In the months leading up to his death in December 1791, Mozart composed two of his most popular sacred works: his Ave verum corpus, completed in June 1791, and Requiem, which was incomplete at the time of his death six months later.
Tucson Symphony Orchestra Music Director José Luis Gomez has both works on this weekend's "Mozart's Requiem" concert with the TSO Chorus and a quartet of soloists — mezzo-soprano Angela Brower, soprano Zoe Allen, tenor Omar Najmi and baritone Edward Vogel.
The two works are separated by Dan Coleman's "Certum est," a new work that Gomez hopes will connect the dots between the two works and finish what Mozart couldn't through a 21st-century lens.
Gomez tapped TSO's longtime Composer in Residence Coleman with an invitation: Write a piece that would bridge Mozart's unfinished sketches of the Requiem with the motet.
"I took the task literally by writing music that flows seamlessly from the last bar of music that Mozart wrote in his Requiem to the first bar of the motet," Coleman said earlier this week in an email interview. "I found myself writing phrases that begin as a stylistic extension of Mozart, but which slowly evolve into phrases that are informed by the music that came between 1791 and 2026."
The TSO will perform the world premiere at Catalina Foothills High School on Saturday, Jan. 31, and Sunday, Feb. 1. The concert is part of the Tucson Desert Song Festival, which runs through April 25.
Coleman, who has been the orchestra's composer-in-residence since 2002, followed Mozart's lead and set the text in Latin "whose meaning will be revealed only to those who attend the pre-concert talk" before each performance, he said.
"The poet Stanley Kunitz said that 'the idea of regression, like the idea of progress has no aesthetic relevance. The way backward and the way forward are the same'," Coleman said. "This is true in music, too, of course. Some passages in Mozart sound as if they could have been written today, and contemporary composers are always building upon the past."
The program also includes Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten; Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante défunte"; and Mozart's Adagio and Fugue.
Performances are at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Catalina Foothills High School, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive. Tickets are $58.35-$102.13 through tucsonsymphony.org or by calling the box office, 520-882-8585.
