Recommended Sheet Music, Mozart Requiem: New Completion

Mozart is known to have died whilst working on his Requiem. Therefore, most performances we hear today of 'Mozart's Requiem' are not solely his composition. Previous examinations of the available sources have verified which parts of the Requiem Mozart composed himself, and what was added at a later date. The completion most frequently used today comes from Mozart's assistant Franz Xaver Süßmayr, though he is often not credited with this. Based on extensive research and a comparative analysis of Mozart's works and the various Requiem completions already available, Michael Ostrzyga has completed the Requiem with the aim to create a musical text as close as possible to what Mozart could have written in 1791.

New Completion by Michael Ostrzyga

Existing completions of the Requiem not only left general compositional irregularities, but they also include features not to be found anywhere else in Mozart’s scores. Whilst Ostrzyga has based his own work on the historical completions by Süßmayr and Eybler, he has evaluated whether their compositional decisions could have conceivably met Mozart’s approval. Particularly important to him was the influence of Handel and Bach, which he examined in Mozart’s late works and specifically in the Requiem. In his completion he has attempted to project how Handel’s and Bach’s music could have been reflected in the missing parts of Mozart’s Requiem.

Ostrzyga has used many resources to create the basis of this new edition. This includes comparative studies of Mozart’s musical texts and relevant works by his contemporaries; integration of elements from church music fragments composed by Mozart; a study of his theoretical writings and teaching materials; the most up-to-date research on 18th century music theory; examination of the completions by Süßmayr and Eybler; and exchanges with international Mozart scholars.

About the Editor

Conductor and composer Michael Ostrzyga is an active performer, particularly committed to choral music. He is also a music theorist and arranger with extensive professional training and experience in composition, instrumentation, musical analysis, comparative style studies, and in the arrangement and writing of style copies.

Historically informed music theory as well as ever-scrutinizing and comprehensive score comparisons form the basis of his new completion of Mozart's Requiem.