Mozart’s 1791… Music from his final year

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music.  My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you.  And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme. And this episode is dedicated to one composer. And it features music from just one year of his life… the year 1791. The composer is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And it was the last year of his life. He died in December of 1791 at the age of 35.

I’m going to be playing you selections from the works he composed in that final year which included… a piano concerto, a string quintet, a clarinet concerto, most of a Requiem Mass and two complete operas in wildly contrasting genres. And that is by no means the complete list.

I suspect that you could take almost any year of Mozart’s life probably from the age of 15 onwards and be staggered by both the scale of his output… AND the quality… but this final year… 1791…. What a truly astonishing achievement.

First up is Mozart’s 27^th Concerto for Piano & Orchestra. He dated the manuscript 5^th January 1791 so for the musicologists this becomes Mozart’s first work of the year.

This is the slow middle section and it is about seven minutes long.

There are plenty of pretty fabulous recordings of this concerto bit I’ve chosen one that features the pianist Alfred Brendel for a couple or reasons. He is amongst my favourite pianists and he died a couple of weeks before I will be releasing this episode… at the healthy age of 94. Here he is with Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St-Martin-In-The-Fields. The slow section of Mozart’s 27^th Concerto for Piano & Orchestra.

A

That was Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St-Martin-In-The-Fields with the middle section of W A Mozart’s 27^th Concerto for Piano & Orchestra. And the soloist was Alfred Brendel.

Ok. On 12^th April 1791 Mozart completed his 6^th String quintet. Now, whilst for a string quartet you can assume that the instruments are going to be two violins, a viola and a cello. When a composer calls something a string quintet it can be a little more confusing because sometimes a composer adds an extra cello and sometimes an extra viola… as Mozart did here. So, two violins, two violas and a cello.

Here is just the opening section… It is 7 minutes long and the players are Cello – Eva Czako Viola – Georges Janzer, Max Lesueur Violin – Arpad Gérecz, Arthur Grumiaux. Mozart’s String Quintet No. 6.

B

That was the opening of Mozart’s 6^th String Quintet and the players were… Cello – Eva Czako Viola – Georges Janzer, Max Lesueur  Violin – Arpad Gérecz, Arthur Grumiaux.

Next up in this episode… a survey of the music Mozart wrote in 1791… the last year of his life… is something rarely heard and I’m sure very rarely performed. It is a work featuring an instrument called a glass harmonica. If you’ve ever seen someone making somewhat musical sounds from glasses filled with different volumes of water then you have encountered the ancestor of the glass harmonica. The instrument itself was invented by, of all people, the American polymath Bejamin Franklin.  It consists of rotating glass bowls played by touching them with moistened fingers. The instrument had a distinctive sound that was considered both beautiful and somewhat eerie.

Mozart's Quintet for Glass Harmonica, Flute, Oboe, Viola and Cello was written for performances in Vienna in April 1791 by a renowned blind glass harmonica virtuoso by the name of Marianne Kirchgessner, who was touring Europe at the time.

The American critic Dave Hurwitz has a theory about the origin of the piece I quite like. He suggests that as Mozart had, along with his sister, been dragged around Europe as a young prodigy earning money for the family; he would have had a degree of empathy for Marianne Kirchgessner travelling from city to city eeking out a living with her glass harmonica. And on the strength of that connection he wrote the piece for her.

The quintet  is actually one of the very few classical works written for glass harmonica in combination with other instruments. Mozart's choice of accompanying instruments - flute, oboe, viola, and cello - creates a delicate, transparent texture that complements rather than competes with the glass harmonica's ethereal voice.

I’m going to play you the first of the two sections… the Adagio. It is about seven minutes long and is performed by… Jean Decroos (cello), Karl Schouten (viola), Heinz Holliger (oboe),  Aurèle Nicolet (flute), and Bruno Hoffmann (glass harmonica).

C

That was the Adagio from Mozart's Quintet for Glass Harmonica, Flute, Oboe, Viola and Cello performed by Jean Decroos (cello), Karl Schouten (viola), Heinz Holliger (oboe), , Aurèle Nicolet (flute), and Bruno Hoffmann (glass harmonica).

The Latin words ‘Ave verum corpus’ mean ‘Hail, True Body’ and are the beginning of a short Catholic prayer associated with the feast of Corpus Christi… meaning ‘the body of Christ’.

Mozart’s friend Anton Stoll was the musical director for the parish of St Stephan in Baden and Mozart set the words to music for him and his congregation… It is written for a choir, string instruments and an organ. This work’s score is dated 17^th June 1791.

Here is the group Les Arts Florissant directed by William Christie. Mozart’s 3 and a half minute gem… ‘Ave verum corpus’.

D

That was the group Les Arts Florissant directed by William Christie. With Mozart’s ‘Ave verum corpus’.

Ok. I think it is fair to say that Mozart was to put it  mildly… prolific. On top of the music I have already played you from the first half of 1791… a concerto, a quintet, an Adagio and a hymn… he was also writing operas. Yes, that is operas plural. He completed two in 1791. To put them in the chronology of this show I am using the dates of their premieres which were… three weeks apart. The Clemency of Titus on 6^th September and The Magic Flute on 30^th September.

