The accession of Leopold II. to the throne of Austria brought no improvement in the composer's circumstances, for the new Emperor's tastes differed widely from those of Joseph, and it soon became evident that those who had enjoyed the favour of the latter had but little to hope from his successor. Mozart applied for the post of second kapellmeister, and also asked to be allowed to teach the young Princes; but both requests were refused. Thinking that the coronation of the Emperor at Frankfort might afford him a favourable opportunity for an artistic tour, Mozart, who was obliged to pawn his plate in order to procure the necessary funds, started for that city on September 26, and gave a concert of his own compositions in the Stadt-Theatre on October 14. But neither here nor at Mannheim and Munich, which he visited on his return journey, did he make much profit, and he returned to Vienna with little or no improvement in his circumstances. Here he had the pain of parting with one of his dearest friends, Joseph Haydn, who was just leaving for London with Salomon, who had engaged him for a series of concerts.* Salomon also entered into negotiations with Mozart for a similar series in the following year, but before that time the composer was no more. He and Haydn never met again.
* It was for these concerts that Haydn composed his best-known and finest symphonies—those called in this country the "Salomon Set."
In May, 1791, an old acquaintance of Mozart's, Emanuel Schickaneder, the manager of a small theatre at Vienna, being in embarrassed circumstances, proposed to Mozart to write an opera on a magic subject, of which he, Schickaneder, would prepare the libretto. Mozart, always ready to help a friend, agreed, though with some little hesitation, saying that he had never written a magic opera. The work was Die Zauberflöte, and Mozart began its composition at once. Various causes interfered with its rapid progress. It was while working at it that the first signs of the breaking up of his vital powers showed themselves. He suffered from fainting fits, and in June he was obliged to suspend work on the opera and go to Baden, a suburb of Vienna, to recruit his health.
It was while engaged on the composition of Die Zauberflöte that Mozart received from a mysterious stranger the commission to write a Requiem Mass. He was asked to name his own terms, but was enjoined to make no effort to discover who it was that had ordered the work. Mozart, who had written no church music since his Mass in C minor eight years before, eagerly accepted the commission, and began work at once. It is now ascertained beyond a doubt that the individual who visited Mozart was the steward of a certain Count Walsegg, an amateur musician who desired to be thought a great composer, and who actually copied the score of the Requiem and had it performed as his own work.
Mozart's work on the Zauberflöte and the Requiem were alike interrupted in August by a commission which it was needful to execute at once. This was the composition of an opera for Prague, to be performed there on the occasion of the coronation of the Emperor Leopold II. as King of Bohemia. The libretto selected was Metastasio's La Clemenza di Tito, which had been already set to music by several eminent composers. As the coronation was to take place in the following month, Mozart had but little time for composition; according to Jahn, the opera was completed in eighteen days. Its first performance took place on September 6, and was not a success. Mozart, who was in bad health when he arrived in Prague, and who had become still worse through his arduous exertions in getting the work ready in time for the performance, was greatly depressed at its failure.
Returning to Vienna in September, with health and spirits alike failing him, Mozart resumed work on Die Zauberflöte, which was produced on the 30th of the same month, the composition of the overture and the march which opens the second act having been only completed two days previously. Though the success of the first performance was less than had been anticipated, the public soon began to appreciate its beauties; it was given twenty-four times in the following month and reached its hundredth performance in a little more than a year.
PART OF THE SCORE OF THE "DE PROFUNDIS." (British Museum.)
As soon as the opera was off his mind, Mozart returned to his still incomplete Requiem, a work which now engrossed all his attention and energy. In his enfeebled and depressed state he formed the idea that he was writing the Requiem for himself, and had a firm conviction that he had been poisoned. By the advice of his doctor his wife took away the score from him, and a temporary improvement resulted, which enabled him to write a small cantata for a masonic festival—the last work which he entered in the thematic catalogue already mentioned. At his request his wife returned him the score of the Requiem, but as soon as he resumed work upon it all the unfavourable symptoms returned with increased violence, and partial paralysis set in. In the latter part of November he took to his bed, from which he was never to rise again. By a sad irony of fate, it was during his last illness that fortune smiled upon him for the first time: some of the Hungarian nobility joined to assure him of an annual income of 1,000 florins, while music publishers at Amsterdam gave him commissions for compositions which would have insured him against want for the future. But all came too late for the dying composer, and his last hours were embittered by the thought of leaving his wife and children unprovided for at the very time when he would have been able to support them in comfort. To the last his mind was full of his unfinished Requiem, and on the afternoon before his death, he had the score laid on his bed, and the music sung by his friends, he himself taking the alto part. When they reached the opening bars of the "Lacrymosa," Mozart burst into a violent fit of weeping, and the score was laid aside. In the evening the physician told Mozart's pupil, Süssmayr, in confidence that there was nothing more to be done; but he ordered cold bandages to be applied to the head, which brought on such convulsions that Mozart lost consciousness; he never recovered it, but died at one o'clock on the morning of December 5, 1791. He was buried the next day in the churchyard of St. Marx in so violent a storm that the mourners all turned back before reaching the graveyard, where the great composer was laid, not in a grave of his own, but in that allotted to paupers. When the widow was sufficiently recovered from the first shock to be able to go to the burial-ground to look for the grave, a new sexton was there who knew nothing about the matter, and the exact spot under which Mozart's remains rest has never been identified with certainty.