In November, being an ardent member of the Masonic brotherhood, as were also Beethoven and Haydn, believing as they did in the freedom and brotherhood of man, he wrote a cantata and led it himself at his lodge. Ill and despondent, he continued work on the Requiem, finished while he was dying. All during this time he longed to hear his Magic Flute which was constantly given at the opera house, and like a child, he would say: “I guess they have just reached this or that point,” and he would hum the music as he thought it must be progressing at the opera. The day before he died, Roser, his friend, played some of the opera on the harpsichord to cheer him.
The afternoon before his death, after finishing the Requiem, he and some of his friends sang it. At the Lacrymosa, Mozart wept. He said to Sussmayer, his friend, “Did I not say I was writing the Requiem for myself?” Later he asked his wife to tell Albrechtsberger of his approaching end, so that he would be ready to take his post at St. Stephen’s. During his last hours he was informed that he had been made director of all the music at St. Stephen’s with a salary that for the first time in his life would have enabled him to live in comfort, but it was too late! At midnight, on December 5th, 1791, he lost consciousness and fell into a slumber from which he did not awake. His wife was so overcome with grief that she was too ill to attend his funeral. A few faithful friends followed the coffin, but had to turn back as a furious tempest was raging and they could not force their way through the driving rain and sleet. Thus passed one of the rarest spirits that has ever brought Music to earth, and he lies in a grave unknown and unmarked. In 1859, the city of Vienna erected a monument to his memory near the spot where he was probably buried.
Sad, sad end for so great a man! He and Raphael, Keats and Shelley and Jesus, Himself, all died early in their careers and yet had time to leave the world a finer and more lovely place for us.
Mozart Prince of Musicians
Why do we celebrate Mozart in what seems to be exaggerated terms?
Where Handel was a great epic composer, Bach a great religious composer, Gluck, a dramatic writer, Haydn more versatile than many of the others yet not dramatic, Beethoven lyric, free and hating all tyrannies, in Mozart we have great opera, great masses, great epics, symphonies and chamber music quartets and quintets.
The list of his works is gigantic! How he was able in the short span of his life, to write down so much, to say nothing of composing them, is a problem that cannot be solved!
With his usual tendency not to finish work until the last minute, he wrote the overture to Don Giovanni the night before the first performance. He composed and scored it for orchestra in less time that it took the copyists to copy the parts, and the audience was forced to wait almost an hour until Mozart appeared at the conductor’s stand to direct the unrehearsed overture. When the curtain rose on the first act Mozart said, “The overture went off very well on the whole, although a good many notes certainly fell under the desks!”
Mozart promised a group of country dances to a count, but failed to keep his word. The count invited him, putting dinner time an hour ahead. When Mozart arrived he was shown into a room, was given music paper, quills and ink and was asked to compose, then and there, four country dances to be performed the next evening. In a half hour’s time he wrote the entire orchestra score and earned his dinner!
Mozart could be not only humorous, but tragic in the same work, making his humor seem greater by contrast. Don Giovanni and the Magic Flute could be called tragic-comedies they are so rich in both moods.