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

Bauman, it is “unworthy of Mozart,” enacting a “constricted crisscrossing of the voices as
they slowly slide in a huddled clump from one plodding dotted half note to the next...”. 54
Levin turns this weakness into a virtue, in which the voice crossings are prescriptive of an
“intricate, ‘difficult’ counterpoint”. 55 However one considers the sketch, the awkward
diminished-fifth leap in b. 7 and Mozart’s evident difficulty in devising a soprano part that
would fit the already crowded texture in b. 14-16 reveal this to be a fugue at the most
preliminary, even exploratory stage of composition. 56
Given the confidence and fluency of Mozart’s autograph notation, it is practically
impossible on diplomatic evidence alone to determine when the composer was forced to give
up work on the Requiem. The matter of Mozart’s final days is mostly beyond the scope of
this study, but is worth considering the question of his religious beliefs at this most
fundamental of junctures. According to Sophie Haibel’s celebrated account,
...die arme Schwester [Constanze] ging mir nach und bat mich um Gottes willen zu denen
geistlichen bey St. Peter zu gehen, und Geistlichen zu bitten, Er mögte komen so wie Von
Ungefehr, dis dat ich auch allein |: Sant peters wollte ich schreiben :| Selbe weigerten sich Lange,
und ich hätte Vile Mihe einen solgen Geistligen Unmenschen dazu zubewegen... 57
Mozart’s residence was in fact part of the parish of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, so it is not clear
why Constanze wanted her sister to visit St. Peter. Sophie had originally written “zu denen
Michaeler zu gehen” in place of “zu denen geistlichen bey St. Peter zu gehen”, requiring her
54 Thomas Bauman, “Requiem, but No Piece,” 19th Century Music 15 (1991): 160.
55 Robert Levin, ed., Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem KV 626...Ergänzt und Herausgegeben von Robert D.
Levin (Stuttgart: Carus, 2004), xxv.
56 Unlike Plath, who was unable to decipher the soprano in b. 14-16, Konrad provides a conjectural
transcription of this part in the NMA. Levin replaces it with the less-than-convincing sequence d1-e1-a in b. 16;
Maunder has the soprano fall silent. Levin’s curious assertion that “18th century Amen fugues remain in the
same key” (Requiem, xx) is contradicted by Krottendorfer’s C minor Requiem of 1793 (see above); the Amen
fugue in this work contains complete or partial entries in E-flat major, B-flat major and F minor.
57 MBA, iv.464.
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