Mozart Requiem and Mass in C

Shrewsbury Cantata Choir

Shrewsbury Cantata Choir, conducted by Anthony Coupe, will be performing
the Mozart Requiem and the Mozart "Coronation" Mass at St Chad's Church,
Shrewsbury, on Saturday, 21 st March at 7.30 p.m.
"The Requiem is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written," says Cantata
bass Bob Fowke, "strange that it started out as attempted fraud – but perhaps
that's one of the reasons for its impact; you have to double-think when you
listen to it. Is God speaking or is it the servant of a fraudster?"
According to Mozart's wife, Constanza, in 1791 a mysterious messenger arrived
at the Mozarts' home in Vienna to commission a requiem mass for the deceased
wife of Count Franz von Walsegg. It was for the anniversary of his wife's death
- she was only twenty when she died, so a sad occasion. The reason for the
mystery was that the Count intended to pass the work off as his own, something
he was in the habit of doing.
But Count von Walsegg's cunning plan went badly wrong because Mozart died
before finishing the score and Constanza asked a friend called Süssmayr to
finish it – and then she put on a fund-raising concert. Walsegg paid up but no
way could he claim to be the composer after that. Also, it was a masterpiece and
no one would have believed him anyway. The really strange thing is how
Süssmayr rose to the challenge; it was his own greatest work as well as one of
Mozart's. He must have loved him. "It's a requiem written by Mozart (and
Süssmayr) but it's also Mozart's Requiem," says Bob, "as if it was written for his
own death, some parts of it by a friend. Come and join us for what will be a
truly extraordinary evening."
The concert starts with a performance of Mozart's "Coronation" Mass, so called
because its second performance was at the coronation of Emperor Franz II in
1792, shortly after Mozart died. It was written years earlier, in 1779 before
Mozart had moved to Vienn