Greg Stepanich

Levin's Mozart should be preferred

Just getting a chance to go through my notes on the Master Chorale of South Florida's performance April 1 of Robert Levin's new completion of the Mozart Mass in C minor.

I enjoyed the performance of the piece in general; the level of musicianship was high, there was a palpable sense of commitment on the part of the chorus, soloists — sopranos Rebecca Sherburn-Bly and Hannah Sharene Penn; tenor Matthew Tresler and bass Graham Fandrei — and orchestra, and the chorale deserves to be commended for tackling this version of the mass and bringing it to area audiences.

I didn't plan to write a review of the concert, but I did want to say something about the Levin completion and its effectiveness.

Overall, I think he did an excellent job, and the work we have before us, instead of being a beautiful torso, is, in its full dress, a deeply serious, moving, dramatic, powerful piece of 18th-century Catholic church music. Levin's scrupulous notes tell me that he actually had a great deal of material from which to work, and that he can cite a Mozart source for all the invention that he brought to the work.

The closing Dona nobis pacem was composed by Levin based on Mozart's sketches from 1783, for instance, and the aria Et in Spiritum Sanctam was transcribed from another aria in the Mozart cantata Davide Penitente, which was compiled in 1784 from the music of the C minor Mass. He has much to say about the sketches themselves, and how much of the material in there is highly likely as being intended for the mass, though it might not be marked that way.

The Crucifixus is a good case in point. Levin writes: " . . . the first theme of an eight-part double fugue in D minor found, like the Dona nobis pacem sketches, in the Oca del Cairo fascicles, fits the Crucifixus text convincingly, and D minor is a plausible key to follow the F major of the Et incarnatus est.� Well, yes, and in performance, the Crucifixus sounds quite convincing. The theme itself as I remember it (my memory jogged by attempting to notate it during the concert) is a simple tune that, in its plainness and modest range sounds ideal for building a fugue.

The Dona nobis pacem subject, on the other hand, sounded a little florid, and somewhat hard to sing. I'm not sure that had the theme been originally noted for use in tandem with the Dona nobis pacem text, it wouldn't have been simplified.

Levin also provides much fuller orchestration, some of it perhaps anachronistic, such as the tick-tock offbeat chords in the winds in the middle of the Agnus Dei. They sounded like they'd wandered in from about 30 years in the future, but that's the only really jarring example I can recall or that I made notes for. Many of the textures were much richer — in particular the Sanctus, with the restored double choir Levin is sure Mozart intended.

In sum, it's a piece of great musical weight, and very impressive. One small voice in my ear wonders, though, whether or not Mozart, had he decided to finish the Mass, might have varied the approach of the final movements. They're quite contrapuntal and massive, and though Mozart's approach to sacred music is worth a dissertation to itself, I think he might have tried something a little less severe had he done the work himself.

But to make that assumption is to make the task of recomposition just about impossible. You'd have to steal opera arias or something like that and set them to Latin church texts. There'd be plenty more controversy then.

No, after all that, I think Levin's completion of the Mozart C minor Mass should be the preferred version; I'd rather hear the work in this guise than be left wondering what might have been. It's a first-class work of scholarship and musical detective work, and I'm glad I had the chance to hear it.