{"id":2347,"date":"2020-02-12T20:59:41","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T01:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/?p=2347"},"modified":"2021-03-04T11:55:38","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T16:55:38","slug":"arachnophonia-w-a-mozart-requiem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/2020\/02\/arachnophonia-w-a-mozart-requiem\/","title":{"rendered":"Arachnophonia: W.A. Mozart “Requiem”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong> Arachnophonia<\/a> is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library<\/a>\u2018s collection.<\/p>\n

All links included in these posts will take you to either the library catalog record for the item in question<\/a> or to additional relevant<\/a> information from<\/a> around the web<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s installment of Arachnophonia<\/a> is by student worker Emma R. (class of 2021) and features a study score edition of Mozart’s Requiem<\/strong><\/a>. Thanks, Emma!<\/em><\/p>\n

Mozart’s Requiem<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Mozart<\/p>\n

What does it mean to compose a piece of music? Is it writing the notes on the page? Is it dictating the general musical idea? Writing the lyrics? What about the problem of orchestrations? If the composition is in the musical idea, can we know what a composer intended the piece to sound like? These kinds of questions can apply to many pieces by composers who do not work completely alone – both contemporary and long-dead. However, when considering a piece such as Mozart\u2019s Requiem<\/em><\/a>, these questions clearly take on greater than typical importance. As is commonly known, Mozart\u2019s Requiem<\/em><\/a> was left unfinished at the time of the composer\u2019s death \u2013 a tale highly dramatized throughout the centuries since. But dramatization aside, this leaves serious questions for modern historically aware performers and listeners \u2013 questions which are not present when considering most other works. Who really wrote what parts of the Requiem? What did Mozart imagine when he conceived of the work?<\/p>\n

Due to the unfinished nature of the work, the autograph does not contain all the answers. Portions of the autograph \u2013 the original handwritten version of the piece \u2013 are in Mozart\u2019s hand and other portions are not. Significant portions were not completed at all. Orchestrations and \u2013 some scholars argue \u2013 entire sections, such as a hypothesized intended fugue \u2013 are missing. This doesn\u2019t even begin to consider the lack of answers to many performance questions which impact the sound of the piece \u2013 articulation markings, dynamics, tempos, and more. <\/p>\n

\"\"

1st page of Mozart’s autograph manuscript of the Requiem
Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=853665<\/p><\/div>\n

Currently, the version completed by Mozart\u2019s student S\u00fc\u00dfmayr<\/a> is considered somewhat the standard. However, this is still a decision that must be made prior to every performance of the work, as other versions \u2013 completed by Mozart scholars \u2013 do exist. I myself am not informed enough about Mozart\u2019s style nor his compositional process to make normative statements about the potential distance between the composer\u2019s likeliest intentions and the accepted completed version today, however scholars such as Friedrich Blume<\/a> and Nathan Broder<\/a> have. In their article, \u201cRequiem but No Peace<\/a>,\u201d these scholars argue, for example, \u201cthat flutes, oboes, clarinets, and horns are wholly absent in the complete Requiem is entirely unMozartean and must weaken S\u00fcssmeyer\u2019s (sic) credit\u2026\u201d (Blume and Broder 1961, 161). Furthermore, these authors argue that since Mozart tended to compose orchestrations in three rounds \u2013 the above mentioned winds in the last round \u2013 that the lack of these instruments is more likely due to the unfortunate death of the composer than due to his intentions to leave them out (160).<\/p>\n

Can we really say that the Requiem as we hear it performed \u2013 perhaps Mozart\u2019s most well-known work today is really written by Mozart? Is the Requiem we know actually what the Mozart Requiem would have sounded like had the composer lived long enough to see it completed? <\/p>\n

This study score<\/a> at the Music Library shows all parts of the accepted S\u00fc\u00dfmayr completion \u2013 including markings which denote portions from the manuscript judged to be in Mozart\u2019s vs S\u00fc\u00dfmayr\u2019s handwriting. (It\u2019s a miniature score<\/a> \u2013 so it isn\u2019t large and bulky). Take a listen and read along. No matter who wrote it, it really is a marvelous work. <\/p>\n

\"Croce-Mozart-Detail\"

Detail of a portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Johann Nepomuk della Croce – Unknown, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=449108<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library\u2018s collection. All links included in these posts will take you to either the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61217,15223,15236],"tags":[61217,120704,84613,162483,120709,120707,120702,37996,120708,92834,76140,92914,37978,35898,120703,120710,120706,120700,120701],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arachnophonia","category-collection","category-guest-post","tag-arachnophonia","tag-authorship","tag-composition","tag-emma-r","tag-franz-xaver-susmayr","tag-historical-performance","tag-miniature-score","tag-mozart","tag-music-scores","tag-musicology","tag-requiem","tag-score","tag-student-workers","tag-students","tag-study-score","tag-susmayr","tag-unfinished-works","tag-w-a-mozart","tag-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgMV3E-BR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/parsons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}