Süssmayr's appointed task, therefore, was the composition "from his own head" (ganz neu) of the concluding part of the Lacrimosa, the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei; only "in order to give the work more unity" he repeated the fugue of the Kyrie with the words "cum sanctis." The Requiem thus completed—the two first movements in Mozart's handwriting, the remainder in Süssmayr's—was delivered over to the owner.[ 7 ] If it was intended that the latter should accept the whole composition as by Mozart, appearances were certainly not calculated to undeceive him. The score in question passed in 1838 into the possession of the Imperial Library.[ 8 ] The first impression of every one who sees it, and who is familiar with Mozart's handwriting, must be that the whole of it was written by him, and that the autograph of Mozart's Requiem in its entirety is before him.[ 9 ] Closer examination and comparison raise suspicion, many discrepancies are discovered, although perhaps only trifling ones, and the fact must be borne in mind that, to a question addressed to her on the subject, Mozart's widow answered (February 10, 1839) that a full score of the Requiem in Mozart's handwriting could not exist, since it was finished not by him but by Süssmayr.
A comparison of the manuscript with several scores undoubtedly written by Süssmayr—a terzet and bass air, composed by him in 1793 for insertion in the "Serva Padrona"—solved the riddle. It was the same handwriting, closely resembling that of Mozart, with the same deviations from it which had been pointed out in the Requiem. There could SÜSSMAYR'S WORK. no longer be any doubt that Süssmayr had written the score from the Dies iræ—the paging begins afresh, starting with page 1 at the Sanctus. In one place the transcriber betrays himself by a mistake. The closing bars of the Tuba mirum are noted for the stringed instruments by Mozart, as follows:—[See Page Image]
In his copy Süssmayr has omitted the octave passage for the violins, and the characteristic instrumentation for the violas, and has filled up the omission in a way which is certainly no improvement on the original.[ 10 ]
Süssmayr, it is clear, had so modelled his handwriting on that of Mozart that the two could only be distinguished by trifling idiosyncrasies. There are other instances of the same kind—Joh. Seb. Bach's second wife, for instance, writing a hand which only an expert could distinguish from her husband's, and Joachim's manuscript being, at one time at least, almost identical with Mendelssohn's. As far as the score of the Requiem was concerned, the wish to persuade the owner of the Requiem that he was possessed of a composition exclusively by Mozart may have come to the aid of THE REQUIEM. custom and natural aptitude. There is no doubt that Count Walsegg accepted the score as having been completed and written by Mozart at least as far as the Sanctus.[ 11 ] Whether this was expressly stated, or merely taken for granted by him, does not appear, and the fact that the composition had been ordered by him with a view to a deception of another kind is a curious coincidence, but does not make the case any the better.
Under these circumstances it was to the interest of the widow to maintain that the Requiem had been completed by Mozart. This explains the assertion of Rochlitz[ 12 ] (who according to his own account had questioned Mozart's widow at Leipzig in 1796 concerning the whole story of the Requiem) that Mozart had completed the Requiem before his death.[ 13 ] But a secret known to so many could hardly be long kept. The widow had retained a copy of the work, and a performance of it took place soon after in Jahn's Hall at Vienna, the hall being densely crowded. It was pretty well known to the performers what portions were by Mozart and what by Süssmayr,[ 14 ] and the knowledge was not slow to spread. It reached Munich[ 15 ] and Prague, where at the first performance of the Requiem no secret was made of the fact that the Sanctus was composed by Süssmayr.[ 16 ] The widow sold manuscript copies of the Requiem to various noblemen,[ 17 ] and allowed others to make copies of it;[ 18 ] Hiller copied the PUBLICATION. score note for note with his own hand, and wrote on the title-page "Opus,summum viri summi," expressing no doubt whatever as to the whole work being that of Mozart.[ 19 ] Not content with the profits thus accruing from the Requiem, the widow turned her attention towards its publication. The idea occurred to her that a public appeal to the Unknown might induce him to forego his claim on the composition.[ 20 ] The appeal, however, was not made, for the publishers, Breitkopf and Hàrtel, not conceiving themselves to be bound by the agreement made with Mozart, resolved on bringing out the work from the several transcripts of it which had fallen into their hands. Desirous, however, that the work should be produced with all possible correctness, they applied to the widow for her copy, with which, having no power to stop the publication, she saw no objection to furnishing them. To their question (prompted by the reports current as to the authorship of the work) whether the Requiem was wholly and solely composed by Mozart, she answered explicitly as follows (March 27, 1799):—
As to the Requiem, it is true that I possess the celebrated one, written shortly before his death. I know of no Requiem but this, and declare all others to be spurious.[ 21 ] How far it is his own composition—it is so to near the end—I will inform you when you receive it from me. The circumstances were as follows: Seeing his end approaching, he spoke with Herr Süssmayr, the present Imperial Kapellmeister, and requested him, if he should die without completing it, to repeat the first fugue in THE REQUIEM. the last part, as is customary; and told him also how he should develop the conclusion, of which the principal subjects were here and there already carried out in some of the parts. And this Herr Süssmayr actually did.
