Franz Xaver Süssmayr

Biography

Franz Xaver Süssmayr or Süßmayr (Austrian German: [frants ˈksaːvɐ ˈsyːsmaɪɐ]; 1766 – September 17, 1803), also anglicized as Suessmayr, was an Austrian composer and conductor. Popular in his day, he is now known primarily as the composer who completed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's unfinished Requiem.

Life

Süssmayr was born in Schwanenstadt in upper Austria. He received early music lessons from his father Franz Karl Süssmayr, and later was educated at Kremsmünster Abbey, where Georg Pasterwitz was a teacher. At the monastery he composed symphonies, cantatas and church music, which were performed at the abbey theatre.
He moved to Vienna in 1788, where he became a student and friend of Mozart. On Mozart's last journey to Prague in 1791, where his opera La clemenza di Tito was first performed, Süssmayr accompanied him; Süssmayr, at Mozart's request, composed the secco recitatives for the opera. After Mozart's death later in that year, the composer's widow Constanze was anxious that the partially composed Requiem should be completed; the completion was attempted by Franz Jakob Freystädtler and Joseph Eybler, eventually being carried out by Süssmayr.
In 1792 he became the substitute conductor at the Burgtheater, and from 1794 to 1803 he was conductor at the Theater am Kärntnertor. He composed operas that were staged at these theatres and at Emanuel Schikaneder's theatres: the Theater auf der Wieden and later the Theater an der Wien.
His health suffered because of an unregulated lifestyle, and he died in Vienna in 1803, aged 37.

Critics' assessments

Max Dies wrote in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1894): "Süßmayer's writing style is smooth, pleasing, singable, but generally fashionably superficial. Nowhere does a trace of idiosyncrasy shine out."
His biographer in Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (1880) wrote: "While his friends called him a "second Mozart", more unbiased music critics find in his creations neither originality nor poetic depth; but they do not deny that they have melody and a charming, even folksy character, by means of which they met with a reasonably enthusiastic reception on the part of the public."

Recent performances and recordings

There have been performances of Süssmayr's operas at Kremsmünster, and his secular political cantata (1796), Der Retter in Gefahr, SmWV 302, received its first full performance in over 200 years in June 2012 in a new edition by Mark Nabholz, conducted by Terrence Stoneberg. There are also CD recordings of his unfinished clarinet concerto (completed by Michael Freyhan), one of his German requiems, and his Missa Solemnis in D.
Of special note may be the clarinet concerto (SmWV 501) he most probably wrote for Mozart's clarinetist Anton Stadler, because it was scored for the basset clarinet. Recordings of the work by Dieter Klöcker (on Novalis) on "normal clarinet" and by Thea King (on Hyperion) in a reconstructed version for basset clarinet by Michael Freyhan are available. In 2021 a completion appropriate for period basset clarinet was published by Craig Hill.