One must go to the Austrian village of Stuppach, forty-five miles southwest of Vienna, to begin the story of the Mozart Requiem.  Maria Anna von Flammberg, the wife of Franz von Wallsegg, a young, rich nobleman, had suddenly died on February 14, 1791.  Count von Wallsegg wished to honor his wife with a composition of liturgical music and he secretly commissioned the Requiem from Mozart.

Mozart died on December 5, 1791, less than two months before his thirty-sixth birthday.  What happened between the moment Mozart received the commission and his death, as it relates to the composition of the Requiem, is one of the most undeveloped mysteries in western music history up to this day.

Even thought musicologists agree on the fact that Mozart was convincved that he had been poisoned, that he was going to die, and that the Requiem had been mysteriously commissioned for his own death, the historical facts indicate that the only reason why the commission was carried by the "mysterious man in grey," carrying 50% of the commission pay, was that Count von Wallsegg fancied himself as a composer and had a habit of passing off other musicians' work as his own.  On the other hand, the reasons of Mozart's death have never been documented, with the hypothesis of the poison being the weakest.  This is surely enough material for an extremely talented movie maker to create a beautiful film with excellent dramatic content but little historical fact.

Mozart had died, the family was in debt, so Constanze (Mozart's wife) badly needed the rest of the commission money from Count von Wallsegg, and she was determined to get it at any cost: the Requiem had to be completed, and nobody should know about the fraud.

Franz Xaver Sussmayr (1766-1803), one of Mozart's closest students, was not Constanze's first choice but he ended up being the one who finally took up the responsibility of the completion.  How much of the Requiem presented tonight is Mozart's and how much is Sussmayr's is something that will probably never be known.  It was in Constanze's own interest to claim that it was all Mozart's and it was in Sussmayr's own interest to claim as much as he could as his own work: after all, it was an opportunity to show talent and promise as a composer, something he had never done before.

Through extensive musicological work, it is believed that Mozart wrote all of the Requiem aeternam and virtually all of the Kyrie fugue.  He also wrote all the vocal/choral parts for the Dies irae, Tuba mirum, Rex tremendae, Recordare, Confutatis, Domine Jesu Christe, and Hostias, leaving only eight measures of the Lacrymosa.  Only a few accompanying instrumental parts, however, are believed to be extant in Mozart's hand for all of those movements.  Sussmayr is credited with most of the instrumental parts for the movements in question (the quality of which has been severely criticized by Mozart scholars) and the sole authorship of the Sanctus, the Benedictus, and the Agnus Dei.  The last movement (Communio-Lux aeterna) is virtually a musical repeat of Mozart's own Requiem-Kyrie but with the Lux Aeterna-Cum sancto spiritu text.

Part of Sussmayr's work was based on sketches left by Mozart.  Is is not clear exactly what and how much those sketches contained, something that lead some scholars to believe that the Agnus Dei was of too high quality to be Sussmayr's and most likely to be Mozart's.

Sussmayr's version of the score (with a few adaptations) is the one most usually performed, and it is the one chosen for today's concert.  However, at least four scholars/composers have attempted completions of this magnificent work over the last 30+ years: the German Franz Beyer (1971), the English Richard Maunder of Oxford University (1984), the English Duncan Druce (1984), and the American Robert Levin (1991) of Harvard University, with the last one being the most favored by professional performing organizations today.

Program notes by Eduardo Garcia-Novelli.

Dr. Eduardo Garcia-Novelli, a native of Argentina, is the Director of Choral Activities at Lamar University in Beaumont.  Formerly the Assistant Director of the National Young People Choir of Argentina and a high school choral director in Buenos Aires, he graduated with a Master of Music degree from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, and completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts degree at the University of Houston.  Dr. Carcia-Novelli served as Assistant Director for the Houston Symphony Chorus for five seasons, preparing large choral works for world-renowned conductors.  Also a church musician, Dr. Garcia-Novelli is currently the choir director at First United Methodist Church of Beaumont.  Under his direction , the FUMC choir recently completed its third European tour.  His is a prize winner for the "La Nacion" (Argentina) and ACDA (US) national competitions.  He also hosts "Perfect Pitch, Music for Choirs," a weekly show on 91.3 KVLU, public radio in Beaumont.  Under his direction, Lamar University A Cappella Choir has been selected to perform before the membership of the Texas Music Educators Association next February.  In addition, the choir received a special invitation to perform for the opening gala of the IV International Choral Festival based in Panama City, Pamana, next July.  He was honored with the Lamar University Faculty Merit Award last April.  His wife, Maria Fernanda Fiocchi, is a periodonist; they have two children: a nine-year old boy, Mateo, and a five-year old girl, Camila.

Renee Kloes is the Choral Director at Nederland High School.  She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Music from Lamar University and a Master of Music degree from Arizona State University.  She currently serves as chair of the Texas Music Educators Association Region 10 Vocal Division.