Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 - The Story
von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
A Mysterious Commission
In the summer of 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart received an unusual proposal: a Requiem Mass (a Mass for the dead) to be composed under conditions of strict secrecy[1]. A mysterious, black-clad messenger delivered a bound copy of the Latin Requiem text (a standard liturgical funeral Mass text) along with a note insisting that the composer not seek to learn his patron’s identity[1]. Mozart, who was perpetually short on funds, was intrigued and flattered by the anonymous commission and accepted it readily[1]. He received a generous payment up front – accounts vary, but an initial sum of 50 to 100 ducats was delivered – which was a welcome boon for the cash-strapped composer[2][3]. The patron’s insistence on anonymity added an aura of mystery: Mozart agreed not to ask questions, and in return he had free rein on the timeline and style of the piece.
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Only later did history reveal that the secret patron was Count Franz von Walsegg, a young Austrian nobleman[4]. Walsegg’s 20-year-old wife had died on 14 February 1791, and he sought a Requiem to honor her memory on the first anniversary of her death[5]. The count was known for commissioning works from prominent composers and then attempting to pass them off as his own at private performances[6]. This explains the secrecy: Walsegg sent intermediaries (including the so-called “grey” or black-clad messenger) so that Mozart would remain unaware of who ordered the piece[6]. For Mozart, however, the transaction was straightforward – a well-paid assignment during a year when he desperately needed income[7]. Whatever misgivings he might have had about the cloak-and-dagger commission were offset by the financial relief and the flattery of being sought out for such a monumental work.
The Final Year: Mozart’s Life in 1791
Mozart’s life in 1791 was a whirlwind of creative activity and personal strain. At 35 years old, he had experienced recent ups and downs. After a few financially difficult years, he was finally enjoying some success: that same year saw the completion of two operas, La Clemenza di Tito (composed for the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Prague) and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), which premiered in Vienna in late September 1791[8]. These works – one a serious Italian opera for royalty, the other a German singspiel full of Masonic symbolism – occupied Mozart through the summer and early fall. It was only after The Magic Flute opened on 30 September that he could turn his full attention to the commissioned Requiem[9]. By then, however, Mozart was physically and emotionally exhausted[10].
The composer’s health had been delicate for some time, and the frantic pace of 1791 worsened it. He had also recently become a father again – his wife Constanze gave birth to their sixth child in July 1791 – and the pressures of supporting a young family weighed on him. Mozart’s letters from this period reveal both enthusiasm for his projects and anxiety about money and illness[11]. He had hoped that writing a grand sacred work might bolster his reputation and even position him for a coveted post at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral (a post he had his eye on)[2]. Thus, despite his heavy workload, Mozart welcomed the Requiem commission as both financially and professionally opportune.
By the autumn of 1791, however, witnesses noted that Mozart looked unwell – pale and exhausted, with swelling and ongoing fevers[10]. He himself was aware of his declining health. Still, he pressed on determinedly with composition. Friends later recalled Mozart’s almost obsessive focus on the Requiem during these final weeks, as if he sensed time running short[12][13].
“Writing a Requiem for Myself”
As Mozart worked on the Requiem in October and November 1791, a shroud of eeriness seemed to surround the project. According to Constanze and others close to him, Mozart began to speak of the piece in morbid terms, convinced that the anonymous messenger was an omen of his own fate[14]. “I feel like I’m writing the Requiem for myself,” Mozart reportedly remarked[15]. This chilling admission, echoed in various forms by different sources, has become one of the enduring legends of the Requiem. It suggests that as his health deteriorated, Mozart came to believe he was literally composing his own funeral mass.
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Constanze later recounted that her husband was haunted by the mysterious commission. In one conversation, Mozart allegedly told her that the strange gray messenger seemed like a specter sent to herald his own death[16][17]. He spoke of “very strange thoughts” in connection to the stranger’s visit[18]. As his illness worsened, Mozart grew superstitious: “I am only too conscious… my end will not be long in coming: for sure, someone has poisoned me! I cannot rid my mind of this thought,” he wrote to Constanze in a moment of despair[19][20]. (Notably, this line was penned in 1789, during an earlier bout of illness, but it shows Mozart’s tendency to imagine a sinister cause for his symptoms[20].) Such statements fed later rumors that Mozart had been poisoned, though modern historians attribute his death to natural causes. At the time, however, Mozart’s fixation on death was very real. Constanze grew so alarmed that she took the Requiem manuscript away for a short period, hoping to ease his anxieties, but Mozart could not be kept from his “own” Requiem for long[21][22].
