Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)

One fine day in the autumn [of 1791] his wife drove with him to the Prater. As soon as they had reached a solitary spot, and were seated together, Mozart began to speak of death, and said that he was writing this Requiem for himself. She tried to talk him out of these gloomy fancies, but in vain, and his eyes filled with tears as he answered her, ‘No, no, I am but too well convinced that I cannot last long. I have certainly been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this idea.’

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Stendhal’s account of the Requiem has acquired legendary status: it is substantially untrue
One day, when he was plunged in a profound reverie, he heard a carriage stop at his door. A stranger was announced, who requested to speak to him. A person was introduced, handsomely dressed, of dignified and impressive manners. ‘I have been commissioned, Sir, by a man of considerable importance, to call upon you.’ – ‘Who is he interrupted Mozart. ‘He does not wish to be known.’ – ‘Well, what does he want?’- ‘He has just lost a person whom he tenderly loved, and whose memory will be eternally dear to him. He is desirous of annually commemorating this mournful event by a solemn service, for which he requests you to compose a requiem.”
Mozart was forcibly struck by this discourse, by the grave manner in which it was uttered, and by the air of mystery in which the whole was involved. He engaged to write the Requiem. The stranger continued, ‘Employ all your genius on this work; it is destined for a connoisseur.’ – ‘So much the better.’ – ‘What time do you require?’- ‘A month.’- ‘Very well: in a month’s time I shall return. What price do you set on your work?’ ‘A hundred ducats.’ The stranger counted them on the table, and disappeared.
Mozart remained lost in thought for some time; he then suddenly called for pen, ink, and paper, and, in spite of his wife’s entreaties, began to write. This rage for composition continued several days. He wrote day and night, with an ardour which seemed continually to increase; but his constitution, already in a state of great debility, was unable to support this enthusiasm: one morning, he fell senseless, and was obliged to suspend his work. Two or three days after, when his wife sought to divert his mind from the gloomy presages which occupied it, he said to her abruptly, ‘It is certain that I am writing this Requiem for myself; it will serve for my funeral service. Nothing could remove this impression from his mind.
As he went on, he felt his strength diminish from day to day, and the score advanced slowly. The month which he had fixed being expired, the stranger again made his appearance. ‘I have found it impossible,’ said Mozart, ‘to keep my word’ – ‘Do not give yourself any uneasiness,’ replied the stranger; ‘what further time do you require?’ – ‘Another month. The work has interested me more than I expected, and I have extended it much beyond what I at first designed.’-‘In that case, it is but just to increase the premium; here are fifty ducats more.’-‘Sir,’ said Mozart, with increasing astonishment, ‘who, then, are you?’ – ‘That is nothing to the purpose; in a month’s time I shall return.’
Mozart immediately called one of his servants, and ordered him to follow this extraordinary personage, and find out who he was; but the man failed for want of skill, and returned without being able to trace him.
Poor Mozart was then persuaded that he was no ordinary being: that he had a connexion with the other world, and was sent to announce to him his approaching end. He applied himself with the more ardor to his Requiem, which he regarded as the most durable monument of his genius. While thus employed, he was seized with the most alarming fainting fits, but the work was at length completed before the expiration of the month. At the time appointed, the stranger returned, but Mozart was no more!
His career was as brilliant as it was short. He died before he had completed his thirty-sixth year; but in this short space of time he has acquired a name which will never perish, so long as feeling hearts are to be found.

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It was late in the evening of 5 December 1791, that his sister-in-law [Sophie Haibl] returned, but only to witness his dissolution. Her own account may now be given.
‘How shocked was I, when my sister, usually so calm and self-possessed, met me at the door, and in a half-distracted manner said, “God be thanked that you are here. Since you left he has been so ill that I never expected him to outlive this day. Should he be so again he will die tonight. Go to him, and see how he is.” As I approached his bed he called to me – “It is well that you are here: you must stay tonight and see me die.” I tried as far as I was able to banish this impression, but he replied, “The taste of death is already on my tongue – I taste death: and who will be near to support my Constance if you go away?” I returned to my mother for a few moments to give her intelligence, for she was anxiously waiting, as she might else have supposed the fatal event already over; and then hurried back to my disconsolate sister. Süssmayr was standing by the bedside, and on the counterpane lay the Requiem, concerning which Mozart was still speaking and giving directions. He now called his wife, and made her promise to keep his death secret for a time from every one but Albrechtsberger, that he might thus have an advantage over other candidates for the vacant office of kapellmeister to St
Stephen’s. His desire in this respect was gratified, for Albrechtsberger received the appointment. As he looked over the pages of the Roper the last time, he said, with tears in his eyes. “Did I not tell you that I was writing this for myself?”
On the arrival of the physician, Dr Closset, cold applications were wered to his burning head, a process endured by the patient with extreme shuddering, and which brought on the delirium from which he never recovered. He remained in this state for two hours, and at midnight expired.
Franz Xaver Süssimayr (1766-1603); composer, pupil of Mozart whose Requiem he eventually completed.

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A contemporary musician (Salieri must be meant) did not scruple to say to his acquaintances: ‘It is a pity to lose so great a genius, but a good thing for us that he is dead. For if he had lived much longer, we should not have earned a crust of bread by our compositions.

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At three o’clock in the afternoon of 6 December the corpse of Mozart received the benediction in the transept chapel on the north side of St Stephen’s Church. A violent storm of snow and rain was raging, and the few friends who were assembled-among them Van Swieten. Salieri, Sussmayr, Kapellm. Roser, and the violoncellist Orsler stood under umbrellas round the bier, which was then carried through the Schulerstrasse to the churchyard of St Mark’s. The storm continued to rage so fiercely that the mourners decided upon turning back before they reached their destination, and not a friend stood by when the body of Mozart was lowered into the grave. For reasons of economy no grave had been bought, and the corpse was consigned to a common vault, made to contain from fifteen to twenty coffins, which was dug up about every ten years and filled anew: no stone marked the resting-place of Mozart.

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I was beside myself,’ wrote Haydn from London. ‘I only regret that before his death he could not convince the English, who walk in darkness in this respect, of his greatness… I shall make every possible effort to promote his works for the widow’s benefit: I wrote to the poor woman and told her that when her favorite son reaches the necessary age I shall give him composition lessons to the very best of my ability and at no cost,’

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When Mendelssohn visited Italy in 1831, he had an introduction to the wife of the military commandant at Milan, Dorothea von Ertmann, the intimate friend of Beethoven. Her name is immortalized on the title-page of the Sonata, Op. 101. Mendelssohn was invited to her house, and had played her own special sonata and a great deal of Beethoven besides, when a little modest Austrian official* who had been sitting in the corner came up and said timidly, ‘Ach! Wollen sie nicht etwas vom lieben Vater spielen?’ (Won’t you play something of my dear father’s?)
Mendelssohn: ‘Who was your father?’
Austrian official: ‘Ach! Mozart.’
‘And,’ said Mendelssohn, ‘I did play Mozart for him, and for the rest of the evening.

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At an Augarten concert [in 1799, Beethoven and J. B. Cramer]† were walking together and hearing a performance of Mozart’s Pianoforte Concerto in C minor (K491); Beethoven suddenly stood still and, directing his companion’s attention to the exceedingly simple but equally beautiful motive which is first introduced towards the end of the piece, exclaimed, ‘Cramer, Cramer! We shall never be able to do anything like that!’