Mozart's Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion

by Simon P. Keefe

Overview

Presenting a fresh interpretation of Mozart's Requiem, Simon P. Keefe redresses a longstanding scholarly imbalance whereby narrow consideration of the text of this famously incomplete work has taken precedence over consideration of context in the widest sense. Keefe details the reception of the Requiem legend in general writings, fiction, theatre and film, as well as discussing criticism, scholarship and performance. Evaluation of Mozart's work on the Requiem turns attention to the autograph score, the document in which myths and musical realities collide. Franz Xaver Süssmayr's completion (1791–2) is also re-appraised and the ideological underpinnings of modern completions assessed. Overall, the book affirms that Mozart's Requiem, fascinating for interacting musical, biographical, circumstantial and psychological reasons, cannot be fully appreciated by studying only Mozart's activities. Broad-ranging hermeneutic approaches to the work, moreover, supersede traditionally limited discursive confines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781139539548
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/28/2012
Series:	Music in Context
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Simon P. Keefe is James Rossiter Hoyle Chair and Head of Music at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Mozart's Piano Concertos: Dramatic Dialogue in the Age of Enlightenment and Mozart's Viennese Instrumental Music: A Study of Stylistic Re-invention and has edited five volumes for Cambridge University Press: The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music, Mozart Studies, The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia (with Cliff Eisen), The Cambridge Companion to Mozart and The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto. He is also the author of more than forty scholarly articles and book chapters.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Mozart's Requiem in context; 1. The Requiem legend in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; 2. Criticism and scholarship from 1800 to the present day; 3. The Requiem in performance; 4. Mozart's work on the Requiem: sounds and strategies; 5. After Mozart: the Requiem completion, 1791–2; 6. Modern completions of the Requiem; Epilogue: a Requiem for the future.

Editorial Reviews

"It is astounding that Keefe opens up new ground in large areas … A far-reaching book … All in all, a first-class monograph, outstandingly produced and printed, which will be read cover to cover as well as used for reference."
Manfred Hermann Schmid, Mozart-Jahrbuch 2013

From the Publisher