Franz Beyer
Musicologist who ‘finished’ Mozart’s unfinished Requiem
FRANZ BEYER, who has died aged 96, was a German musicologist who in the 1970s provided a satisfactory conclusion to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s unfinished Requiem; it has since become widely used by orchestras around the world.
Mozart began working on his Requiem in 1791 but died before it could be completed. The mysterious “messenger” who commissioned the piece has long been the subject of speculation, not least in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus. Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766-1803), Mozart’s pupil, was asked by the composer’s widow, Constanze, to complete the work, but his efforts have often been criticised as unworthy of his teacher.
Beyer published his edition in 1971. It has been described as “essentially a skimming of Süssmayr” and is notable for its lighter texture, particularly in the wind parts. Beyer explained how he attempted to eliminate many of Süssmayr’s shortcomings and the errors that Mozart’s student had introduced. He acknowledged, however, that without Süssmayr’s work the Requiem would in all probability have been lost to humankind.
A review of a German recording in The Musical Times in 1975 referred to Beyer having “courageously published his version”, adding of his work: “The general effect is a gain in tautness and clarity.”
It was quickly adopted by conductors including Leonard Bernstein, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Franz Welser-möst. In 1978 Gramophone magazine reviewed a recording by the Academy of St Martinin-the-fields and Neville Marriner “which uses the edition by Franz Beyer that does much to cleanse the score of Süssmayr’s turgid orchestration”.
The Requiem was not Beyer’s only Mozart reconstruction. As the bicentenary of the composer’s death approached in 1991 he published a completed version of the C minor Mass (1989) and several arrangements of his chamber music.
According to the Schwäbische news website in Weingarten, Beyer made more than 150 revisions and completions of pieces by some 25 composers, as well as writing cadenzas for all three of Haydn’s surviving violin concertos.
Franz Beyer was born at Weingarten, south-west Germany, on February 26 1922; his older sister, Marianne, became a cellist. While a music student in nearby Stuttgart he became interested in making arrangements of other composers’ music, but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War, during which he was imprisoned in France, from 1943 until 1947.
He had trained as a viola player, and after the war became a member of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. By 1950 he was appearing with them as a soloist on recordings of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.
He was also a member of the Max Strub Quartet, widely regarded as one of the best postwar German string quartets, and other ensembles dedicated to performing music of the 18th century.
From 1962 to 1995 Beyer was professor of viola and chamber music at the Munich Hochschule für Musik und Theater. It was after a concert in the 1960s that he took his idea to improve upon Süssmayr’s arrangement of Mozart’s Requiem to the conductor Bruno Walter, who gave the project his blessing. In 1983 Beyer was awarded a culture prize by the cities of Ravensburg and Weingarten.
Beyer appeared as violist on several recordings of the composer’s music, including two of the composer’s string quintets with the Melos Quartet for Deutsche Grammophon. He also wrote music for children, including a set of Lullabies in 1943 for his god-daughter, and Das Kränzel im Haar (“The wreath in the hair”), a German party song.
Franz Beyer is survived by his wife and three sons.