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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Requiem

KV 626

Composed: 1791

  1. I. Introitus
  2. o Requiem aeternam
  3. II. Kyrie
  4. III. Sequentia
  5. o Dies irae
  6. o Tuba mirum
  7. o Rex tremendae
  8. o Recordare
  9. o Confutatis
  10. o Lacrimosa
  11. IV. Offertorium
  12. o Domine Jesu
  13. o Hostias
  14. V. Sanctus
  15. VI. Benedictus
  16. VII. Agnus Dei
  17. VIII. Communio
  18. o Lux aeterna

The Requiem in D minor, K. 626, is a requiem mass by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart composed part of the Requiem in Vienna in late 1791, but it was unfinished at his death on 5 December the same year. A completed version dated 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who commissioned the piece for a Requiem service to commemorate the anniversary of his wife's death on 14 February.

The autograph manuscript shows the finished and orchestrated Introit in Mozart's hand, and detailed drafts of the Kyrie and the sequence Dies irae as far as the first eight bars of the "Lacrimosa" movement, and the Offertory. It cannot be shown to what extent Süssmayr may have depended on now lost "scraps of paper" for the remainder; he later claimed the Sanctus and Agnus Dei as his own. Walsegg probably intended to pass the Requiem off as his own composition, as he is known to have done with other works. This plan was frustrated by a public benefit performance for Mozart's widow Constanze. She was responsible for a number of stories surrounding the composition of the work, including the claims that Mozart received the commission from a mysterious messenger who did not reveal the commissioner's identity, and that Mozart came to believe that he was writing the requiem for his own funeral.