MOZART AND THE PRACTICE OF SACRED MUSIC, 1781-91 a ...

and performance are of the greatest interest for all manner of biographical, musical and
psychological interpretations. Since 1991, Mozart’s Requiem has become implicated in the
memorial tradition of that composer through two archival rediscoveries. The scholarly and
popular response to these discoveries closely mirrors the response to the other “big”
rediscovery of 1991, the Lichnowsky lawsuit. 5 In both cases, a considerable amount of
speculative and often misinformed commentary has sprung up to compensate for the small
amount of information that the documents actually provide. The rapid introduction of a
“Requiem for Mozart” into the accepted narrative is due to the potentially sensational
implications of the find: reports that Mozart believed he was writing the Requiem for himself
appeared very early in the biographical tradition, and here, at last, was evidence that the work
may have fulfilled just that function.
Research on the Requiem has been hampered by a number of shortcomings
characteristic of Mozart source studies more generally, among them the absence of a rigorous
method of handwriting identification, a lack of attention to non-autograph sources, and a
dearth of biographical research into the musicians of Mozart’s circle. Important work has
sometimes been overlooked: Nowak and Moseley’s discovery that part of the figuring in the
Kyrie is in the hand of Süssmayr is often ignored in modern studies and editions, for
example. 6 In addition, the work’s notoriety has attracted the attention of amateur researchers
and an ever-growing host of editors who seek to complete it, often leading to the replication
of outdated and speculative theories. 7 In this chapter, I shall concentrate upon the events
5 Walther Brauneis, “"...Wegen Schuldigen 1435 F 32 Xr": Neuer Archivfund zur Finanzmisere Mozarts im
November 1791,” Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum 39 (1991): 159-63.
6 Leopold Nowak, “Wer Hat die Instrumentalstimmen in der Kyrie-Fuge des Requiems von W.A. Mozart
Geschrieben? Ein Vorläufiger Bericht,” in Mozart-Jahrbuch 1975 (Salzburg: 1976), 191n4, Paul Moseley,
“Mozart's Requiem: A Revaluation of the Evidence,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 114 (1989): 210.
7 For studies of several completions of the Requiem, see Matthias Korten, Mozarts Requiem KV 626: Ein
Fragment Wird Ergänzt (Frankfurt and New York: P. Lang, 2000), David A. McConnell, “The Requiem
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