Was it Mozart's Requiem or a requiem for Mozart?

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck incorporates both views to bring out the glories of Mozart's final composition in his production, "Requiem -- Mozart and Death in Music and Words."

The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem is wrapped in mystery and myth like few other works in the repertoire. Who was the "dark messenger" who secretly commissioned the funeral Mass from the composer? Did the severely ill Mozart (1756-91) feel he was writing his own funeral music? What is it about the work for choir, soloists and orchestra that places it among the most compelling pieces of sacred music ever written?

Long before the play and film "Amadeus" raised the subject again in the 1980s, the music world has been enthralled by the score and the tale of Mozart's Requiem. While scholars have long debunked the legend that Mozart was poisoned by rival Salieri, there is no consensus on what illness killed him at the too young age of 35 (latest theory: strep throat).

As for the dark messenger, he contacted Mozart on behalf of one of music history's strangest characters, Count von Walsegg. He was a patron with the ignominious trait of passing off commissions as his own compositions. He asked Mozart to write a requiem to honor his wife, but Mozart put it off and then died before finishing it. Mozart left several movements only partially written and others completely undone. It is a matter of debate, but it appears he wrote either the Hostias or the Lacrimosa movement last.

Heavily in debt, Mozart's widow, Constanza, tried desperately to get Mozart's friends and students to finish the work so she could claim the commission fee. Franz Xaver Sussmayr finally finished it well enough to satisfy the Count, but his version has not entirely satisfied music lovers.

Over the years, other scholars have offered their own completions they consider to be more Mozartian, including H.C. Robbins Landon and Robert Levin.

With all due respect to these scholars, Mozart's friends, confidants and wife, Honeck feels the piece is best left unfinished. He thinks the best way to "complete" the work is to place it in its setting as liturgical event and to contextualize the meaning behind it. About 10 years ago, Honeck's personal vision of the work led to the creation of "Requiem -- Mozart and Death in Music and Words," a roughly hour-long combination of music and readings, to be narrated at Heinz Hall by actor John Lithgow.

"This is not a historical production," says Honeck. "It is an impression of the mood and the meaning of the requiem, put together with the tradition of the requiem Mass in Mozart's time." The requiem, or Mass for the Dead, is a liturgical service in which the more joyous elements of the traditional Catholic Mass are replaced by funerary elements, including the dramatic "Dies irae" sequence ("Day of Wrath").

Honeck's creation loosely mimics an Austrian Roman Catholic funeral Mass of Mozart's time, beginning and ending with the ringing of bells as they did high in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, and interspersed with chant and biblical readings. But he also includes other music by Mozart (including his "Ave Verum Corpus" and "Masonic Funeral Music") and writings about the Holocaust (by poet Nelly Sachs and local student Matt May) "to illustrate what death means in our recent history." As for the Requiem, the conductor uses only that portion definitely written by the composer, leaving out the Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei and Communio.

But the insight Honeck feels the contextualization brings to the actual music of the Requiem is the greatest benefit of the additional elements, starting foremost with a revealing letter Mozart wrote on April 4, 1787.

"He wrote to his father that death is man's best friend, and he had no fear of death," says Honeck. "He felt there was life after death."

Not knowing the Count Walsegg story, Mozart's friends who heard the excerpts of the Requiem performed at a memorial service for him a few days after his death on Dec. 5 thought the composer had written it for himself, says Honeck. But, while Mozart was technically writing it for another, Honeck tends to side with the contemporaries. For him, the Requiem is Mozart's view of his own impending journey through death to meet God.

"When Faure or Verdi wrote their requiems, they might have experienced a friend who had died," he says. "When Mozart wrote his Requiem, he already felt that he had died. He was sick and didn't have hospitals and not great prospects. Mozart was thinking of death at the time."

For Honeck, the proof is in the score. He hears a powerful "pouring out of the soul" that takes almost tangible form for the famed opera composer with a "talent to describe human moods and feelings" and who "knew the text very well."

"What is that beginning -- a death march?" asks Honeck of the famous building entrance of the Introitus, eventually overlaid with singers intoning the word "requiem" from the line "Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine" (Give them eternal rest, O Lord).

"No, it is the tears that are coming out of the eyes. It cannot be played [like] a march. I will have a different bowing -- sobbing, and on the top of the bow."

At the point in the "Dies Irae" movement in which the text reads, "How great will be the trembling, when the Judge comes ..." Mozart has the singers and strings oscillate between two notes, a play on the marking tremelo and the Latin word "tremor."

"It is someone shaking, thinking about what will happen in the future as they meet God," says Honeck.

Such word painting was standard in the 18th century but rarely applied in such a personal manner. In the Recordare movement ("Remember, merciful Jesus"), Mozart has the strings drop a large interval just as the text says, "Bless me that I may not burn in everlasting fire."

"I will ask the strings to play like the hell," says Honeck.

Honeck views the famous trombone solo in the Tuba mirum movementfamous trombone solo in the Tuba mirum movement as the voice of God. "Why not use the cello?" he asks of Mozart. "Because the trombone was a symbol of God in the baroque. I will put the trombone player in the balcony, where it has a dialogue with the singers, who symbolize [humanity]."

The conductor also hears a personal "shout to God" in "Rex tremendae" (King of immense majesty), which is followed by amazingly sweet, quiet statements of the text "Salve me" (save me or heal me).

"In a requiem, you stand in front of God for mercy," says Honeck. "This moment is like Mozart's own prayer, and the diminuendo is like Mozart is sitting in a bed. His body is so weak that it falls back into the bed."

Even drifting away and horribly swollen from sickness, Mozart was still one of the greatest interpreters of text in music who ever lived, and he somehow managed to write a personal statement and profound work that lives on today in performance.

"There are a lot of requiems -- why is it so powerful?" asks Honeck. "I can only say that it is because he understand the words and human emotion."

Program also includes Beethoven's "Coriolan" Overture and Braunfels' "Te Deum."

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.