REQUIEM AETERNAM, Kochel 626 Version

[dulcinea]

Happy New Year!
In a performance of K626 that I attended, the public were so delighted by the trombone obbligato of TUBA MIRUM that they broke protocol and applauded as enthusiastically as if the trombonist were Tommy Dorsey or Glenn Miller.
Have you ever witnessed similar instances of the public's enthusiasm overriding performance etiquette?

[John F]

That's remarkable! The only performances I've attended when audience applause has actually interrupted the music so early in a movement has been ballet, when a dancer has completed a difficult move or is actually doing it. Kind of like the circus. Of course audiences often applaud at the end of an act before the music concludes, as the curtain falls, but that's not like what you describe.

However, way back when, audiences applauded whenever they liked what they had just heard. The most famous example is the last movement of Mozart's Symphony #31, which he composed for Paris. He noticed that the Parisian audience liked a particular orchestral effect (it's called the premier coup d'archet) and applauded it, so he wrote the effect into his music in order to make the audience applaud - and he succeeded!

He then wrote home to his father that this was silly of the Parisians, but what he didn't say in that letter was that he needed a success if he was to find a job in Paris (in that he failed), and he wasn't above playing giving the audience what it liked even if he himself wasn't so keen for it.

This also tells us that 18th century audiences, at least in Paris, didn't hesitate to applaud during the music when they felt like it - like the audience at the performance you attended. Of course the Requiem is an 18th century work but it was also music for a church service - secular concert performances came much later - and the congregation would not applaud the music during celebration of a mass.

[Lance]

This reminds me of something said by among my most favourite pianists, Artur Rubinstein. As I recall it was a New York Times article wherein he said people should applaud any time they feel like it if they are so moved during a performance. At a concert he gave the next day or so, people applauded between movements and he looked at them with disdain!

[barney]

Delightful stories, thank you John and Lance. I can't believe Rubinstein actually said that!

[Belle]

Rubinstein also said "in most countries when people have the flu they go to the doctor; here they come to my concerts"!!

[John F]

This reminds me of something said by among my most favourite pianists, Artur Rubinstein. As I recall it was a New York Times article wherein he said people should applaud any time they feel like it if they are so moved during a performance. At a concert he gave the next day or so, people applauded between movements and he looked at them with disdain!

That's surprising. On the same subject, after a performance of the Emperor Concerto when the audience didn't applaud the first movement, Rubinstein is said to have complained wistfully that he thought they had made a bit of music there.

[jbuck919]

Oddly, though we can never be sure about this, that movement tends to be high on people's lists of what was completed by Süssmayr. A typical remark is that the trombone part is a bit too, um, enthusiastic.

[John F]

Yes, the trombone solo does go on and on. But the latest scholarship as of 1994, on which Christoph Wolff's book about the Requiem is based, attributes the beginning of the solo to Mozart but its continuation to Süssmayr.

The most crass example is perhaps in the 'Tuba mirum,'.. where Mozart uses the trombone to represent the sound of the last trumpet (bars 1-18). The entry of a string accompaniment in bar 5 is an intelligent and skillfully executed idea (taken from Eybler), but Süssmayr then finds himself obliged to continue the trombone solo from bar 24. Without reflection, he follows Mozart's model (trombone solo), heedless of the change taking place in the character of the music, let alone the nature of the text in the fifth stanza of the Sequence ('Liber scriptus').

Wolff's "Mozart's Requiem," not only a detailed and engrossing study of the music but also including the full score, is well worth having by those who care about this piece. Actually, Wolff provides two scores - one of the Mozart fragment, leaving out whatever he didn't write down himself, and the other of Süssmayr's additions. Published by the University of California Press, in paperback.

Of the several completions of the score by other hands, the most persuasive is Robert Levin's. He says that the Süssmayr completion should be respected except where it is obviously defective or otherwise un-Mozartean, as Süssmayr was Mozart's assistant at the time, may have received some instruction from Mozart on completing the work (there's no evidence to support this), and may have had written sketches to work from that haven't survived. Levin retains the trombone part as we have it to the end of the bass solo, then drops it. From several footnotes in Wolff's book it's clear that he consulted with Levin - both were on the Harvard faculty then. Indeed, he once called Levin "the greatest Mozartean since Mozart," and that's not hype.

Incidentally, I've come across a fine recording of the Requiem (Levin version) that I didn't know, conducted by Charles Mackerras. Here it is:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsp6XQmnb3I

[dulcinea]

At the end of the performance that I attended, six individuals took bows: the conductor, the soprano, the contralto, the tenor, the bass, and the lead trombone, who got a huge helping of applause.