Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season November-December 2017 | Page 28

MOZART’S REQUIEM
But as he grew older, he turned more to
slower music expressing great intensity
of feeling, such as his Symphony No. 1,
cast in one long Adagio movement. And
his grim-visaged works dealing with the
tragedies of human life were gradually
infiltrated by more joyful pieces, such as
his ecstatic Rapture, heard here in 2014,
and his very lyrical Oboe Concerto,
heard in 2016.
Receiving its World Premiere at
these concerts, Rouse’s Berceuse Infinie
(Infinite Lullaby) falls into the more
lyrical and quiet category represented
so beautifully by the Oboe Concerto.
Commissioned by the BSO, completed
on July 1, 2016 and dedicated to Marin
Alsop, “it took its original inspiration
from Ferruccio Busoni’s remarkable
Berceuse élégiaque, a haunting cradle
song in memory of Busoni’s mother,”
as Rouse explains.
He continues: “My work is intended
as a largely tonal, contemplative piece
lasting about 13 minutes. The ‘rocking
motion’ so typical of the lullaby is
almost always present, and despite a
few isolated more dramatic moments,
Berceuse Infinie is largely introspective
and, I hope, consoling in tone. The
score calls for two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two
horns, two trumpets, three trombones,
harp, celesta, timpani, bass drum,
glockenspiel, tam-tam and strings.”
The BSO
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OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org
From 1986 to 1989, Christopher
Rouse was the BSO’s composer-
in-residence and continued as its
new music advisor until 2000. He
is a graduate of the Gilman School
and Oberlin College and holds a
doctorate from Cornell University. His
numerous awards and honors include
being named as Musical America’s
Composer of the Year in 2009, as well
as the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Music
and the 2002 Grammy® Award for
Best Contemporary Composition.
In addition to his extraordinarily
busy creative career, he is currently a
professor of composition at New York’s
Juilliard School.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns,
two trumpets, three trombones, timpani,
percussion, harp, celesta and strings.
REQUIEM
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756;
died in Vienna, Austria, December 5, 1791
Listening to Mozart’s unfinished
Requiem, one feels with special poignancy
the tragedy of Mozart’s death at age 35
in the prime of his career. With this
work, we are confronted not only with
the question of “what might have been”
in his future creative output had he
lived on, but, very specifically, with what
might have happened in this work had he
survived to complete it.
The writing of the Requiem in D Minor
has been surrounded with myth and
mystery, some of it true, some of it total
fabrication. Yes, there was a mysterious
stranger delivering a commission for
a requiem mass from an anonymous
patron to Mozart in July 1791. The
unknown patron, however, was not a
supernatural being (as Mozart sometimes
seemed to have believed himself as he was
writing the work), nor was he Mozart’s
rival Antonio Salieri (as Peter Shaffer
postulated in his fictional play Amadeus).
He was Count Franz Walsegg-Stuppach,
a wealthy musical amateur who liked to
commission works by leading composers
for his chamber ensemble and then try to
pass them off as his own compositions. In
February 1791, Count Walsegg had lost his
young wife, Anna, and he anonymously
commissioned a requiem from Mozart as a
memorial to her.
Although he was still in good health
during the summer of 1791, Mozart seems
to have reacted to this commission as a
harbinger of his own death. While working
on it, he was often depressed and told his
wife, Constanze, that he felt that he was
writing his own requiem. He also found
plenty of excuses to set the work aside:
first to fulfill a commission from Prague
for the opera La Clemenza di Tito, then
to write the great Clarinet Concerto for
his friend Anton Stadler, next to put the
finishing touches — including the famous
overture — on his comic opera The Magic
Flute and finally, in the midst of writing
the Requiem, to write and premiere
the Kleine Freymaurer Kantate, K. 623.
Mozart scholar H. C. Robbins Landon
estimates that Mozart only managed to
work intermittently on the Requiem from
October 8 to November 20, when he took
to his bed with his fatal illness.
As he lay dying, Mozart was still
struggling to complete the work, but he
was not dictating it to Salieri, à la the film
Amadeus. Instead, he was working closely
with his two students Joseph Eybler and
Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Mozart managed