Franz Xaver Süssmayr

Franz Xaver Süssmayr or Süßmayr (; 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.

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.

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.