Janos Gereben gives us an account of yet another stab at completing
Mozart's Requiem.  As much as I respect Robert Levin, I think it should
still be pointed out that his efforts here, as with Robbins Landon's, Franz
Beyer's and others' are based on speculation.  They have not found even a
32nd-note of new Mozart to add.  (Levin has, by the way, done the same sort
of thing with the wind Sinfonia Concertante: an inspired piece of
speculation.

Instead, they play "let's show how clever we are by dumping on poor old
Suessmayer".

>As Rilling put at the lecture-demo-concert: How could Franz Xavier
>Suessmayr, whose completion of the Requiem the world has been treasuring
>for two centuries, write such glorious music...  and nothing else of his
>own? According to the widow, Constanze (Sally Fields) Mozart, Suessmayr --
>hard as he worked to get the commission payment for the composer's family
>-- just put together what already existed.

Suessmayer did at least write one opera.  He also re-wrote the Rondo to
the so-called First Horn Concerto, the one with only two movements.  Until
relatively recently it was the version we all knew and loved.  Now that
Mozart's original has been discovered, the Suessmayer version has
predictably become uninspired and full of errors.

The traditional version of the Requiem is the one that brought tears to my
eyes when I heard it in St. Stephen's in Vienna, oom-pah accompaniments
and all.  For me it is still an immensely satisfying work in its original
form.

Eric James
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