Dying to Discuss Mozart's Requiem
The Best Moments
Requiem in D minor, K. 626
I'm Mozart, and I'm glad to welcome you to the best moments of my Requiem. You'll hear the hushed Introitus, the restless Dies irae and the Lacrimosa, where my own writing stops after eight bars, and together they show you how this music moves from calm to terror to sorrow. Here on this site, my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces when you hear them, so come and test yourself with this Requiem.
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Eternal Rest, Slowly
I begin the Introitus in D minor at an Adagio pace, so nobody can accuse me of rushing you into the afterlife. The choir sings "Requiem aeternam", which means eternal rest, and I gave the orchestra two basset horns and two bassoons instead of flutes or oboes, so the whole room sounds like it's wearing dark clothes.
The Day of Wrath Arrives Without Knocking
I mark the Dies irae Allegro assai, which is my polite way of telling the orchestra and the choir to hurry up and look worried. The sound is fiery and agitated, and I only left the voices and the bass line on the page, so it falls to other musicians to fill in the flames.
Eight Bars and Then Silence
I wrote the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa, the last section of the Sequence, and then my manuscript simply stops. It's a famous case of a composer leaving off mid-sentence, and I'd call it the world's longest pause if others hadn't completed the rest for me.
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Eight bars into the Lacrimosa, my pen stopped, but the music didn't stop with it. My pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed the work, and on 2 January 1793 it was heard complete in Vienna, at a concert held to help my wife Constanze. It still moves me that a piece I left unfinished went on to be sung by so many people in so many places. Did you enjoy going through the best moments of Requiem with me? I hope you found a few places in it that you'll want to come back to. There is still a lot of Requiem left to explore. The Tuba mirum, the Recordare and the Confutatis each have a character of their own, and I haven't said a word yet about the Sanctus, the Benedictus, the Agnus Dei or the Communio. People also still debate how much of those later movements follows my instructions and how much is Süssmayr's own, and I find that question as fascinating as anyone does. If you'd like to hear more, I invite you to click on the links provided and carry on exploring Requiem. A full performance takes about 50 minutes, so put the kettle on and settle in, because the music is worth the time.