Whole volumes have been written about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem. About the mysterious commission; about the body of a still young man, exhausted by work and life; about the race against time… Mozart never learned the name of the person who commissioned the piece, and that person – as we now know – was Count Franz von Walsegg: a musical amateur who used to order and then claim authorship of other composers’ works. For many years, this led to countless speculations surrounding the circumstances of the commission – one of the most famous interpretations of this episode can be found in Miloš Forman’s film Amadeus.

Mozart, despite receiving an advance payment, did not begin work on the piece right away. In fact, he hardly had time for it, as he was simultaneously composing the operas The Magic Flute and La clemenza di Tito. When he finally began working on the mass, his health deteriorated. Stricken by illness, in the final days of his life, he dictated successive phrases of the Requiem to his friend – Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Between consciousness and fever, he composed with the belief that this would be a funeral mass for his own soul. He died on December 4, 1791, at the age of 35, while dictating the eighth bar of the exquisite Lacrimosa. Süssmayr had to complete the sketches left by his friend. The original Mozart phrases – Dies Irae, Confutatis, and Tuba mirum (as well as Lacrimosa) – bear witness to the composer’s genius. Meanwhile, the demonic Sanctus, the melancholic Benedictus, and the romantically tinged Agnus Dei are Süssmayr’s work. The successor achieved a level worthy of his master.

From the recollections of Benedikt Schack, a friend of the Mozart household, we learn that in December 1791, a vocal rehearsal of parts of the work took place. Reportedly, upon hearing the first bars of Lacrimosa, Mozart burst into tears, set down the score, and eleven hours later, around one in the morning, he died… “Here I hear the voice of Mozart himself,” wrote the eminent Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt in his Musical Dialogue, “praying with the utmost fervor, trusting like a sick child looking up at its mother, and in that moment all its fears vanish.” Yes, listening to Mozart’s Requiem – those brilliant phrases born of inspired genius – we may believe that there is no fear when death comes. If only for a moment.