MOZART_Süßmayr – Requiem K.626 (1791) – special complete version of David Johnstone for FOUR CELLOS

Other Identification:
The Requiem in D minor, K. 626, is a Requiem Mass by Wolfgang Amadé/Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). It has been a staple of the choral repertoire since its first publication in July 1800. Yet, when Mozart died on 5th December 1791, some of the work was unfinished. Constanze, the composer’s wife, desperately needed the remainder of the commission fee, so she decided to have the work revised/completed by another composer, someone from Mozart’s close circle of students and friends and pass it off as entirely by Mozart. The version widely performed and recorded today is the work of Franz Xaver Süßmayr, who assisted Mozart in the final months of his life.

A completed version dated 1792 by Süßmayr was indeed delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had commissioned the piece for a requiem service on 14th February 1792 to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of his wife Anna at the age of 20 on 14th February 1791.

However doubtful this Mozart- Süßmayr ‘collaboration’ might seem, the amazing result is is not only a totally unified work musically, but one of the greatest choral pieces ever written! It offers a sublime beauty and dignity that leaves audiences profoundly moved and memorably uplifted through its approximately 55 minutes of duration. It should be fair to point out that in addition to the ‘normal’ Süssmayr version, a number of alternative completions have been developed by composers and musicologists in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Mozart’s widow Constanze was responsible for a number of stories, now legends, surrounding the composition of the work, including the claims that Mozart received the commission from a mysterious messenger who did not reveal the commissioner’s identity, or that Mozart came to believe that he was writing the Requiem for his own funeral.