In 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna. He was just weeks shy of his 36th birthday. The famed composer never finished his last commission – his “Requiem,” his famous Mass for the dead. At his widow’s behest, a student actually wrote much of the composition that is today considered Mozart’s most-beloved choral work.
In 2023, George Isaacson died in Brunswick. He was 74 years old and had a distinguished career as a lawyer in Lewiston and as a faculty member at Bowdoin College. He was also the father of Emily Isaacson, the founder and artistic director of Classical Uprising, a performing arts nonprofit that creates immersive events and educational programs. In her grief, she turned to Mozart’s “Requiem.”
She did not find what she needed. Isaacson did not connect with the 18th-century view of death or the Roman Catholic origins of the piece. Yet she was asking the same questions that Mozart and then his student might have contemplated centuries ago. How do we honor the dead? How do we live when they are gone?
Isaacson, 42, set herself the task Mozart’s student had centuries before – to finish his “Requiem” – but she wanted to reimagine his historic work for people in the 21st century. The result is “Mozart Requiem Renewal.”
“What if I use the unfinished nature of Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ as an opportunity not just to finish it in this modern musical language, but also to reconceptualize it not as a Mass for the dead?” said Isaacson, who lives in Portland. “I’m not thinking about my dad burning in a fiery hell. I’m not thinking about, how is he going to be judged? In fact, I don’t really want to focus on his death. I want to focus on his life. How can we reconceive this work as a celebration of life?”
It is the most personal and ambitious work of her career to date.
“Grief makes you do bold things that you wouldn’t do otherwise,” she said. Read more…