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

weight than Süssmayr’s say-so. But Thomas Bauman sounds a valuable note of
caution in his article ‘Requiem, but no piece’: ‘Mozart’s attempt at a fugal Amen
makes more sense if we think of it not as a recovered sketch but as an abandoned
sketch. Its underlying parallel motion in imperfect intervals is monotonous, and
equally so its relentless accentuation of the downbeat. The E on the second eighth beat
of m.7 would be judged inexcusable if Süßmayr had written it, and so would the
constricted criss-crossing of the voices as they slowly slide in a huddled clump from
one plodding half-note to the next, always in the lowest part.’ 72 One needn’t be as
impolite as Bauman to recognise that, for all its indubitable textual authenticity, the
fragment itself is something less than a model of good contrapuntal writing. On these
grounds, it seems at least as likely that Mozart put it aside to think of a better way of
finishing the Lacrymosa as it is that it represents his long obscured ‘real’ intention.
We simply don’t know.
‘DEATH BY COUNTERPOINT’
If this recovered autograph is for Bauman a mere footnote to Mozart’s oeuvre,
Anselm Gerhardt makes it the very centrepiece of his interpretation of the relationship
between Mozart’s works and his life—and his death. He died, it seems, while writing
this movement; and, for all the immense wealth of his oeuvre, it is hard to disagree
with Landon when he describes Mozart’s early death as ‘surely the greatest tragedy in
the history of music.’ 73 As with any tragedy, there is a strong urge to find meaning in
it—to seek a more satisfying explanation than the simple fact that sometimes people
die young, sometimes they don’t. The early rumours about poisoning have a number
of distinct advantages over the tantalisingly imprecise accounts of the actual medical
72 19th-century Music 15/2 (1991), 160.
73 1791: Mozart’s last year (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), p.147.
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