Mozart, as he worked on his last composition, The Requiem, which was left unfinished, wrote: “Someone has given me a poison. (He specified which one.) They have precisely calculated the time of my death and it is myself for whom I am writing this Requiem.”
He died at age 35 on 5 December 1791, the Requiem unfinished, and, later, Antonio Salieri, a court composer Mozart eclipsed, was suspected as his murderer, at least in Peter Shaffer’ss stage play and the subsequent 1984 movie, both of which inspired by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’ss opera and Aleksandr Pushkin¼’s drama. Circumstances made the plot obvious, if dubious.
Scholars give short shrift to the poisoning theory, and yet we have Mozart’s own testimony to the contrary. Of course, we also have Mozart writing of having come to terms with death, learning to love it as life’s goal, and saying, “…death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.” It’s evident he was undergoing esoteric initiation, perhaps into Freemasonry, during this period, which may make his talk of death somewhat symbolic.
There is also the tradition of memento mori, or keeping death in mind, to remind us life is short so we may use our time more wisely. Skulls on desks in portraits, often with the poser’s hand on them; the subject holding a skull; or a shadowy figure lurking in the background were common elements in art, all resonating with Hamlet as he held Yorick’s skull for Horatio to see.
This tradition, too, may have given rise to what seems to us now a morbid fascination with death.
And he did die young, stricken suddenly, and he did complain of having been poisoned, but it was alcohol and other drugs that wore him out, as with so many of any generation’s crop of creative people. Yet he wasn’t entirely a wastrel, either, as his own words testify: “People make a mistake who think that my art has come easily to me. Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose work I have not studied over and over.”
When confronted with his own genius, he once wrote, “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” He meant love of what one does.
His protÈgÈ, Franz S¸ssmayr, completed The Requiem after Mozart’s death, and this is generally considered the preferred version, but other completions exist and receive occasional performances. That his tone is maintained in any of them is a tribute to Mozart’s overarching brilliance of conception and execution of balanced form.
Economy, grace, and style are hallmarks of Mozart’s later works and The Requiem is an exemplar of these. Let it be a reminder that such attributes are always wanted, no matter the art or endeavor. They are never in surplus.
Let The Requiem inspire us not to mourn, but to revel in life amd to live it with economy, grace, and style.
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