On being pressed for further information she referred the publishers to Süssmayr himself, who answered in the letter already mentioned (February 8, 1800). He nowhere asserts having received a decided commission from Mozart, nor does he mention the concluding fugue, so that it is plain that the widow turned her not very clear recollection of the transaction as far as possible in favour of the integrity of the Requiem. Count Walsegg, who had already given himself out as the composer of the Requiem, must have felt considerable annoyance at its wide dissemination as Mozart's work; but as yet he had made no sign. When however, in 1799, Breitkopf and Hàrtel announced the publication of the Requiem from the manuscript in the possession of Mozart's widow, he thought it time to put forward his claim. He sent his own copy of the score to his advocate, Dr. Sortschan, at Vienna, and through him demanded explanation and compensation from the widow. Stadler and Nissen negotiated with the advocate in her name. Stadler pointed out which parts had Mozart and which Süssmayr for their author, and the advocate wrote down all that he said for the information of the Count, to whom he returned his score.[ 23 ] As to compensation, the widow wrote to Hàrtel (January 30, 1800) that the Count had demanded the restitution of fifty ducats, but that he would perhaps be satisfied with receiving a number of copies of the work. Nissen at length induced the Count "with much difficulty and after many threats" to accept as payment transcripts of several unpublished compositions by Mozart,[ 24 ] and even to allow the widow to revise the printed score by a comparison of it with his own.[ 25 ]
As the result of this unsatisfactory transaction to all concerned in it, we may conclude that the Requiem and Kyrie are the work of Mozart as we have them, that the movements from the Dies iræ to the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa, also the Domine Jesu and Hostias, were finished by Mozart in the voice part and the bass, and that the principal points of the instrumentation were also indicated by him, leaving only the details to be elaborated. This, however, is not by any means so easy and purely mechanical an undertaking as has been supposed, and Mozart's verbal suggestions must not be underrated. As regards the last three numbers, Süssmayr's statement that they had been "composed (verfertigt) entirely afresh" by him offers no decided testimony on the point. Stadler's account[ 26 ] ("the widow told me that after Mozart's death a few scraps of paper with music on them had been found on his writing-desk, and had been handed over to Herr Süssmayr; what they contained, or what use Süssmayr made of them, I do not know") admits the possibility, but only the possibility, that these scraps were sketches for the last movements.[ 27 ] The repeatedly expressed doubt as to whether "these flowers really grew in Süssmayr's garden" can only be supported upon internal evidence.
The serious spirit in which Mozart undertook the composition of his Requiem, the intensity of his absorption in it, and the artistic labour which he bestowed upon it, are best evidenced by the work itself.[ 28 ] It is remarkable that towards the close of his life, when increasing illness disposed his mind to serious reflection, his musical labours should have been calculated to turn his thoughts upon death and the grave. On the one hand his views as a Freemason, which were both earnest and sincere, found their expression in the "Zauberflote"; and, on the other, his religious convictions THE REQUIEM. asserted for the last time in the Requiem the sway over his mind and conscience which they had never lost.[ 29 ] The two sets of mental activities thus roused found their common centre in Mozart's mind, and impelled him to the production of his most powerful and most important works. The similarity of thought and tendency displayed in the Requiem and the "Zauberflöte" is observable even in the combinations of external means in corresponding parts of the two works. The combination of basset-horns, bassoons, and trombones, and here and there of trumpets and drums, with the stringed instruments, which gave so singular an expression of earnest solemnity to the tone-colouring of the "Zauberflöte," is made use of again in the Requiem.
