The orchestra and choir at a rehearsal for Classical Uprising’s Mozart Requiem Renewal at First Parish in Brunswick on Thursday. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

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,” which will be performed for the first time this weekend in Brunswick by a string orchestra and symphonic choir. Two more concerts are scheduled for November in Portland and Bangor.

“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.

Emily Isaacson conducts during a rehearsal for Classical Uprising’s Mozart Requiem Renewal at First Parish in Brunswick on Thursday. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

AN UNFINISHED TASK

The story goes that an Austrian aristocrat commissioned “Requiem” in memory of his young wife, although Mozart may not have known the source of the request. As his health declined, Mozart reportedly believed that he was writing his “Requiem” for his own funeral. He worked feverishly into the final hours of his life, but the piece was still unfinished when he died.

His widow, Constanze, perhaps worried that the commission might not be paid in full if she did not deliver a complete work, turned to her husband’s students. One tried but abandoned the project. Franz Xaver Süssmayr wrote the bulk of the “Requiem” we know today, although Isaacson said he felt unqualified for the task and even wrote to the music publisher that he felt unworthy of recreating Mozart’s talent. Others have taken on the task in the centuries since.

“I’ve always known this intellectually, but it sat differently recently,” Isaacson said. “This piece we call Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ is actually two-thirds his student who didn’t want to do it. Now that I’m a little bit older and a little bit more confident in my artistic voice, I allowed myself to go back and look at it and be like, ‘The ‘Sanctus’ movement has always been really boring to me. It feels kind of sterile and formulaic.’ And coincidentally, that movement is completely written by Süssmayr.”

Isaacson turned to two collaborators. The first was indie-rock singer-songwriter Don Mitchell. The two sang in choir at Williams College in Massachusetts together and had not been much in touch in the intervening years. But Isaacson thought about the sound of his band Darlingside (she described it as “nostalgic,” “poignant,” “sweeping”) and how she wanted to bring that vibe into her composition. She reached out on Instagram to see if he would join her. He, too, had lost a parent when he was younger, and he agreed, even though he had limited experience in classical music.

Don Mitchell at a rehearsal for Classical Uprising’s Mozart Requiem Renewal. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

“I think Emily’s extreme outward confidence really got me on board, and I’ve been rising on the coattails of that enthusiasm and confidence and moving past my imposter syndrome in this world that can sometimes feel rarefied and exclusive,” said Mitchell, 41, who lives near Boston. “I love that even my inclusion in this is part of the Classical Uprising spirit and their mission of making the walls around classical music shorter and getting more people into that world.”

The second collaborator was film composer Joel Lindberg, who recently graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and was working as an intern for Classical Uprising. Isaacson invited him into the project based on his experience as a cellist and a composer. Mozart’s “Requiem” is a fixture in his childhood memory; his parents sang the piece in a choir.

“It made me feel a lot of emotions even as a young child,” said Lindberg, 24, who is now based in Los Angeles. “I don’t know if I could really put a finger on what I was feeling at that age, but I could recognize that there was something special about those movements.”

A NEW VOICE

Isaacson described her dad as her beacon.

“I have found grief to be so disorienting,” she said. “The whole world is shaped differently.”

She wanted to make room for that feeling of disorientation in “Requiem.” But she also wanted to add another feeling she has experienced – a heightened awareness of being alive, an urgency to live fully.

From January to June, the project focused on historical research and locating or creating digital scores of Mozart’s material. From June to August, the trio adapted the score. The rules were simple: If Mozart wrote it, they kept it; if he didn’t, they could replace it.

Orchestra members at a rehearsal for Classical Uprising’s Mozart Requiem Renewal at First Parish in Brunswick on Thursday. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

They preserved the overall structure. They made small edits to the Latin text so the language was more universal and less liturgical; as a Jewish person, Isaacson said she felt excluded by the Roman Catholic terminology and wanted to find ways to welcome more people into the choral work.

Each collaborator brought their own perspective and skills to the project. Some movements had a significant amount of source material from Mozart; others became a blank page. They found inspiration in modern musicians such as Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens and Florence and the Machine.

Mitchell did much of his brainstorming on an acoustic guitar. Isaacson and Lindberg would translate ideas into instrumentation. They kept the strings. The brass and wind instruments became a vibraphone and other percussion instruments. About 70 or 80 people will be involved in the performance as musicians or singers, and the piece still runs about 50 minutes.

A portion of the choir sings at a rehearsal for Classical Uprising’s Mozart Requiem Renewal at First Parish in Brunswick. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

There’s less and less Mozart as it progresses. It’s still Mozart, of course. But there’s also a little improvisation by the choir, a little electric guitar by Mitchell, a little more joy in life itself.

“I wanted the audience to have that experience, instead of gears shifting that there is this slippery slope from being in Mozart’s voice to being in this new voice, and they actually couldn’t tell where that moment happened,” Isaacson said.

She’s still trying to understand the impact this piece will have on her own journey with grief. It isn’t finished, of course. Perhaps it never is.

This story was updated on Oct. 26 to correct ticket prices.