Mozart died while composing his Requiem mass, which was commissioned anonymously by a nobleman who wished to pass the work off as his own. The composer's cash-strapped widow Constanze put pressure on several of the composer's associates to finish it up -- and that's where the musicological mystery tour begins. About half the work was finished or sketched out in Mozart's hand. The rest he discussed to some unknown degree with his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who ended up entrusted with the task after another composer, Joseph Eybler, bowed out. Süssmayr, following the procedure of other requiem masses and what are thought to have been Mozart's own wishes, rounded out the work with a repetition of Mozart's music for the Kyrie, fitting it to the Lux aeterna text of the Communion of the mass.
Various commentators have felt that the conclusion is a bit of a letdown, but then the whole second half of the mass, being something less than Mozart and something more than Süssmayr, is the same way. For whatever reason, Austrian composer Sigismund Neukomm von Ritter wrote a new finale, a setting of the "Libera me" text, during a visit to Brazil in 1819. It is this version that is offered here by French historical-performance specialist
Jean-Claude Malgoire,
La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy, and the Kantorei Saarlouis choir.
The new "Libera me" isn't likely to come into general circulation, but it does, as
Malgoire and other commentators in the booklet contend, tell us a few things about Mozart's Requiem. Neukomm was, like Mozart, a Freemason, and he matched closely the Requiem's rather odd brass- and wind-heavy orchestration, which had links to the other Masonic works (including Die Zauberflöte) from the end of Mozart's life.
Malgoire stresses this aspect of the work, keeping his complement of strings small and sonically in the background. Yet the oddest thing about the Neukomm "Libera me" is that, for all the care Neukomm took in thinking about Mozart's intentions; it doesn't quite feel of a piece with the existing music by Mozart. Süssmayr was no Mozart, and he may not even have been a Neukomm. But he soaked up Mozart's ideas in the last days of his life, and the Requiem as we have known it until now reflects that. This disc will certainly appeal to those interested in the Requiem and its reception. But it does not live up to the claim made on the packaging: that "Mozart's final work at last yields up the secret of its conclusion."