“Die Ochsen am Berge”: Franz Xaver Süssmayr and the Orchestration of Mozart's Requiem, K. 626

Abstract

Abstract Franz Xaver Süssmayr's letter to the publisher Härtel (1800) about his involvement in completing Mozart's Requiem implicitly and explicitly asks its recipient to take his contribution seriously. Positive appraisals of the entire Requiem in the early decades of the nineteenth century, read alongside this letter, invite reevaluation of Süssmayr's orchestration of the work. Early writings on Mozart's orchestration clarify that Süssmayr's countless musical decisions, large and small, would have carried genuine aesthetic resonance. Süssmayr's view that the winds should function primarily as support for the voices derives from Mozart's orchestration of the Introit, and manifests itself especially in voice doublings and frequent segues between vocal statements. The origin of his shaping of orchestration toward climactic points in the Lacrymosa, Sanctus, and Benedictus, however, is less clearly attributable to Mozart. Süssmayr's entitlement to a vision of his own for the completion of the work, one that may not follow Mozart's intentions in every respect, encourages us to consider putative “transgressions” evidence of active engagement with the work itself, rather than of musical misjudgment. Examining the Sanctus and Benedictus (for which no materials in Mozart's hand are extant) as well as the Sequence, reveals the consistency and coherence of Süssmayr's vision across the Requiem as a whole.