A section of a page from the manuscript of W.A. Mozart's Requiem, K 626. (1791), showing Mozart's heading for the first movement.
Through October and November, the composer labored whenever his strength allowed. He worked mostly from his bed, scoring movements in fragments. He completed the opening Introit (“Requiem aeternam”) fully, and sketched out the complex choral fugue of the Kyrie[23]. He then tackled the sequence of the Mass (the dramatic Dies Irae, Rex tremendae, Confutatis, etc.), and portions of the Offertory. But he was growing too weak to finish the job. The famous “Lacrimosa” – a movement whose first eight bars, filled with weeping string figures, are among the most poignant music Mozart ever wrote – broke off after only a few measures in Mozart’s draft, as if the composer literally could not continue[23]. This fragment would prove to be Mozart’s last notated music.
Mozart’s Last Days and Death
By late November 1791, Mozart was gravely ill. According to contemporary reports, he became bedridden on November 20 with high fever, severe fatigue, and painful swelling in his limbs[11]. Despite these symptoms (now thought to be from rheumatic fever or kidney disease, though the exact cause remains debated[24]), Mozart’s mind stayed on the Requiem. On December 4, 1791, sensing perhaps a brief rally in his condition, he invited a few close friends and family into his bedroom to sing through portions of the work-in-progress with him[25]. They gathered around the sick composer’s bed in the afternoon and ran through the completed sections in a small ensemble. Mozart himself tried to join in, reportedly singing the alto part of the Lacrimosa or another section[26]. But as the story goes, when faced with the heart-rending music and the reality that he might never finish it, Mozart burst into tears and could sing no more[26]. It was a scene as tragically operatic as any he had ever written – the genius composer, weakened and weeping, surrounded by music of mourning that he now believed was his own.
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That night Mozart’s condition rapidly deteriorated. In the early hours of December 5, 1791, just after midnight, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in his Vienna apartment, with Constanze at his side. He was 35 years old[27]. The Requiem was left unfinished on the desk. At the time of Mozart’s death, only the first movement (Introitus) was fully orchestrated and complete in score; the Kyrie and most of the sequence and offertory existed only as vocal parts and bass lines with hints of orchestration, and the Lacrimosa abruptly cut off where Mozart had stopped days earlier[23]. The final sections of the Requiem (Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei) had not been written at all yet.
Mozart’s death was a shock to Vienna’s musical world. Rumors flew that he had been poisoned – a theory fueled in part by Mozart’s own fearful words and by the rapid onset of his illness[20]. (Antonio Salieri, the court composer, was even falsely accused by gossip-mongers of having schemed against Mozart, an accusation Salieri vehemently denied[28].) In truth, there is no evidence of murder; most modern experts believe Mozart succumbed to natural illness, with acute rheumatic fever being a leading possibility[24]. He was buried in a simple grave in Vienna’s St. Marx Cemetery, as was common for someone of his social class. At a memorial service shortly after his death, the existing portions of the Requiem were performed in his honor – a poignant foreshadowing of how the music, commissioned by a stranger, indeed became Mozart’s own requiem.
Completing the Unfinished Requiem
Mozart died with the Requiem unfinished and the mystery patron still waiting. For the young widow Constanze Mozart, the priority quickly became salvaging the commission. She had received a substantial advance, and the agreement was that the work must be delivered completed for the final payment. Constanze feared that if the Count learned Mozart was dead and the Requiem incomplete, he might refuse to pay the remainder – or even demand his money back[29]. Desperate to secure her family’s financial future, Constanze moved swiftly to have the Requiem finished in secret.
She first approached one of Mozart’s colleagues, Joseph Eybler, to see if he would take on the task[30]. Eybler managed to orchestrate a few of the unfinished sections (notably parts of the Sequence), but ultimately felt unable to complete the composition. Constanze then turned to Franz Xaver Süssmayr, a 25-year-old composer who had been Mozart’s pupil and assistant[31][32]. Süssmayr had helped Mozart with minor tasks on La Clemenza di Tito and was intimately familiar with Mozart’s late style[33]. According to his own later account, Mozart had even discussed aspects of the Requiem with him in the final days[34]. Though some other composers in Vienna reportedly declined Constanze’s request – either out of humility or fear of being compared to Mozart’s genius[34] – Süssmayr agreed to complete the score.