First up here is just the overture to ‘The Clemency of Titus’… which is perhaps better known by its Italian name… ‘La Clemenza di Tito’. Here is Colin Davis conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. It is about 5 minutes long.

E

That was Mozart’s overture to the opera La Clemenza di Tito. Colin Davis conducted the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

So, as I mentioned a few minutes back the 2^nd opera Mozart premiered in 1791 was ‘The Magic Flute’. And whilst La Clemenza di Tito from which I just played the overture was much more popular in the years after Mozart’s death… it is The Magic Flute… or Die Zauberflöte to give it its German name that is considerably more popular today.

I’m going to play you eight minutes from near the end of the opera. The words for the opera were written by the actor and impresario Emmanuel Schikaneder and in the original production he played the character who you will first hear in this excerpt… the bird catcher Papageno.

It is maybe worth taking a moment to give you a sense of the tone of The Magic Flute… because it was, perhaps surprisingly and refreshingly, for its time a quite non-traditional opera. It was written for a theatre in the suburbs of Vienna… well away from the Court. And it was the continuation of the resident performance company’s run of very popular fairly-tale operas. As a contrast… the ‘high-brow’ opera of the time was always sung in Italian. The Magic Flute was written in German for a German-speaking audience. 

And it is true to the ‘fairy-tale’ opera genre. It is a vehicle for fabulous singers in fantastical roles and if there are overall themes they are that good will overcome evil and couples meant to be together will find a way but all this is almost secondary to moments of almost childish joy and delight.

In the scene I am going to play you Papageno, a bird-catcher is deeply despondent at having lost his beloved, whose name is Papagena. He contemplates ending his life but at the last moment he is reminded by three mysterious boys who have kept turning up at critical times in the opera… that he has a set of magical bells he can use to summon Papagena back to him. In moments she appears and the scene ends with them singing together about their bright future.

Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau sings Papageno; Lisa Otto sings Papagena and the Berlin Philharmonic is conducted by Karl Böhm. Eight minutes of W A Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’.

F

That was…  Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau singing Papageno; Lisa Otto singing Papagena and the Berlin Philharmonic was conducted by Karl Böhm. With one of the final scenes from Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute.

Ok. Much of the great classical music we have today exists because a particular performer commissioned a composer to write a piece for them. And this was the case with Mozart’s final completed work… his Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra written for his friend and colleague Anton Stadler who had incidentally travelled to Prague with Mozart for the premiere of the opera La Clemenza di Tito a couple of months earlier… and had played in the orchestra for that performance.

Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto is one of the great works written for that instrument. It was completed in October 1791. It is in three parts the middle eight minute section titled ‘Adagio’ is… well, let me just say I am confident you might enjoy it rather a lot. Here is the clarinettist Charles Neidich with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

G

That was the middle section of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. It was performed by the clarinettist Charles Neidich with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. I have a bit more music coming up but before that I want to give you a bit of information that I hope you find useful…

If you would like to listen to past episodes, of which there are more than a dozen, or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net. And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

I hope you have enjoyed this look at the music Mozart composed in 1791… the final year of his life. Before I play you this episode’s last piece you might be curious to know what caused Mozart’s death at the, even for the eighteenth century, young age of 35. But I’m afraid you’re going to remain curious as no one knows for certain what particular disease or combination of diseases killed him. All that is known for certain is that he was ill in Prague in September, became bedridden in late November and died in the early hours of the 5^thDecember.

One thing of which pretty much everyone is certain is that the composer Antonio Salieri had absolutely nothing to do with Mozart’s death. This idea was first popularised in an 1830 play by the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin. And this was one of the sources for Peter Shaffer’s play ‘Amadeus’ and the script he co-wrote with the director Milos Forman for the 1984 film of the same name. The film was so successful that this fictional idea of Salieri playing a part in Mozart’s death became widely accepted. It’s a brilliant film and remarkable evocation of the era Mozart lived in… but it is not a documentary.

There is however one historically accurate plot device in the film that involved Mozart’s last and unfinished work.. his Requiem Mass. It was in fact commissioned through an intermediary by a nobleman who wanted to remain anonymous. This was Count Franz von Walsegg. The count, an amateur musician routinely commissioned works by composers and passed them off as his own. He wanted a Requiem Mass he could claim he composed to memorialize the recent death of his wife.

Just a reminder that a Requiem Mass is a version of the catholic mass used to pray for the dead in general or for the funeral of a specific person. The name ‘Requiem’ comes from the very first word of the first Latin sentence in the service which is… Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine which in English is Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.

Ok. The music. I’m going to play you the Lacrimosa section. Incidentally, it is pretty much certain that Mozart’s student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, had a hand in completing the unfinished Requiem after Mozart’s death including this section.

The words for the Lacrimosa are sung in Latin but in English they are…

Full of tears will be that day

When from the ashes shall arise

The guilty man to be judged;

Therefore spare him, O God.

Here is the Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Peter Schreier. ‘Lacrimosa’ from the final work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart… his Requiem Mass from 1791.

Thanks for listening and have a great week.

G

That was the Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Peter Schreier with the ‘Lacrimosa’ from the final work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart… his Requiem Mass from 1791.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’. This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never. And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you…

Here are the final three minutes of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’. The words from Emanuel Schikaneder begin with ‘The Rays of the Sun drive away The Night’. Karl Böhm conducts the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Thanks again for listening