Mozart's Requiem in D Minor, "Confutatis Maledictus"

This is the pivotal scene in Milos Forman's Best Picture Film "Amadeus," where Mozart is shown lying on his deathbed, dictating the Confutatis Maledictus of his Requiem in D Minor to Antonio Salieri. Of course, and perhaps unfortunately, the true story of the requiem is far less romantic, and there is no evidence that Salieri had any hand whatsoever in its creation (a myth started by Alexander pushkin in his play "Mozart and Salieri", continued in an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov and Peter Shaffer's play "Amadeus" which was the basis for the movie). However, what IS true, is that Mozart died when only about 37% of what we call "his" Requiem was complete. The 14 movements of any requiem are as follows (including "Mozart's" orchestration in parenthesis):

* I. Introitus: Requiem aeternam (Choir and Soprano solo)
* II. Kyrie eleison (Choir)
* III. Sequentia:
o Dies irae (Choir)
o Tuba mirum (Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass Solo)
o Rex tremendae majestatis (Choir)
o Recordare, Jesu pie (Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass Solo)
o Confutatis maledictis (Choir)
o Lacrimosa dies illa (Choir)
* IV. Offertorium:
o Domine Jesu Christe (Choir with Solo Quartet)
o Versus: Hostias et preces (Choir)
* V. Sanctus:
o Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth (Choir)
o Benedictus (Solo Quartet then Choir)
* VI. Agnus Dei (Choir)
* VII. Communio:
o Lux aeterna (Soprano solo and Choir)

The mystery surrounding the commission of the work, and the subjectivity of Mozart's wife (who still hoped to get the complete payment) allows for differing versions on the extent of Mozart's completion. According to some, Mozart had fully completed and orchestrated only the first movement. From the Kyrie Eleison through the six movements of the Sequentia (including the Confutatis Maledictus) he had completed only the vocal parts and the continuo, with some indication for orchestral parts in certain movements (such as the violin parts in the Confutatis).

This left the last six movements, as well as the Lacrimosa, which only had eight bars at the time of his death, to be completed by other composers. Constanza Mozart, eager to claim the full commission from Count von Walsegg, had composer Joseph von Eybler look at the unfinished work. Eybler worked on the Dies Irae through the Lacrimosa, working from the material left from Mozart, but found it futile to go on where Mozart hadn't left anything. Composer Franz Xaver Süssmeyer, who was perhaps the real man who sat by Mozart's bed and took dictation, completed the Requiem. The Requiem has gone on to extensive fame as a piece Mozart may have known he was writing for his own death. The version completed by Süssmeyer was played at the funerals of both Haydn and Frederick Chopin, masters of composition in their own rights.


But forget the story for a moment, and let's listen to the music. Below is a version of the Confutatis (and Lacrimosa, from 2:17 on, which I won't comment on) done by John Eliot Gardiner conducting the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir. This performance was filmed at the Palau de la Musica Catalana, Barcelona in Dec. 1991. The words for this movement are particularly ominous when considering Mozart was on his deathbed when writing this music:

CONFUTATIS
Confutatis maledictis,
When the damned are cast away
Flammis acribus addictis,
and consigned to the searing flames,
Voca me cum benedictus.
call me to be with the blessed.
Oro supplex et acclinis,
Bowed down in supplication I beseech Thee,
Cor contritum quasi cinis:
my heart as though ground to ashes:
Gere curam mei finis.
Help me in my final hour.




Immediately obvious is the quick tempo. When I first found this version and some others, the opening felt almost too slow to me, especially if you view the entire beginning as one long phrase until the cadence at 00:15. This seems to be the common approach taken by most interpreters, the feeling of a flurry of strings backing a vocal line that slowly climbs in one long phrase through a mini-fugue to the cadence.

Now listen to the opening of the Confutatis performed by Nicholas Harnoncourt with the Concentus Musicus Wien and the Arnold Schönberg Choir (hit the HD button if possible, the sound quality is much improved!).



