Requiem, but No Peace

1. Requiem, but No Peace The Requiem Controversy 1825–1839

2. "Requiem but No Peace" • Friedrich Blume, The Musical Quarterly 47 (1961): 147–169. • State of scholarship unable to solve the requiem controversy • Polarization of source studies and style criticism

3. The Places • The Persons • The Chronology • The Controversy

4. A. The Places • Austrian Habsburg domains until 1795 • Prague • Vienna • Schloss Stuppach

6. Prague 1783

7. Vienna 1832

8. Schloss Stuppach, lower Austria

9. B. The Persons

10. Gottfried Baron van Swieten, 1733–1803, Dutch-born musical patron. A resident of Vienna, he trained as a diplomat; his main posting was to Berlin (1770–77), where he developed a taste for the music of Handel and J.S. and C. P. E. Bach. Returning to Vienna as Prefect of the Imperial Library, he became a champion of these composers. He led a group of the nobility which sponsored private performances of oratorios, notably Handel's Messiah (arranged by Mozart) and Haydn's The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801) (both to librettos compiled by van Swieten).

11. Abbé Maximilian Stadler (1748–1833), Austrian composer. Ordained at Melk Abbey in 1772, he held ecclesiastical posts in Austria, in 1796 settling in Vienna where he became prominent in musical life and a respected composer. He was music adviser to Mozart's widow Constanze, completed (among other works) a number of Mozart's fragments and sketches and wrote articles defending the authenticity of his Requiem. Vocal music predominates in his own output; he also wrote some instrumental pieces and made arrangements and editions of other composers works. Notable among his writings is the first known history of music in Austria (MS, c 1816–25).

12. 1790 (authenticity?) 1782 Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–91)

13. Georg Nissen (1761–1826), Danish music historian and diplomat. He married Mozart's widow Constanze in 1809, and wrote a biography of Mozart (1828; completed by J. H. Feuerstein) which remains a basic source on the composer.

14. Franz Jakob Freystädtler (1761–1841), Austrian composer. The son of a composer and choirmaster, Freystädtler studied the organ and in 1777 entered the Kapelle of St Peter, Salzburg, where he was organist until September 1782. He then went to Munich as a piano teacher; he ran up debts, as he had done in Salzburg, and was imprisoned. On 13 May 1786 he arrived in Vienna, where he studied counterpoint with Mozart. Mozart employed his pupil as a copyist. During a lawsuit in 1786/7, in which Freystädtler was accused of having stolen a piano, Mozart came to his help by posting bond for him and presenting a written surety. In summer 1787 he was the title hero of Mozart’s canon Lieber Freistädtler, lieber Gaulimauli (k509a). Freystädtler was still active as a piano teacher in 1834. He moved into a pensioners’ home in April 1837 and died there, destitute, in 1841. Whether Freystädtler was involved in completing the orchestration of the ‘Kyrie’ in Mozart’s Requiem should be reexamined by studies of his manuscripts.

15. Konstanze Weber (1762–1842), soprano, wife of W. A. Mozart. Her father, Fridolin Weber, was a music copyist and theater prompter; as a girl Constanze Weber took lessons in voice and clavier. The family moved to Vienna in 1779; two years later Mozart lodged with them, having met them in Mannheim in 1777. (Initially he had courted Constanze’s sister, the soprano Aloysia.) In 1782 Mozart and Constanze were married. After the composer’s death in 1791, Constanze organized concerts of her husband’s music; in 1799 she negotiated a sale of his remaining manuscripts to the publisher André. Later she married Georg Nikolaus Nissen, the Danish diplomat whose Biographie W. A. Mozarts nach Originalbriefen (Leipzig, 1828) she helped complete. They lived first in Copenhagen (from 1810), then in Salzburg (after 1821).

16. Franz Count von Walsegg (1763–1827) “An enthusiastic but dilettante musician […] he would put on private performances of music he claimed as his own when it was in fact the work of other hands.” Countess Anna von Walsegg (1770–91)

17. Joseph Leopold Edler von Eybler (1765–1846), Austrian composer. He studied with Albrechtsberger, 1776–79, and later with his distant cousin Haydn; a friend of Mozart's, he began to complete the Requiem after his death (Süssmayr continued this task). He was choir director at the Carmelite Church in Vienna, 1792–94, and at the Schottenkloster, 1794–1824. He also held court posts, ultimately as court Kapellmeister (1824–33). His works include an opera, oratorios, cantatas, sacred works, instrumental music (notably string quintets) and songs. The early works reflect his respect for Haydn and Mozart

18. Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766–1803), Austrian composer of operas, church music, etc., and conductor. A pupil of Mozart, he made a completion Mozart left unfinished at his death.

19. C. Chronology • Early 1791: The Commission • Late 1791: The Composition • 1791–92: The Completion • 1793–99: First Performances • 1799–1824: First Publications • 1825–29: The Controversy • 1829–39: The Collection of the Manuscripts

20. 1. Early 1791The Commission

22. 2. Late 1791The Composition

24. 3. 1791–92The Completion

26. 4. 1793–99First Performances

28. 5. 1799–1824First Publications

29. full score1800 vocal score1801 parts1812

30. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, founded by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf (1695-1777) in 1719. Gottfried Christoph Härtel (1763–1827) takes over the publishing house in 1795 (since then: " Breitkopf & Härtel"). Close collaboration with Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner and Brahms.

31. Johann Anton André (1775–1842), Offenbach am Main. In Vienna he bought the so-called ‘Mozart-Nachlass’ from the composer’s widow Constanze in 1799 and immediately prepared a provisional manuscript catalogue in 1800. It was Mozart’s estate that gave André his life’s task. He viewed this purely in its editorial aspect, producing from 1800 a veritable plenitude of, for the most part, outstandingly reliable ‘editions following the composer’s original manuscript’; but above all he viewed his task as one of sorting and ordering the manuscripts. André’s original plan, as arranged with Constanze and her husband Nissen as early as 1799–1800, called for a chronological catalogue of works and manuscripts to 1784, to be completed by appending Mozart’s own autograph catalogue of 1784–91. The results of André’s groundwork were later gratefully excerpted and adopted by Otto Jahn and Ludwig von Köchel. Indeed André, if anyone, deserves to be called ‘the father of Mozart research’. He entered the dispute over the authenticity of Mozart’s Requiem, initiated by Gottfried Weber in 1825, with two editions of the work (1827 and 1829) accompanied by detailed commentary.

32. 6. 1825–29The Controversy

34. 7. 1829–39The Collection of the Manuscripts