Working with whatever sketches and instructions Mozart left, Süssmayr filled in the missing pieces of the Requiem. He composed the entirety of the Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei himself, and finished the Lacrimosa beyond bar 8[35][36]. He also stitched together the ending by reprising Mozart’s own Kyrie fugue to serve as a Communion (Lux aeterna), thus concluding the work in a cyclic way. By early 1792, Süssmayr had produced a complete score of the Requiem. In a bit of furtive showmanship, he even forged Mozart’s signature on the manuscript and dated it 1792, imitating Mozart’s handwriting so that the delivered piece would look entirely authentic[37].
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Constanze’s subterfuge succeeded. The completed Requiem was presented to Count Walsegg as Mozart’s final composition, with no mention of Süssmayr’s contributions[14]. The count paid the remaining fee, and for a time he believed he alone possessed the work he had commissioned. Walsegg apparently copied out the score in his own hand and, as planned, prepared to present the Requiem under his own name at a memorial concert for his late wife[38]. However, Constanze was determined that her husband receive credit (and that she might further benefit from the work’s fame). She quietly arranged a public performance of the completed Requiem before Walsegg could premiere it. On 2 January 1793, a mere year after Mozart’s funeral, a grand benefit concert was held in Vienna for Constanze’s profit, at which Mozart’s Requiem was performed in full[38]. The concert was organized by Baron Gottfried van Swieten, a prominent patron of Mozart’s, and attended by the Viennese public and musical elite[38]. By all accounts, the performance was a success and it established the Requiem as Mozart’s swan song in the public mind. (One report even suggests that Antonio Salieri – far from plotting against Mozart – may have conducted the orchestra at this benefit performance, lending his support to honor his late colleague[39].)
With that 1793 Vienna benefit, the secret was effectively out. Walsegg’s scheme to pass off the work as his own was foiled by the fact that many already knew of Mozart’s Requiem and had heard it performed[14]. Nonetheless, Walsegg went ahead and held a private performance on 14 December 1793 at his estate in Wiener Neustadt, with the Requiem played in memory of his wife two years after her death[40]. A plaque in Wiener Neustadt records that occasion, naming Walsegg in connection to the Requiem. Afterward, Constanze also arranged for the Requiem to be published in 1799 under Mozart’s name, which further ensured that Mozart received posthumous glory for the work (and that Constanze could continue to earn money from it)[41]. For decades, the public was kept unaware of Süssmayr’s role; Constanze initially perpetuated the polite fiction that every note of the Requiem was Mozart’s, knowing that a “last masterpiece by Mozart” would generate far more interest (and income) than one completed by a pupil[41]. It was only many years later – in 1839 – that Constanze finally publicly acknowledged Süssmayr’s substantial contribution to finishing the Requiem[42].
Legend vs. Reality: Mozart’s Requiem and Amadeus
The dramatic circumstances of Mozart’s Requiem – the anonymous commission, the composer’s death, the secrecy and subterfuge – have given rise to many myths and legends. Nowhere have these been more famously dramatized than in the 1984 Oscar-winning film Amadeus, directed by Miloš Forman and based on Peter Shaffer’s play. Amadeus weaves an engrossing narrative in which Mozart’s rival, Antonio Salieri, schemes to manipulate Mozart into writing the Requiem and effectively “work him to death,” all while concealing his identity in a ghostly gray cloak. It’s a compelling story – but it takes significant liberties with the truth. Shaffer himself admitted his script was “a fantasia based on fact… not a screen biography of Mozart”[43]. Indeed, many elements of the Requiem’s portrayal in Amadeus are fiction, intertwined with just a few grains of truth.
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What the movie gets right:Amadeus accurately conveys that Mozart did receive a strange anonymous commission for a Requiem Mass, and that he became deeply enmeshed in writing it during the final days of his life. The film captures Mozart’s feverish obsession and the idea that the Requiem became, in effect, his own funeral music – a notion rooted in accounts from Mozart’s family[14]. The atmosphere of mystery and dread surrounding the commission is also grounded in reality: Mozart truly did not know who the patron was, and the figure of a “masked stranger” haunting Mozart’s doorstep has been part of the Requiem lore since Constanze’s early tellings[14]. The movie’s powerful final scenes, in which a dying Mozart strains to finish the Lacrimosa, reflect the genuine pathos of Mozart’s last hours (with some creative license). And in a poetic sense, as one commentator noted, “the Requiem he wrote for a stranger became his own” – Mozart died leaving the work to the world as his epitaph[44].
