By Robert Croan
It’s a daunting and presumptuous task for any composer to complete Mozart’s magnificent Requiem, but that’s just what Gregory Spears has done, on commission from the equally audacious Seraphic Fire vocal ensemble, which performed the amalgamated version in several South Florida venues Feb. 12-14.
It was a repeat for Seraphic Fire, who premiered the Requiem with Spears’s additions in Miami in 2013.
Mozart’s Requiem is fair game. The composer left the work unfinished at the time of his own death on Dec. 5, 1791. Contrary to legend, rival composer Antonio Salieri did not murder Mozart in an attempt to pass the requiem off as his own. Mozart was writing it on commission from a young Austrian nobleman, Count Franz von Walsegg, who wanted it to commemorate the first anniversary of his wife’s death, which would have been Valentine’s Day 1792.
When Mozart died, his widow, Constanze, asked Mozart’s student Franz Süssmayer to complete the work, so that she could collect the money she needed to live on. Süssmayer, working on a tight deadline, did a workmanlike but uninspired job, using Mozart’s sketches and information he had gleaned during the older composer’s last weeks of life. This became the standard performing version for the next two centuries, but has never been considered satisfactory, and various attempts have been made to provide a more accurate realization of Mozart’s intentions.
Spears’s completion of the Requiem is an entirely different case. The American composer, born 1977, has composed the three missing movements — “Sanctus,” “Benedictus” and “Agnus Dei” — in his own style, which combines contemporary techniques with those of minimalism and early music. Spears already has a Requiem of his own to his credit (in a quite different style) as well as a successful opera, Paul’s Case, and he employs his knowledge of Renaissance counterpoint along with his dramatic instincts to advantage to the movements he has provided to round out Mozart’s musical torso.
For one thing, his segues are cogently crafted. One barely notices the evolution from Mozart’s “et semini ejus” to Spears’s “Sanctus”: from a classical to a contemporary sound which soon becomes entirely Spears’s creative voice. What follows is about twice as long as the music Süssmayer wrote for these movements.
Spears develops his own contrapuntal ideas at self-indulgent length, mostly convincingly, occasionally (in the uncharacteristically slow “Hosanna” and the “Benedictus” that follows) with a little too much wandering. But his “Agnus Dei” contains genuine drama and high energy, with another smooth transition back to Mozart’s (or Süssmayer’s) music for the concluding “Lux aeterna.”
The ensemble, heard Friday night at All Saints Episcopal in Fort Lauderdale, was of ideal Mozartean proportions: Seraphic Fire’s 20-voice choir matched by The Sebastians, a period orchestra of 24. Under Patrick Dupré Quigley’s expert direction, they sang and played with razor-sharp attacks and cutoffs, and rhythmic drive.
Tone quality varied, however. The men of the chorus were uniformly resonant, but the female voices ranged from rich outbursts to a white, vibrato-less production that sometimes brought down the pitch. The most poignant moment was the “Lacrimosa,” in which the broken string phrases became aural teardrops, and the choir followed the dynamics in the score with immaculate care.
The soloists, chosen from the choir, were adequate but not outstanding. Baritone James Bass was short-breathed in the opening words of the “Tuba mirum,” though he sustained the low B-flat admirably. Tenor Steven Soph followed with secure, pointed sound, but the women were less solid. The solo quartet in the “Recordare” was more even and totally ingratiating.
Quigley always finds a good gimmick. This time, anticipating the premise of the multi-styled Requiem, he devoted the first half of the program to a cappella works in which a new piece is built on an old one. Most interesting was the opening piece, Immortal Bach, in which Norwegian composer Knut Nystedt deconstructs and then reconstructs Bach’s Komm, süsser Tod. He first presents the chorale in its original form, layering the chords one on top of the other, subsequently resolving the resulting discordances into a miraculous harmonious congruity.
The conductor then juxtaposed Heinrich Schütz’s 17th-century motet, Selig, sind die Töten — surprisingly dissonant for its period — with Mendelssohn’s milder, ear-pleasing Richte mich, Gott, composed three centuries later.
Ingram Marshall’s Hymnodic Delays presented another feat of revision. The work originally manipulated the choral voices electronically. For Seraphic Fire, Suzanne Hatcher made a purely acoustic arrangement that recreates the electronic alterations without artificial help. It served as a vehicle for the abilities of Quigley’s highly versatile and technically accomplished ensemble.
Seraphic Fire performs the Mozart Requiem with Gregory Spears’s additions tonight at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.