Singer says Mozart's 'Requiem' tough on tenors

When lyric tenor Andrew Skoog joins soprano Jennifer Barnett, mezzo-soprano Jorraine DeSimone and bass-baritone Andrew Wentzel as the soloists for the Knoxville Choral Society and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra's performance of Mozart's "Requiem," KV 626, this week at the Tennessee Theatre, Skoog will be singing music that isn't particularly friendly to tenors.

"Mozart was so mean to tenors," he says during a conversation about being both en educator and a working singer.

Asked if that may be because Mozart played the viola and heard those voices in the middle, between the higher voices and the lower ones that provided the supporting foundation, Skoog agrees.

"Just listen to Mozart's operas. There is no doubt that he made tenors really work. Mozart's writing for tenors sits right there in the break between tenors' middle and the high registers."

Associate Professor of Music at the University of Tennessee School of Music, Skoog likes the combination of teaching and performing.

"I came to terms with my voice late in life," he said. "I came up through music education. I went into a teaching position to balance singing with work.

"My singing is what led to teaching. I love watching a student develop. But it's also my love for singing that pays off when my students move up," Skoog said.

"I took a long time settling into the idea of singing for a living. I really loved graduate school. I think that's why I went into teaching. It was a way of staying in school."

Asked why a singer with a good voice should go to graduate school instead of one of the apprentice programs with an opera company, Skoog responded: "In graduate school there's a focus on languages and style. It's good training. A student learns good preparation skills. I've seen so much growth in graduate school. The students start to become artists and not just singers."

Along with Skoog, DeSimone and Wentzel are also educators, as well as professional singers. Both are on the UT School of Music faculty.

Soprano Jennifer Bartlett is the KSO's director of education and community partnerships.

The soloists in Mozart's "Requiem" don't have long solos, as in many of the great choral-orchestra works.

"The soloists in this requiem don't have long, outstanding solos," Skoog said. "It's really a work for orchestra and chorus, with the soloists singing more supportive roles."

Work on the requiem was the last music Mozart wrote. Very ill while he worked, told his wife Constanze that he felt like he was writing his own funeral music. One can hear Mozart's sadness in the opening notes of the "Lacrimosa," when the violins cry.

Working from sketches after Mozart's death, his copyist, Franz Sussmayr, completed the orchestration.

Along with Mozart's "Requiem," the KSO will perform another great work in the key of D Minor, Robert Schumann's "Symphony No. 4 in D Minor," Op. 120.

Written in 1841, Schumann withdrew the score and revised the symphony extensively in 1851 to give it more structural integrity. Composer and conductor, Johannes Brahms, among the greatest masters of Romantic-era music and a close friend of Schumann and his wife Clara, preferred the original version, which he published in 1891, despite Clara's objections. The KSO will perform the 1851 revision

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Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

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