National Philharmonic: Exquiste Expression
National Philharmonic
Saturday, April 2, 2005 at 8:00 PM
Music Center at Strathmore

Overture to The Impresario
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Mozart wrote the Overture in 1786 as the opening movement of the one-act comic opera, Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario). The opera was first performed on February 7, 1786, at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. It was written on commission for a festival honoring the Governor General of the Netherlands. The opera is in the German Singspiel tradition, with close relationships to Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Seraglio (The Abduction from the Seraglio), K. 384.
At 30, Mozart was still struggling to establish a career in Vienna, having been fired in 1781 by his Salzburg employer, Cardinal Colloredo. He eked out his living by teaching, giving concerts, and receiving commissions for composing music for specific functions. He was especially interested in being a successful composer of opera, which would enhance both his reputation and his pocketbook, so the commission for Der Schauspieldirektor was especially welcome.
The libretto, by Gottlieb Stephanie the Younger, who had written the text for The Seraglio four years earlier, is a burlesque in the form of an audition held by a theater director, in which the participants are two sopranos and a tenor. These four constitute the entire singing cast, and the sung portions of the work add up to only about 20 minutes. The action may be summarized as follows:
Herr Buff, the theater director, is auditioning singers for a troupe he is planning to take to Salzburg. The three singers, all with descriptive names suited to this vaudeville treatment arrive, and the audition begins. The first to perform is Mme. Herz (“Heart”), who chooses an arietta with dramatic pretensions. Her rival, Mlle. Silberklang (“Silver Tone”), follows with a display-type rondo, and then the two sopranos light into one another over the issue of who is the superior singer and thus entitled to the higher fee. The tenor, M. Vogelsang (“Birdsong”), tries to act as peacemaker, extolling the importance of harmony among singers, and eventually the impresario himself gets one little number, in which he makes a pun on his name and allows as how he is the head man because he can’t sing at all.

Exsultate, jubilate
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
In Mozart’s day, church music in Salzburg was rooted in the Italian tradition. As early as the 16th century, Prince Bishop Wolf Dietrich employed a number of well-respected Italian musicians. The Italian tradition merged with the German in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the works of such German composers as C. H. von Biber, J.E. Eberlin, C. Adlgasser, Leopold Mozart, and Michael Haydn. They employed the Neapolitan stile moderno, with its opulent sonorities, for occasions of pomp and ceremony, but music for Advent and Lent still used the stile antico, which followed strict contrapuntal norms. This format was codified by J. J. Fux in his treatise on contrapuntal writing, which became the foundation of all musical and compositional training.
The young Mozart was familiar with both of these styles. On his trips to Italy, Mozart eagerly absorbed the stile moderno in his sacred music as a fitting tribute to God. However, its use was tempered by reform. The despotic Bishop Colloredo of Salzburg wanted no part of such “operatic ostentation.” So, while in Salzburg, Mozart composed his sacred music in the stile antico, within the restrictions expected of a Salzburg Konzertmeister.
But the Exsultate, jubilate was from an earlier time. “I am about to write a motet for the primo uomo [the castrato Venanzi Rauzzini, who sang a principal role in his Lucio Silla], which is to be produced at the Theatine Church tomorrow,” Mozart wrote in January 1773. The result was Exsultate, jubilate, an expression of youthful joy. It is a motet for soprano accompanied by strings, oboes, horns, and organ. The work is for all intents and purposes a concerto for voice and orchestra. It begins with an Allegro, then a brief Recitativo and Andante, and closes with the familiar Alleluia.

Requiem
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
The Requiem Mass was commissioned, as the movie Amadeus would have it, by a “mysterious stranger.” This supposed cloudy and sinister aspect is dispelled by the more mundane truth. Franz Walsegg zu Supach was a musical dilettante whose ego drove him to have works composed for him by other composers, claiming them as his own. He then had them performed in his castle or its chapel. Having lost his wife, he decided to memorialize her with a Requiem. He sent his servant Leutgeb (the “mysterious stranger”) to Mozart with a commission for the Requiem in the early fall of 1791.
In late September, Mozart wrote a letter, presumably to Lorenzo da Ponte, his librettist. Ponte wanted Mozart to come with him to London. But Mozart’s letter expressed his anxiety, hinting at a foreknowledge of his impending death.
My Dear Sir, I should like to follow your advice, but how can I do so? My head is confused, I reason with difficulty, and cannot rid my eyes of the image of this stranger (presumably his mysterious patron). I see him continually begging me, soliciting me, and impatiently demanding my work. I go on because composition wearies me less then resting. Besides, I have nothing to fear.

But Mozart’s continuing anxiety is shown in an incident that fall. One fine autumn day, while he was sitting with Constanze in the beautiful Prater, Mozart spoke of his approaching death, and told Constanze that he was composing the Requiem for himself. The myth that Mozart knew he was being poisoned, as projected by the film Amadeus, is completely untrue. Numerous examinations by eminent physicians determined that Mozart died a natural, if horrible, death due to infections of various internal organs leading to kidney dysfunction. Nevertheless, the rumor persisted in Vienna long after Mozart’s death. The fact that Rimsky- Korsakov composed an opera titled Mozart and Salieri shows that even late in the 19th century, Salieri was still cast as the villain.
Mozart sketched about forty pages of the Requiem score, but interrupted it to complete his operas La Clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte. He finished only the opening Requiem and the Kyrie and sketched eight sections for the Dies Irae through the Hostias. He also sketched the voice parts, bass and rough sketches for the instrumentation. He did not even begin the final three movements.
After Mozart’s grisly death, Constanze, who surprisingly turned out to be a shrewd businesswoman, feared that the incomplete manuscript would not receive the full fee, or perhaps none at all. Therefore she appealed to Joseph Eybeler, a competent musician who was overwhelmed by the score, and though making some contributions, could not finish it. Constanze appealed to several other musicians, but finally had to settle for Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Mozart did not think much of his pupil’s musical abilities, even through the latter attended Mozart with doglike devotion. The fact that Süssmayr was at Mozart’s deathbed, discussing the Requiem, and frantically taking Mozart’s dictation, were the deciding reasons Constanze finally settled on him to complete the Requiem.
Süssmayr set to work, copying Mozart’s sketches and filling out the instrumentation which he felt best met Mozart’s intentions. He then composed the missing Lacrymosa, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei. Finally he repeated the fugue of the Kyrie to the words “cum sanctis.” Süssmayr’s contributions to the Requiem have been controversial ever since, and a number of efforts have been made to revise the score to make it more “authentic.” But in spite of it all, Süssmayr’s is the generally accepted version for concert performance.