Mozart`s Requiem and a wily Count

The final work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his Requiem in D Minor composed in 1791, is widely regarded as being among his finest, despite the fact that it was left incomplete at his death.

Mozart only completed the Introit and Kyrie, although he had done enough work on most of the other sections for them to be completed by his pupil Franz Xaver Sussmayr, who also wrote the Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei based on little more than general ideas gleaned from conversations with Mozart.

Stories have arisen over the years concerning the reasons behind Mozart writing this work. Some have wondered if Mozart knew that he was dying and that he was writing the work as his own Requiem.

However, it is generally accepted that Mozart was working to a commission brought to him by a messenger who refused to tell him who the message was from. All Mozart knew was that he would be paid well and that the Requiem was to commemorate the loss of a loved one.

It is now known that the commissioner was Count Franz von Walsegg and that the loved one was his wife Anna, who had died not long before.

But why the secrecy? This was because the Count was a bit of a con-artist. He like to pretend that he was a great composer who would have works played in his own home that he claimed to have written himself although this was never the case. It says something about his character that he would even play this game when the work was a Requiem for his own dead wife.

As it happened, Count Franz did not get away with it on this occasion. By the time that the completed work was delivered to him and he was able to get it performed at his home it had already been performed in public – the completed parts were heard only five days after Mozart’s death at a memorial service for the composer, and the whole Requiem was performed in Vienna at a benefit concert for Mozart’s widow Constanze.

At least Count Franz was honest enough to pay the agreed fee for the work. That was the reason why cash-strapped Constanze had been so keen to get Sussmayr to finish what her husband had started. Music lovers ever since have had cause to be grateful to all those concerned, including the rascally Count Franz.

© John Welford