ABSTRACT
The appearance of Richard Maunder's performing version of Leopold Mozart's Requiem and of his monograph explicating and defending the need for a new completion has given a peculiar twist to the spirited debate over authenticity that has of late invigorated both contemporary performance practice and modern musical scholarship. The Requiem has been marked out as especially dangerous ground for anyone sharing Maunder's ideas about the unbiased exercise of "normal critical faculties." At Leipzig the Requiem was given in German, using the text that the new Breitkopf and Härtel edition included underneath the Latin. If the durability of the Requiem problem has proved anything, it is that solutions do not lie in a simple appeal to the evidence. For evidence engages our interest only when it ceases to be self-evident, when it challenges the coherence of our prior understandings.
