The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-09

did mind 80 sensitive and supersuUOus as
Mozarts Time and investigation have,
in n greater or lesser degree, removed from
n the mystery which surrounded it;
but neither time nor investigation has
been able to assign any rational or satisfac-
tory reason for the proceedings of the un-
known from whom Mozart received the COM
mission to compose the work in question.
The 'person of considerable Importance"
to whom the stranger alluded on his first visit
to Mozart, has since been discovered to have
been a Count Wallsegg or Wollfegg an Aus
trian nobleman, who, according to some,
wishing to appear as a musical composer
thought it the easiest way to palm off one of
Mozarts compositions as his own. This would
certainly account for the manner in which his
intendant, the unknown stranger, appeared
before Mozart. But. ON this supposition, how
are we to account for the manner in which the
work was treated for with Mozart? If the
count really wished TO pass the composition as
his own, he would of course, have stipulated
that Mozart should resign all claim to its au-
thorship, or at least have laid some restric-
tions upon him as to his keeping a score, or
publishing part the whole of the work;
and he would, moreover, have obtained from
Mozart written agreement to such effect
Furthermore, suppo5ing that he had made
no such stipulati0ns-or even suppo5ing that
he had-it would have been necessary, as a
first step, to destroy all traces of Mozarts
handwriting, which would have been dan
gerous proceeding when we remember that
Mozart made no secret of the circumstances
His family and friends all knew that he was
composing the work, and also the circum-
stances under which he had been commits
stoned to do so.
Again, if Mozart had agreed to give up the
authorship, he would not, as he most un-
doubtedly did, have regarded the work as the
most durable monument of his genius. He
would not, as he did, have made his friends,
most of them public men, so familiar with its
music that they could have refuted any claims
that might be made to it. He would not as
he did, have talked and written about it to his
friends He would not, as he did, have got
his pupil, Sussmayer, to assist him; and,
lastly, if he had made any such agreement
with the count would he have regarded the
whole affair in the strangely supersttious
manner that he most undoubtedly did?
But in the face of these undoubted facts,
we have another undoubted fact--namey
that the count really did dispute the Re-
quiems authorship, and instituted legal pro-
ceedings against Madame Mozart for having
printed it, which he only stopped at the
request of the Baron Won Nilsson, her second
husband, and the Able Stadler. Look at
it as we WILL the whole affair appears very
strange. ''That rich and tasteful noble
man, says MIR. Holmes, ''who knew Mozarts
power of writing in the most elevated style of
sacred music, should wish to possess a Re
QUEEN by him WAS not wonderful; but that, in
treating for it, be concealed his name, paid
handsomely beforehand, and transacted the
whole affair through the agency Of one who
seemed to watch Mozart, and to come upon
him at unexpected times and places, was
strange, and appeared to the composer almost
ba bo1 in
acting we do not pretend to know but can
only with the author Just quoted) express
the obligations of the world to him, and wish
that Mozart had earlier found 50 discerning
patron"
But the Austrian count was not the only
one who claimed the merit of the Requiems
authorship. 1t seems strange, to say the least,
that Madame Mozart, a good musician, who
attended her husband all through his last
illness, and was so perfectly i'll his conf
dence, should have been so utterly unable
to decide the question at once and forever.
But her statement is that whatever scraps
and sketches she found after Mozarts death
were committed, without examination, to the
keeping of Sussmayer, who was Mozart's
pupil, and who had assisted him in filing up
some of his late scores. Sussmayer afterwards
gave Madame Mozart a copy OF the work. of
which portions were in Mozarts handwriting,
one to the count. The work was subsequently
performed as ''Mozarts last composition, at
a concert given for the benefit of Madame
Mozart; but neither the count nor Sussmayer
at this time-which would have been the
proper time-made any sign; and 1t was not
until the work was printed that the count
came forward.
In 1899 the right of publication was pur-
chased by Messrs. Breitkopf and Hartel, who
Immediately printed the work; and it was not
until 1901, some two years afterwards, that
Sussmayer thought it worth while to write
letters to the public press, in which he claimed
the authorship of all those portions of the
copy given to the widow which were in his
handwriting; which assertion, although not
taken much notice Of at the time, served, in
1926, as the foundation of another
equally startling assertion made by
Gottfried Weber, namely, that Mozart's
claim was an entirely spurious one, which
assertion gave rise to a dispute engaging the
attention of the principal critics of the day.
! But in January, 1889, Herr Hofrath Won
! Mosel published description of the copy for
warded to the Count, which had, after his
death, passed into the Imperial Library at
Vienna. This copy has been declared by com
petent judges to be entirely in Mozarts hand
writing; but it has been asserted, on the other
side, that the handwriting of master and
| pupil was very similar and that the copy in
question was written by Sussmayer. This
copy, however, is now generally considered to
set at rest-let us hope forever-the question
of the Requiem's authorship. The question
has been very quantity disposed
of in one sentence by DIR. Bernhard Marx
of Berlin: eff, he says, mozart wrote it not
what matter? He who wrote it is Mozart.