle Palace
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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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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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!
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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.
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A contemporary likeness (so we are told) - and a sight one sees
replicated throughout Salzburg & Vienna.
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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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