J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

terrible warning for those who undertake judgements of authenticity in stylistic criteria
alone (he died having just discovered the existence of the original score, but—perhaps
fortunately—not aware of its actual contents).
A critic hostile to the Requiem’s counterpoint would find a good deal to
complain about: the proportion of imitative or fugal writing is at least as high as that in
the C minor mass—by this stage it almost seems to be Mozart’s preferred way of
organising a choral texture, as in the ‘Domine Deus’, where there no fewer than three
thematically independent fugal sections. Hardly a trace can be found of the
‘rauschende Violinen à la Reutter’ so common in his earlier church music. Sometimes
fugue is used with considerable dramatic effect, as in the ‘Confutatis’, where brusque
imitative exchanges between the tenor and bass are countered by gentler, pleading
passages from the sopranos and altos. Sometimes it is not quite clear how intentional
this dramatic effect is, as in the ‘quam olim Abrahae’ fugue, where Mozart’s knack for
working up a fine fugal imbroglio, together with the activity of the orchestra, give a
quite unexpected sense of urgency to what is after all a relatively matter-of-fact part of
the text (‘as you once promised to Abraham and his seed.’)
It is, paradoxically, the movements we know to have been written by Süssmayr
(the Sanctus, the Benedictus, and the Agnus Dei) which come closest to the style of
Mozart’s Salzburg church music. The Agnus Dei may have been modelled on that in
the F major Missa Brevis, K.192/186f, while the Sanctus shows a certain affinity with
that in the ‘Waisenhaus’ mass K.139/47a. A brief fugato serving for the ‘Osanna’ can
be found in a number of masses: K.49, K.192/186f, and K.258 (‘Spaur’), for example;
although the third-shift, from D to B flat, is unusual. The Benedictus is a very
attractive facsimile of Mozart’s Salzburg style; if the part-writing is at times not quite
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