The haunting beauty of Mozart's Requiem and the tragic circumstances
surrounding its composition have made it a favorite among performers
and listeners alike. But how much of it actually Mozart's and
how do we know? Who wrote the missing pieces? What role did his
wife, Constanze, play and what about the anonymous man who commissioned
the work? Who tricked whom, and who had the last laugh in
this grim tale?
The author, an internationally recognized expert on Mozart, traces
the complex web of events and intrigue that produced the Requiem and
miraculously preserved it for posterity. Here is an accurate, precise,
complete narrative of the dramatic story, minus the difficult terms and
musicological obscurities; with a spoonful of sugar, the author introduces
some of the technical problems, clues, and terminology used in
reconstructing such histories.
Daniel N. Leeson was bass clarinetist with the San Jose Symphony
orchestra for 20 years and is an award-winning writer of nonfiction,
including articles dealing with Mozart, published in the Mozart Jahrbuch,
Music and Letters, The Instrumentalist, The Musical Times, Musical America,
MadAminA, the International Journal of Musicology, Eighteenth Century Music,
and The Newsletter of the Mozart Society of America. In addition, he has written
program notes for the London Proms concerts, the San Francisco
Symphony, San Francisco's Midsummer Mozart Festival, and others.
Leeson has been an invited speaker at the Salzburg Mozarteum as
part of the International Congress of Mozart scholars; at the
Chautauqua Institute; the Nevada Mozart Festival; and the California
Mozart Society in Carmel/Monterey. In 1992 and 1993, he was a faculty
member of the Mozart Opera Studies Institute (San Francisco State
University and California State University, Fresno). For two years he devoted himself
to research on the subject of the Mozart Requiem and his book,
Opus Ultimum presents
the results of that study.
Leeson�s fiction work, The Mozart Forgeries, was published in 2004.