by Mike Telin
For 234 years musicians have struggled with the question of how to perform Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s Requiem, a piece that he left unfinished at the time of his death in 1791. Although his widow arranged for his student Franz Xavier Süssmayr to complete the work, many have found that version to be unsatisfactory.
In a press release Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell said, “As I pondered how to honor the legacy of Mozart’s unfinished Requiem, I found myself reflecting on voices that were silenced or overshadowed by the culture of that time. These voices speak to us profoundly today, as the world teeters on a precipice in so many ways. So, to complete the Requiem, I chose eight movements from sacred-inspired works by living Black composers. In this way, we pay homage to Mozart by honoring the humanity within us all.”
On Friday, November 7 at St. Bernard Catholic Church in Akron and Saturday, November 8 at Severance Music Center, Jeannette Sorrell will conduct Mozart’s Requiem: A Tapestry. Performers include soprano Sonya Headlam, mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Paz, tenor Jacob Perry, and bass-baritone Kevin Deas, with the treble youth choir Apollo’s Musettes and the professional chamber chorus Apollo’s Singers. Both performances begin at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available online.
In a season preview interview with Clevelandclassical.com Jeannette Sorrell spoke about her vision for the program.
I’m calling it a tapestry because as many of your readers know, Mozart died before he was able to finish the Requiem. He was in a race against time to finish it — but he did not win the race. So there are several movements that he did not write at all, and then there’s a movement where he only wrote the first few bars.
People are used to hearing the piece in a completion by his student. But I think most of us who are professional musicians tend to agree that the movements by Franz Xavier Süssmayr are not great.
When I was thinking how to approach that, I thought about replacing the Lacrimosa, the Angus Dei, and the Sanctus — movements that Mozart did not complete.
There are such beautiful and poignant movements with those titles in Damien Geter’s An African American Requiem, a brilliant masterpiece that was premiered three years ago at the Kennedy Center. This seemed like a wonderful opportunity to weave in some related spiritual and moving pieces by one of today’s leading Black composers. So what we’re doing is honoring the humanity that Mozart gave voice to in the Requiem.
We also commissioned Eric Gould’s 1791 Requiem for the Ancestors, which incorporates voices from non-European cultures at the time when Mozart was writing the Requiem in 1791. So you have poetry by Phyllis Wheatley, a young enslaved person who had been brought from Africa to the United States. And one of Eric’s movements, “A Mother’s Pain,” gives voice to the experience of many enslaved African American women in American history. We are proud to have commissioned the piece.
And Jessie Montgomery is a well-known composer who is highly respected internationally. She wrote a set of spirituals called Five Freedoms Songs and we’re doing three of those. Again, it’s a different language that has the same message as Mozaŕt’s Requiem.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com November 4, 2025.
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