Tonight my thoughts are with Mozart. I have been reading a lot of specualative crap about the Requiem K. 626 and the manifold attempts to "Mozartize" the sections that Sussmayr is believed to have completed. Conductors have such egos... the Requiem isn't good enough for them as it is, so they feel the need to meddle with it. Anyway there are some computer programmers in Holland who have devloped a program that will seperate the Sussmayer out from Mozart by comparing the digital thumbprint of each composer through feeding other of their works into a computer program. I certainly hope all of the music in the Requiem comes out on Mozart's side - in fact that is what I expect.
Sussmayr, I feel, knew when to be Mozart and when to be Sussmayr. Did you know that all of the recitatives in La Clemenza di Tito, K. 621 were composed by Sussmayr? The reason for that was to take a little of the pressure off Mozart, namely the gruntwork of writing recitatives. There is this myth that Mozart never made sketches, that everything just came together in his head at once and it was all he could do to pace himself to write it all down. I think that may have been true about the fripperies that the Viennese court expected of him, but not so works that he really cared about. I don't see any evidence that he composed anything at all in the six months that followed his father's death. The earliest work following that event is K. 525 Eine Kliene Nachtmusik, about which scholars say "nothing is known of the occasion it was written for". Indeed, I don't think it was written for any occasion at all, it was just a way for Mozart to get back on his feet after the most devatating blow in his life had happened. He wrote it to please himself, and that's why it's such a GREAT work. If you compare the types of works he was making and their quantity (right around a hundred pieces) in the years 1788 to 1791 to another three years in his life (or even just one year, 1782) you'll note that he was spending more time on his music, and undertaking more personal, ambitious kinds of statements.
I am completely satisfied with Sussmayr's realization of Mozart's Requiem. So it's not perfect, it has flaws. For me that makes it even more precious. Certainly Sussmayr was the only person who knew from Mozart himself where the work was going. According to Constanze Mozart, her husband's last words as he drifted into his final, feverish unconciousness were "Oh dear, I do not think I will be able to finish my Requiem..." That's reason enough to leave it alone.
By comparison it is interesting to note that no one complains about the posthumous completion of Schoenberg's unfinished cantata Die Jakobsleiter. In school I was told it would "never appear", but lo and behold it was published even before I finished my studies. No one in the world has stepped forward to say "this is unacceptable. Schoenberg would never have completed the work this way." In fact, no one has stepped forward to say that Die Jakobsleiter is even "good". One writer I read today referred to it as "ugly and overblown". I like that - I will have to use that as a title of one of my own compositions. In fact , I already have something in mind...
Uncle Dave Lewis