“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death's image is not only no longer terrifying to me but is indeed very soothing and consoling.” — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

REQUIEM: A mass for the dead with music composed for each part of the mass.

FURTHER LISTENING:

Mozart: Clarinet Concerto, K. 622

The Magic Flute, K. 620

La Clemeza di Tito, K. 621

Program Note

Mozart’s Requiem, his final work, has a ghoulish origin.

A mysterious messenger (some accounts say it was a masked man) approached Herr Mozart with a handsome commission: compose a Requiem for the sum of 250 florins, but don’t ask who commissioned the work. Mozart’s genius for music did not extend to his finances. He needed the money and accepted the ill-fated job, setting diligently to work.

Alas, he fell ill while working on the Requiem, and after languishing a couple of months from an unknown malady — historians have posited everything from a Vitamin D deficiency to a subdural hematoma — he passed away before completing the score.

We do know now that the commissioner was the unscrupulous Count Franz von Walsegg, who was looking to commemorate his wife’s passing. The dastardly Count likely had an ulterior motive, though. Walsegg was a minor aristocrat who had the distasteful habit of anonymously commissioning composers for work and then claiming it as his own. He conducted his business from a grand old Austrian castle — in true villain fashion — that was coincidentally auctioned off in 2023 for several million euros.

Back to the music, Mozart’s widow Constanze needed to complete the commission to earn the fee, and she turned to Mozart’s students to complete the Requiem in their master’s own style. Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed the Requiem and forged Mozart’s signature at the bottom. It’s incredibly difficult to tell where Mozart’s work ends and Süssmayr’s begins, and scholars debate some of the authorship of different sections of the manuscript to this day.

What isn’t debatable is the effect of the music, which remains as poignant and intense and immediate as it was 200 years ago. The orchestra plays a gentle, somber introduction before the choir begins to layer in from the bass up, a prayer for eternal peace. From here, the music follows a fairly traditional mass: the Kyrie, a request for mercy for the deceased’s soul; the Sequence, with its “Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath”) chant; the Offertory, a prayer to Christ to deliver the soul from eternal death; the Sanctus, or praise to the Lord; the Benedictus blessing; the Agnus Dei, another prayer for peace for the deceased; and Communion, with the “Lux Aeterna,” a prayer for perpetual light for the deceased.

And in the end, the widow Constanze was too clever for the Count. She had the Requiem performed publicly in a memorial for Mozart, ensuring that Walsegg couldn’t claim authorship later.

(c) Jeremy Reynolds 2024