Ever the optimist, I recently tuned on my TV to a performance of Mozart’s last work. The omens were bad from the start: the recording was made in the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I quite like some of Gaudí’s whimsical architecture, but for his grotesque, bloated church he invented a new style altogether. It has become the biggest TikTok attraction in Europe; the hordes crowd in, like an expanded version of a long line in front of a pop-up pizza joint that an “influencer” recommended yesterday. Measures have been taken to limit the tourism that has rendered one of the Spain’s loveliest towns a hellscape. What splendid sources of better inspiration lay ready for Gaudí, even in his native Catalunya!
The performance was commensurate. It seemed as though the conductor, his arms flapping about constantly like an old wood-and-string Jumping Jack, was interpreting a translation from Latin and Greek produced by a hallucinating ChatGPT.
Requiem aeternam…give them eternal unrest;
Kyrie eleison…turn on the lights, NOW! ;
Dies irae…day of frenzy;
Rex…tyrannosaurus;
Confutatis maledictis…accursed confusion;
Lacrymosa…Ländler.
False “passion” and “excitement” one again trumped gravitas, respect for the true purpose of a masterpiece, and elemental understanding of musical rhetoric.
I am particularly sensitive about Mozart’s last work because of an incident I would like to recount. Around 1980, when I was still harpsichordist of The Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the ensemble was hired to accompany the cute American trumpeter du jour in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, probably the most storied and glamorous classical concert venue in the world. Carnegie Hall is a cramped old dump by comparison. After the morning rehearsal I was strolling the streets with a colleague. We passed the Albertina, where the music collection of the National Library was held at that time. For some reason I boasted that I could get us a look at the manuscript of the Requiem. My companion offered a wager that I couldn’t, at long odds, which I felt honor-bound to accept.
You didn’t need a reader card in those innocent days, only a passport for ID. I filled out a request slip after consulting the card catalog (a lost, ancient ritual) and presented it to the librarian on desk duty. She gasped audibly, looked us over, asked us to wait a moment, and disappeared into an inner sanctum. She returned with what looked like bad news: a starchy, elderly Oberbibliothekarin who came out glaring at us as if we were a couple of Balkan thieves. She informed us that it would not be possible to see the original for obvious reasons, but that if we liked, she had a facsimile she could show us. My heart sank, but I thought it would be churlish to refuse the offer. I accepted with all the deference and gratitude I could muster. We took seats at a work table and waited.
Five minutes went by, then fifteen. After a half an hour we were thinking of leaving when gnädige Frau walked in, reverently carrying wooden box clad in red Morocco leather, stamped Mozart’s Requiem in gold. She set it down in our work space, and whispered that the facsimile could unfortunately not be located, and if we would like to see the original instead?
We would.
The volume of the “working score” –– not the fraudulent completion by Eybler and Süssmayr, made in cahoots with the widow and delivered to Count Waldegg –– was placed on a felt-covered wedge and opened to the Introitus. There, in the little man’s precise handwriting, was the orchestration, still complete at that point; the violins and violas in staccato after-beats, the organ tasto solo, the basset horns and bassoons weaving their threnody.
Slowly turning the leaves we eventually reached the last page Mozart ever wrote, the terrifying, rising chromatic line of the Lacrimosa on the text Judicandus homo reus. He died shortly afterwards of his recurring childhood rheumatic fever. Did fear of Judgement Day, the dies irae, hasten his end? We are told that on his deathbed friends sang parts of the work with the composer taking the alto line, but that he broke down at Lacrimosa. Apocryphal?…well, maybe so. True story: I broke down and had to lean back to avoid staining the page with tears.
Eybler, to his credit, circled his additions to this sacred document in pencil, and left a note in the score to that effect.
Heiligabend 2025
|