Description
Three arrangements including Ave Verum Corpus and the Lacrimosa from theRequiem. During the year 1771 when Mozart was 15 years old, he and his father Leopold were touring Italy which was at that time the most formi dable citadel of the music world. In the following four years the young Mozart was received at the homes and villas of Italy's aristocracy. He met the most famous musicians of the time including Niccolo Piccinni, operatic rival to Gluck, and Padre Martini from whom he was to benefit fromstudies in counterpoint. He also met many noted male soprano singers an d for one, the celebrated Venanzio Rauzzini he wrote, in 1773 the motet Exsultate Jubilate from which comes the well known Alleluia. At the endof his life only 19 years later in Vienna, 1791, Mozart was very ill an d working on a number of massive works such as the operas The Magic Flute, and Titus, also the Requiem. Titus was completed in 18 nerve-shattering days, as it had to be performed in Prague in September 1791. At its premiere it was a complete flop. This affected the now overworked, almostpenniless composer's spirit and he returned to Vienna suffering from me ntal and physical exhaustion. Rest was denied him. The Magic Flute had to be finished for its premier on September 30th, 1791. The task of the Requiem still faced him. In this weakened state Mozart thought that he was in fact writing his own requiem, reading evil omens into the commissioning of the work. He thought someone had calculated the precise time of his death, and was thus troubled with sombre thoughts. He completed the first two of the twelve parts. The next six parts were in an unfinished state and his manuscript ceased at the Lacrimosa. Sí_ssmayer, who was working closely with Mozart at the time, was given the task of finishing the Requiem. Ave Verum Corpus is also one of his final works. It is a setting of an anonymous hymn, written as a motet for Anton Stoll the choirmaster at Baden in June 1791. Mozart was a composer of great genius who by the young age of 21 had not only composed a vast quantity of music - operas, symphonies, string quartets, church music, concertos and piano works, but was also a virtuoso performer on a number of instruments. He died aged 36 on December 5th. His wife, Constanza, had very little money and was obliged to give her dead husband the cheapest possible funeral. There was a short ceremony the following day at St. Stephen's Cathedral,at with end of which a funeral waggon was waiting to take the lonely co ffin on its last journey to the cemetery of St. Marx, a good hour's walkfrom the centre of Vienna. He was buried in a paupers' grave, with none of his friends and family present.