This is much, much more ominous. The choir is much more punctuated, far less legato than the Gardiner performance, the tempo slower, the sound overall much more raw and gritty. The indications given by the two performances in the very beginning phrase continue throughout both recordings. Gardiner continues to be generally more legato in articulation and uses longer phrasing, while Harnoncourt permits a grittier, but more strictly articulated sound. To me, the difference is one of perspective: Gardiner is doing no wrong by conducting the movement as part of a Requiem, which in the Roman Catholic tradition is designed to "pray for the souls of the departed." But Harnoncourt has taken it a step further and realized that it is Mozart's own soul that the music prays for. Gardiner's performance says, "someone is dying," while Harnoncourt's says, "I am dying."Harnoncourt infuses the music with the drama of the scene from "Amadeus", which may be, remember, rather false.

So then is either correct? Gardiner sounds to me like the diligent student of the classical sound: he carefully stitches together long phrases out of small two bar phrases. His version then is probably much more practical and historically accurate, a sense of distance from the gritty reality of Mozart's impending death, an aloof sense of ceremony that is complicit with the grand dress, balls, wigs, and manner of the times. This is perhaps the music as Mozart would have heard it in his head (for he never heard any part of the Requiem performed).

Harnoncourt then takes a much more emotional approach that in some ways ignores the classical tradition of performance. In his version, phrases are more separated; dynamics and tempo are much more free to follow the emotional quality of the music. For another analogy, Gardiner paints a picture of a man dying, while Harnoncourt tries to put you in his shoes. In terms of liturature, I find Gardiner's to be 3rd person, while Harnoncourt's is 1st person. This kind of abrupt violence, if you will, is not in line with our perception of classical performance of Mozart's work, but brings forth depth of sadness and fear that is glossed over in the Gardiner version.

Then both are correct: Gardiner's in terms of period phrasing and a measure of emotional detachment, and Harnoncourt's in the gritty emotional state of a dying composer. I definitely have a favorite (hint: Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus Wien also has a mind-opening version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons that everyone should hear!), but what do you think?



ClassicalMusicGuide (Youtube user). May 20th 2007. John Eliot Gardiner, English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir.


Florian (Youtube user Nachtmarchen). August 14th 2008. Nicholaus Harnoncourt, Cencentus Musicus Wein, Arnold Schönberg Choir.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_(Mozart)

Pushkin, Alexander. "Mozart and Salieri". Translation by Alan Shaw. 1984.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Is Bach the greatest composer of all time? Many would argue that his masterful command of counterpoint - the sheer fluidity of his music and its ability to manipulate the strict rules of composition at the time - as well as his almost infinite popularity with audiences across many genres well into the 21st century, places him among the best of the best when it comes to compositional influence on western music. As a violinist myself (Bach was famous for being an organist, but his father started him with the violin), Bach was entrenched in every lesson and every performance as I grew up. It started with simple Bach Minuets, the Double Violin Concerto in D, then later the A Minor and E major Concertos and finally, his magnum opus for violin, the collection of Partitas and Sonatas. Bach has always held a special place for me: my parents decided to name me after a friend suggested Wolfgang (as in Amadeus Mozart, and thank god they didn't), but their minds wandered to other composers and they settled on Sebastian, from Johann Sebastian Bach.
So how did a deeply religious organist become not only the name of Baroque music, but perhaps of all "classical" music? An interesting view is raised by neural research scientist Charles M. Limb in a clip from Michael Lawrence’s documentary “The Bach Project” (soon to be released Summer 2009):



Limb believes that Bach’s music came from the same parts of the brain used in improvisation; that the composition process for Bach may have been very improvisatory, and that “his filtering mechanisms were off.” His skill as an organist certainly makes this a possible theory, as well as the way Bach is appreciated as very natural sounding. For example, it is obvious from a first listen that composers like Webern or Schoenberg were not in this improvisatory state of mind during composition. Maybe this is a clue into the universal appeal of Bach: you’d be hard pressed to find someone who really dislikes his music, and most find it to be, at the very least, enjoyable.
The “natural” sound of Bach is well shown in this clip of Bobby McFerrin performing Bach’s Air on the G-string. The original piece of music comes from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D-Major, BWV 1068, which Bach wrote for Prince Leopold of Anhalt, his patron between the years 1717 and 1723. In the late 19th Century, violinist August Wilhelmj transposed the piece to C Major so that he would be able to play the entire melody on only the lowest string of the violin. The strength of Bach’s harmony and melodic work crosses all instrumentation, from Baroque orchestra, to Wilhelmj’s version for violin and piano, to a simple solo voice.



