Manfred Honeck's personal version of Mozart's Requiem was more than an experience, it was a search for one's very own soul. Honeck created a canvas, covered with sounds and sights and spoken words. He painted an artistic masterpiece upon that canvas, and I am glad I was there to experience this artistic creation, and to see it unfolding and hear the majesty. Could we imagine what the Mass of Mozart's funeral could have been like? This was a fantastic version of that hypothetical idea. The Requiem, complete with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, conductor Manfred Honeck, John Lithgow as narrator, Chen Reiss soprano, Lauren McNeese mezzo-soprano, Alek Shrader tenor, John Relyea bass, and the wonderful choral sounds of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Betsy Burleigh director, and even Gregorian Chant, conjured this image and sound.
One of my favorite parts was Lithgow's reading of Mozart's letters to his father, Leopold Mozart. This letter is revealing in that it shows several themes which I took to heart. One, that Mozart himself may have been ready to accept life and death: "death is the true ultimate purpose of our lives." But what did he mean by that? I see it this way: life after death, and does it exist. My take is yes: I envision an image of my father, who has passed away, and that image is somewhat blurry; then beyond that is an image of myself, slightly less blurry, and beyond that further still is an image of my daughter, quite sharper in image quality, and the caption: Yes, there is life after death, and somehow, with this image, I don't fear death, I can easily, when the time comes, whenever it comes, and with God's grace, accept death. I finally see that this life after death is generational, and I see perhaps what Mozart meant in his letter to his father.
With the sights I could almost imagine Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral, the place where Mozart's funeral mass was actually performed; only then they did not play his Requiem. I believe Mozart himself never heard or experienced the complete orchestration and choir perform his magnificent piece. What a shame, but it was not a shame that it is his legacy and that we were able to experience it this night, and it was: beautiful! I'm still hearing the haunting sounds of the violins left play their two notes upward, and the violins left play their two notes downward, this melodic music flows in tuneful ways that bring both melancholy and joy, simultaneously, that is the genius that was Mozart.
I'll blog some more on this concert, but for now, I wanted to share a few thoughts and photos.
I would have preferred a different poem than Sachs, something more contemporary to or preceding the death of Mozart; perhaps this, and would that Lithgow could speak the speech, I pray thee, as I present it to you, trippingly on the tongue, and it would have been as this:
Dirge
COME away, come away, death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave
To weep there!
-- William Shakespeare