The pieces in featured in tonight’s concert come from an astonishing year in which Mozart completed the Piano Concerto in B^b, various sets of dances including the Six German dances, two operas (The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito), a string quintet in E^b, an Adagio for Glass Harmonica, a motet Ave verum corpus, a Clarinet Concerto, and various pieces for his Masonic lodge (‘Crowned Hope’). The one piece he didn’t manage to complete is arguably the best known from this year, the Requiem. It is fairly certain that he began work on it in October, 1791 shortly after he has completed his Clarinet Concerto.

Mozart died aged 35 on 5^th December 1791, and he had been bedridden since around 2O^th November. The fanciful tales that he had been poisoned (by a rival?) emanate from various letters and recollections which surfaced some time after the event, and much more recently from Peter Schaffer’s play Amadeus. Studies published in the journal Musical Times by Dr. P.J. Davies in 1984 point to the fact that Mozart had had a number of streptococcal infections during his life, which had considerably affected his kidney function, and that his final illness was caused a complex of previous health issues allied to contracting a form of rheumatic fever (another streptococcal infection) during an epidemic. It is even suggested that he caught this at a meeting in a (Masonic) lodge meeting in Vienna on 18^th November, which ties in with his becoming bedridden a few days later.

Scholars believe that Mozart was probably working on the Requiem from 8^th October to the 20^th November, during which time he also fitted in composing the Kleine Freymourer-Kantate (Little Freemason Cantata) k.623. We now know that the commission for the Requiem came from a Count Walsegg, who quite probably wanted to pass the work off as his own. The manuscript of the Requiem has only one movement fully scored and written out by Mozart (the first, Requiem Aeternam); the remaining pages are all sketched in ‘short score’ - a reduced version – and these comprise nearly 100 pages and became the basis of the first completion made (or rather, overseen) by his pupil and friend Franz Sussmayr. Sussmayr spent quite a lot of time with Mozart in the second half of 1791; he travelled to Prague with Mozart (and Mozart’s wife, Constanze) late in August for the premiere of La Clemenza di Tito, and he almost certainly wrote the recitatives for the opera which Mozart had started in mid-July. He was therefore very familiar with Mozart’s work, and when Mozart’s widow was looking to have the Requiem completed in January 1792 to give the impression that Mozart himself had completed it (to claim the unpaid fees owing from Count Walsegg) she set up a team of Sussmayr, Joseph Eybler (a friend of both Haydn and Mozart) and a local choirmaster and composer, Frëystadler, to prepare the completed work. As his handwriting was similar to Mozart’s, Sussmayr was the main copyist and he also faked Mozart’s signature on the first page. This is essentially the version that we will perform in the concert.

Mozart’s susceptibility to illness during 1791 cannot have been helped by the extraordinary amount of music he was having to produce. His finances had not been good for some time, and he was forced to seek out the best paid opportunities. One of these was to write dances for the lavish Viennese balls, and Mozart did this as one of the few duties within his contract with the Viennese court. Clearly, there was also money to be made through publication of the dances, and as well as the full orchestra versions, they were also sold as piano arrangements. He was not alone in taking this route – Haydn and Beethoven also provided dances for these events at around the same time. The Six German dances, k.600, are good examples of Mozart’s approach – written for the Viennese court orchestra, they employ the full orchestra (though not, curiously, violas) and despite the metrical similarities (all are minuets with trios) are varied and characterful.

In the spring of 1791, Mozart heard that the Kappellmeister of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Leopold Hoffmann, was very ill. Knowing that this was a very well paid appointment, Mozart wrote to the City Magistrates to request that he could work alongside Hoffmann in an unpaid role, with the clear intent of taking over when the opportunity arose. They warmed to the idea and offered that Mozart would indeed take over in due course; however, in the event Hoffmann recovered and outlived Mozart. Nevertheless, this episode re-awakened Mozart’s interest in church music, and his motet Ave Verum Corpus was written in June to celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi. It was first performed at the parish church in Baden, where Mozart had gone to visit Constanze, who for health reasons had been taking the waters at the spa town. Its simplicity and serenity is characteristic of the approach to church music that Joseph II had encouraged during his reign.

The Magic Flute overture and extracts from La Clemenza di Tito

The first half of our concert is framed by extracts from the two operas that Mozart composed in the summer. The Magic Flute was completed in July, and more or less immediately Mozart set about writing La Clemenza di Tito which he completed with great speed. The two operas could not have been more different – The Magic Flute is a singspiel (effectively a play with musical numbers) whereas La Clemenza di Tito took the form of the old-fashioned opera seria, complete with a central role for a castrato. Written for a popular Viennese theatre group run by Emmanuel Schikanader, The Magic Flute brought fantasy, comedy and high Masonic ideals together in a libretto written by Shikanader and following its premiere on 30^th September it had enjoyed 100 performances by the early months of 1792. La Clemenza di Tito was commissioned to celebrate the coronation of the Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia on 6^th September 1791, with the subject chosen specifically to flatter Leopold as a kind and generous ruler. Succeeding his brother Joseph II early in 1790, Leopold was musically much more musically conservative and the choice of an opera seria by the authorities reflected this. They sought out one of the leading castrati for the role of Sesto, and Sesto’s (male) friend Annio is sung by a soprano (in travesti, a ‘pants’ role). Our two extracts present these two characters, along with a third, Servilia who is Sesto’s sister.

In the duet Ah Perdona, Annio has been despatched by the Emperor Titus to inform Servilia that he wishes her to become his Empress. This is bad news for both Annio and Servilia , as unbeknown to Titus, Annio and Servilia are in love. In the duet they sing of their love for each other and the pain of impending separation. (The good news is that later in the opera Titus hears of their love, and decides that he should marry Vitellia…)

Vitellia, however, is an ambitious and ruthless woman (and daughter of the deposed Emperor Vitello) who is determined to become Empress from the outset. Hearing of Titus’ choice of Servilia, she despatches Sesto to assassinate Titus in revenge. In Parto, parto, Sesto sings of his love for Vitellia and his determination to go and do her bidding. (Spoiler alert: the assassination goes wrong in a case of mistaken identity).

Somewhat in the shadow of the three da Ponte operas and The Magic Flute, the opera is not often heard but contains some memorable music - as we hope these extracts will demonstrate.

The overture to The Magic Flute is a short sonata movement in E^b with a fugue-like Allegro following the Adagio introduction. For Mozart (and others) the choice of this key held Masonic significance (three flats) and twice during the opera we hear three solemn chords. Considered to be sacred in Freemasonry, the number three symbolised the three stages of life: youth, adulthood and old age.

To many of us, it may be shocking that Mozart died when he was 35. However, life expectancy in the late C18th Europe hovered around the 35-40 mark, even though more comfortable social circumstances usually offered a chance of living beyond this. Being from a relatively well-off family should have (statistically) offered Mozart a longer life, but he lived at a time in which hygiene was very basic by modern standards and smallpox, cholera, typhoid, various forms of flu and STDs were pretty common. Childbirth and early childhood were precarious and five of Mozart’s six siblings died in infancy. At the other end of the scale, Mozart’s great friend and mentor Josef Haydn was born 24 years before him and outlived him by a further 17 years.

Stephen Pratt - March 2025