Interestingly, McFerrin’s performance is from a Jazz Summit held in Stuttgart for German public TV channel ZDF. Bach’s influence in Jazz and other popular music is well noted, especially in 1960’s pop music. Bach’s harmonies can be found in The Beatles, the opening to Led Zeppelin’s hit Stairway to Heaven, and perhaps most blatantly in the 1967 hit single “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by the band Procol Harum. The influence of the same “Air” sung by McFerrin is overtly heard in the descending bass line:



So there seems to be an inherent timelessness about Bach’s music: heralded by later composers as a genius (Mozart famously studied his scores, Beethoven as well) he is still topping the charts in 1967 in pop music form. Some might argue that not only has Bach greatly influenced western music, perhaps in some ways, Bach IS western music. In an article written about pianist Glenn Gould (famous for his 1955 recording of Bach’s Gold berg Variations) Robert Everett-Green writes about how the pianist idealized not only Bach, but Schoenberg as well. When Gould organized three concerts after Schoenberg’s death in 1952 (two of Schoenberg’s music, one concert of Bach), he argued that Bach belonged in a new-music series because to him Bach was “essentially a modern musician.” It isn’t so far-fetched: Schoenberg himself suggested that one of Bach’s fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier was the first 12-tone composition.

Then it is impossible to pin-point Bach’s influence on western music, for it is omnipresent. When traces of Bach fugues are found in Schoenberg, when serialist composers write music with numbers and rows but practice retrograde and inversion forms pioneered by Bach, when top-40 hits are based in his harmonies, it is apparent that Bach’s influence cannot be measured. It can only be heard.

Giulio Caccini

The early Italian Baroque composer Giulio Caccini is credited with an influence in the art of singing, leading to the development by other composers of the Operatic form. His greatest known work, Le Nuove Musiche (The New Music, 1602), introduces a collection of twelve madrigals and ten arias based in the Seconda Prattica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seconda_prattica), a term coined by Claudio Monteverdi. In Le Nuove Musiche, Caccini uses an interchangeable term, Stile Modern, to describe the new use of solo lyrical voice over a single, submissive basso continuo part. In an article for Early Music in May of 1984, Tim Carter notes “that the claims for originality and innovation made in Caccini’s title-page… should be read in the context of both his vanity and of his antagonism towards his Florentine colleagues” indicating that with a reading of Vincenzo Giustiniani’s treatise Discorso sopra la Musica (circa 1628), Carter finds that the shift towards solo vocal monodies was a product of five Italian cities over a period from 1570 to 1620, not the single work of Caccini.
But Carter admits that Caccini does introduce a new way to score such monodies, giving very explicit instructions as to ornamentation and embellishments, which were previously at the performer’s discretion. Carter muses: “Caccini thus exhibits a tendency to insist upon his right to exercise greater control over the performance of his music than had previously been the case.” Below is an example of two published versions of Caccini’s monody Ardi, cor mio, the first from an earlier publication where the artist was given free reign to embellish, and the second from his Le Nuove Musiche. Note the very detailed embellishments given for the opening note, which creates a whole new melodic line.




In a different Early Music article, Howard Meyer Brown describes the four things that Caccini thought his Le Nuove Musiche did differently, as enummerated in the preface: firstly, Caccini claimed that he set better poetry than his contemporaries, “[by using] poems either by Ottavio Rinucci or Gabriello Chiabrera” who were contemporary poets in Italy. Secondly, Caccini claimed that his written embellishments matched the ideas of the text “much more skillfully than his contemporaries.” Thirdly, Caccini wrote melodies that were dissonant against the bass line in spots, allowing the bass line to be free from the rhythms of the melody. Lastly, he wrote that his music exemplified a new notation system. He wrote out all the passages, and published the monodies with only melody and basso-continuo – no inner parts.
As a tenor himself, who was able to accompany himself on lute and other instruments, Giulio Caccini was both a performer and a composer as was required to gain employment. His emphasis on composer control over ornamentation and future performance would be a model for compositional technique until the 20th Century, his influence extending far beyond just ornaments in singing.







On the Composition and Performance of Caccini's "Le nuove musiche" (1602)
* Guilio Caccini and Tim Carter
* Early Music, Vol. 12, No. 2 (May, 1984), pp. 208-217
* Published by: Oxford University Press

*
The Geography of Florentine Monody: Caccini at Home and Abroad
* Howard Mayer Brown
* Early Music, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Apr., 1981), pp. 147-168
* Published by: Oxford University Press