Mozart — Requiem
Published in
3 min readApr 1, 2016
The final masterpiece of one of the world’s best-loved composers — written as he himself lay dying.
When?
Composed in 1791, the same year that…
- The west coast of Australia is claimed for Great Britain by Commander George Vancouver. On the east coast, the Third Fleet reaches Sydney: 11 ships bringing more than 2000 convicts.
- In France, which has been in a state of revolution for two years, King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette are arrested while trying to flee the country; both would go to the guillotine two years later.
- The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin (then capital of Prussia) is completed, after three years of construction. It was designed as a monument to Peace.
- Vermont becomes the 14th state of the United States of America.
- And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart begins work on the Requiem, but dies two months later, leaving the work unfinished.
Fast Facts
- Mozart lived for only 35 years, but he composed over 600 pieces of music, including 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos, 23 string quartets, more than 30 violin sonatas, 17 mass settings and some of the world’s favourite operas: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute.
- He began his musical career early; by the time he was five, he was already writing short keyboard pieces. At six, he was performing on the harpsichord before royalty; at nine, he completed his first symphony. Much of his childhood and adolescence was spent on concert tours of Europe, appearing in dozens of cities including Paris, London, Brussels, The Hague, Milan and Florence.
- His first paid job was in his native Salzburg, working for the Archbishop, but servanthood did not agree with him, and eventually Mozart was literally kicked out of the Archbishop’s employment. He moved to Vienna where he freelanced as a pianist, composer and teacher; despite receiving considerable acclaim, he experienced financial hardship for much of his life, and was often in debt.
- A Requiem is a mass for the dead; the name comes from the first words of the text, ‘Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine’ (Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord). Unlike the regular Mass, which has a fixed set of texts for which a composer is expected to write music, the Requiem is more flexible, and different composers have chosen different parts of the text for their musical settings. One of the most dramatic (which Mozart includes in his Requiem) is the Sequence: a long poem describing the horrors of judgment day and pleading for God’s mercy.
