Life of Mozart

PUBLICATION.3Ö7score note for note with his own hand, and wrote on thetitle-page "Opus summum viri summi," expressing no doubtwhatever as to the whole work being that of Mozart.^^ Notcontent with the profits thus accruing from the Requiem,the widow turned her attention towards its publication.The idea occurred to her that a public appeal to the Unknownmight induce him to forego his claim on the composition.^*^The appeal, however, was not made, for the publishers,Breitkopf and Härtel, not conceiving themselves to be boundby the agreement made with Mozart, resolved on bringingout the work from the several transcripts of it which hadfallen into their hands. Desirous, however, that the workshould be produced with all possible correctness, they appliedto the widow for her copy, with which, having no power tostop the publication, she saw no objection to furnishingthem. To their question (prompted by the reports currentas to the authorship of the work) whether the Requiem waswholly and solely composed by Mozart, she answered explicitlyas follows (March 27, 1799) :—As to the Requiem, it is true that I possess the celebrated one, writtenshortly before his death. I know of no Requiem but this, and declare allothers to be spurious.^^ How far it is his own composition—it is so tonear the end— I will inform you when you receive it from me. Thecircumstances were as follows : Seeing his end approaching, he spokewith Herr Süssmayr, the present Imperial Kapellmeister, and requestedhim, if he should die without completing it, to repeat the first fugue in19 Rochlitz, Für Freunde der Tonk., I., p. 25.20 In a letter to Härtel (October 10, 1799) she sends him a draft of such anappeal ": The noble Unknown, who, a few months before Mozart's death,commissioned him to compose a Requiem, not having declared himself duringthe seven years which have elapsed since that time, the widow of the composergratefully accepts this silence as a permission to her to publish the work to herown advantage. At the same time she considers it as safer for herself, andmore in accordance with the sentiments inspired in her by the noble patron ofher late husband, to call upon him to express his wishes on the subject to herwithin three months through the Wiener, Hamburger, or Frankfurter Zeitung,at the expiration of which time she will consider herself justified in publishingthe Requiem among the collected works of her late husband."21The " Requiem Brevis" in D minor (237, Anh., K.), published by Simrock,of Bonn, under Mozart's name, may be at once pronounced spurious, havingneither external nor internal credibility.