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Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart (17561791)
Requiem (KV 626) 1791
Courtesy of the Music Department Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
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Mozarts
Requiem
1791
The
circumstances surrounding the creation of Mozart's
Requiem have given rise over two centuries
to romantic exaggerations and wild speculation.
The commission, delivered to Mozart by a 'grey
messenger'portrayed as a harbinger of the
composer's own premature deathwas already
the stuff of legend in the nineteenth century
and became the basis for dramatic works on Mozart's
life in the twentieth century. While the reality
is somewhat more prosaic, the Requiem itself
remains one of the most personal, impassioned
and profound of Mozart's works.
In
the summer of 1791, Mozart received a commission
for a Requiem Mass from an intermediary of Count
Franz von Walsegg-Stuppach. The Count planned
to have the Requiem performed on the anniversary
of his wife's death. Mozart was at this time also
engaged in the composition and premiere of the
operas La Clemenza di Tito and The Magic
Flute. At his death on 5 December 1791 Mozart
had only been able to complete the first movement
of the Requiem's scorethe Introit: Requiemand
to write part scores of nine of the following
13 sections.
Mozart's
wife Constanze arranged for Joseph Eybler and
then Franz Xaver Süssmayr to complete the
work. The final score also contained the handwriting
of a third collaborator, Jakob Freystaedtler.
The
text at the head of this last page of Mozart's
autograph scorethe Arbeitspartitur'Fac
eas Domine de morte transire ad vitam' is
translated into English as 'Let, o Lord, souls
enter through death into eternal life'. The words
that can be seen written twice at the right hand
edge of the page'quam olim da capo'are
instructions that, in a performance, the fugue
from the 'Domine' can be repeated with
the beginning of the text 'Quam olim Abrahae
promisisti' ('As once you promised Abraham').
In 1958 a piece of the lower right hand page containing
the words 'quam olim da capo' was torn
off and stolen, and has been lost ever since.
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