What is guesswork or wrong: The famous rivalry between Salieri and Mozart is hugely exaggerated in the film. In reality, Salieri was only about six years older than Mozart and was a respected composer in Vienna; the two men were professional colleagues who on occasion even cooperated musically[45]. Far from being enemies, they had a cordial relationship – for example, in October 1791 (just weeks before Mozart fell ill), Salieri attended The Magic Flute and applauded enthusiastically at each number, to Mozart’s delight[46]. There is no evidence that Salieri bore Mozart the murderous envy depicted in Amadeus. The notion that Salieri plotted to commission the Requiem in disguise and poison Mozart comes from an old legend, not historical fact[47]. In truth, Count Walsegg was behind the commission, not Salieri[48], and Walsegg’s motives were self-serving (plagiarizing a composition) rather than homicidal.
The film’s dramatic device of Salieri helping Mozart by candlelight to transcribe the Requiem on his deathbed is also invention. Salieri was not present at Mozart’s demise and had no involvement in composing the Requiem[39]. If anyone took dictation from Mozart in his final hours, it may have been Süssmayr – but historical evidence for even that is shaky. What is known is that Süssmayr completed the score after Mozart died, working from Mozart’s sketches and his own memory, not from live bedside dictation[49][35]. Likewise, the film’s implication that Salieri directly or indirectly caused Mozart’s death (by poisoning or driving him into collapse) is unfounded. Rumors of Salieri poisoning Mozart did circulate in Vienna (even Salieri, in the throes of dementia decades later, mumbled something about being Mozart’s “assassin”)[50]. But these were rumors amplified by creative works – notably an 1830 play by Alexander Pushkin, Mozart and Salieri, which first popularized the tale of a jealous Salieri murdering Mozart[47]. Shaffer in Amadeus built upon that fictional premise. Historians, however, dismiss the poisoning theory as just one of many colorful hypotheses. Mozart’s own doctor never suspected foul play, and modern analyses of Mozart’s reported symptoms point to illness rather than intrigue[24].
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In the end, the true story of Mozart’s Requiem is dramatic enough without embellishment: a gravely ill genius striving to complete a masterpiece under bizarre circumstances, a widow scrambling to protect her husband’s legacy, and a secretive nobleman’s plan undone by the force of Mozart’s posthumous fame. It is a tale of art, death, and mystery that has captivated audiences for over two centuries. Amadeus may take creative license, but it has familiarized millions with the haunting image of Mozart pouring his soul into the Requiem as his life ebbed away. The real Mozart did just that – though not with Salieri at his side, and not with murder in the air, but with a profound sense of his own mortality. Today, when we listen to the sombre majesty of the Requiem’s opening measures or the fiery fear of its Dies Irae, we are hearing the very notes Mozart wrote in his final days. The Requiem stands as a requiem not only for Count Walsegg’s departed wife, but for Mozart himself – a masterwork born of tragedy, and the subject of one of music history’s most intriguing true stories.
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Sources:
Mozart’s letters and contemporaries’ memoirs; Constanze Mozart’s 1790s interviews (via biographers Friedrich Rochlitz and Franz Niemetschek); Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon; Requiem (Mozart) – Wikipedia[5][14]; Classical-Music.com[1][4][8]; California Symphony[48][19][11]; West Australian Symphony Orchestra[51][20]; Residentie Orkest Hague[52][38]; Sofia Philharmonic[26][53].
- [1][4][8][10][12][13][29][31][33][35][36][40] A ghostly commission: the dark legend of Mozart’s Requiem
- [2][9][15][38][52] "I feel like I'm writing the Requiem for myself" - Residentie Orkest - RO
- [3][5][14][16][17][18][21][22][23][37][41][47] Requiem (Mozart) - Wikipedia
- [6][7][11][19][24][25][27][28][43][44][45][46][48][50] Mozart Movie Myths - The California Symphony
- [20][32][39][51] The Many Myths of Mozart’s Requiem - WASO
- [26][30][34][42][49][53] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Requiem (K.626) – Sofia Philharmonic
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