MOZART's REQUIEM AS MOZART WOULD HAVE PLAYED IT [Lacrymosa + Amen fugue]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - REQUIEM in D MINOR (K626)

MOZART's REQUIEM AS MOZART WOULD HAVEPLAYED IT?
After many years' research and an intensive study of the background to the Requiem and the music itself. C. R. F. Maunder completed a new edition of the Requiem that attempts to be more faithful to Mozart's original intentions.

Many agree to say that Süssmayr (He completed the unfinished Requiem - One of Salieri's and Mozart's student - Mozart's copyist on La clemenza di Tito and The Magic Flute) probably have used instructions or sketches from Mozart himself.

In the 1960s, a sketch for an Amen Fugue was discovered, which Maunder believe belongs to the Requiem at the conclusion of the sequence after the Lacrymosa. Some argue that this Amen fugue was not intended for the Requiem, rather that it "may have been for a separate unfinished mass in D minor" to which the Kyrie K. 341 also belonged.

There is, however, compelling evidence placing the Amen Fugue in the Requiem based on current Mozart scholarship. First, the principal subject is the main theme of the Requiem (stated at the beginning, and throughout the work) in strict inversion. Second, it is found on the same page as a sketch for the Rex tremendae (together with a sketch for the overture of his last opera The Magic Flute), and thus surely dates from late 1791. The only place where the word 'Amen' occurs in anything that Mozart wrote in late 1791 is in the sequence of the Requiem. Third, as Levin points out in the foreword to his completion of the Requiem, the addition of the Amen Fugue at the end of the sequence results in an overall design that ends each large section with a fugue.

Since the 1970s several composers and musicologists, dissatisfied with the traditional "Süssmayr" completion, have attempted alternative completions of the Requiem. Here is Maunder's edit for Lacrymosa with the Amen fugue ending III. Sequentia and opening IV. Offertorium.

Westminster Cathedral Boys Choir + Chorus & Orchestra Of The Academy Of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood Cond.