Requiem

Constanze Mozart was later to claim that her husband had a premonition that the Requiem was an omen of his own coming death, a suggestion to which one may attach little credence, however attractive the story may appear to the romantic imagination. Mozart seemed, in the summer of 1791, very much more cheerful than he had been, since his fortunes had taken an obvious turn for the better. In November, however, he was taken ill and within a fortnight he was dead, his death ascribed by his doctor to military fever, but the subject of much subsequent speculation. On 4th December he felt well enough to sing with his friends parts of the Requiem, which was still incomplete. Benedikt Schack, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, sang the soprano part in falsetto, Mozart sang alto, the violinist Hofer, husband of Constanze's sister Josefa, Queen of the Night, sang tenor and Franz Gerl, whose wife played Papagena, while he took the part of Sarastro, sang bass. It is said that Mozart burst into tears and could go no further when it came to the Lacrimosa, of which, incidentally, he had written on I y the first eight bars. This was in the afternoon. In the evening his condition worsened and he died at five minutes to one on the morning of 5th December, to be buried a day or so later in an unmarked grave. Mozart had completed the composition and scoring of the Introit and Kyrie, used by Süssmayer for the final Communion, Lux aeterna. The great Sequence, the Dies Irae, was sketched fairly fully up to the verse Lacrimosa, dies illa, a point at which Eybler too gave up his tentative work on the score. Süssmayer continued the Lacrimosa for a further 22 bars, completing it. Mozart had written the voice parts and bass of the Offertory, as he had for much of the Dies Irae, and this Süssmayer completed. Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei are the work of Süssmayer. The Czech conductor Zdenek Kosler studied under Karel Ancerl at the Prague Academy of Arts, and distinguished himself early in his career at the Besançon Conductors' Competition and in the Dimitri Mitropoulos Competition in New York. The first prize in the second of these enabled him to work as assistant-conductor with Leonard Bernstein for one year.