franzl's unsinn

Is it you, Sussmayr?

thoughts that no one asked for: i really have nothing against süßmayr's work on the requiem but he shouldn’t have been asked to write it. i hear people complaining it’s not original, well no shit, this isn’t composition, it’s hack work. original süßmayr is not required here. a sense of individuality would be antithetical to the job. what is required is a smooth patching that generates the impression, on a first casual listen through, that one is probably listening to mozart. it's an illusion that doesn't need to hold up under scrutiny. süßmayr was asked to AI-generate a mozart requiem and he did it very well. that’s not on him, that’s on the people who pressured him into doing it. i’m sure he felt he was doing his friend a service. people say mozart worked together with him on it and asked him to finish it… i really doubt that. i have complicated feelings about ‘finishing’ unfinished works in general (ie just leave them alone!!!) and honestly if we even do play the requiem at all i think i would prefer to hear it… exactly as is? as an artifact of its own incompletion if that makes any sense. or of death anyhow, it's a shame that’s the work he's known for, because there's nothing of him in it.

my mental health’s been too good this week. time to fix that

The snowscape of Northumbria has known