1791 Chronology:
1792
1793
Summer 1800: first published edition of the Requiem
From F. X. Niemetschek's biography of Mozart (1798), based on statements by Constanze:
[Before Mozart travelled to Prague], a letter without signature was brought to him by an unknown messenger, which with many flattering remarks contained an enquiry as to whether he would be willing to undertake to write a Requiem Mass . . . . Mozart, who never made the least move without his wife's knowledge, told her of this remarkable request, and at the same time expressed a wish to try his hand at this type of composition, the more so as the higher, pathetic forms of church music had always appealed to his genius. She advised him to accept the offer . . . .
From a letter of Constanze's sister to Constanze's second husband, G. N. Nissen, who also published a biography of Mozart, 1825:
My poor sister . . . begged me for heaven's sake to go to the priests at St. Peter's and ask one of those spiritual men to come . . . [but] I had great difficulty persuading one of those inhuman creatures to do it. Then I hurried to our mother, [and] persuaded her to go and spend the night with [another sister]. I ran back as fast as I could. Sissmaier [sic] was there at Mozart's bedside; and the well-known Requiem lay on the coverlet, and Mozart was explaining to him how he thought he should finish it after his death. . . . There was a long search for Glosett, the doctor, who was found in the theatre; but he had to wait till the play was over -- then he came and prescribed cold compresses on his burning head, and these gave him such a shock that he did not regain consciousness before he passed away. The last thing he did was to try and mouth the sound of the timpani in his Requiem; I can still hear it now.
From the obituary of Mozart's friend Benedikt Schak, 1827:
As soon as [Mozart] completed a number, he had it sung through, and played the instrumental accompaniment to it on his piano [actually a clavichord]. On the very eve of his death he had the score of the Requiem brought to his bed, and himself (it was two o'clock in the afternoon) sang the alto part; Schack, the family friend, sang the soprano line, as he had always previously done, Hofer, Mozart's brother-in-law, took the tenor, Gerle, later bass singer at the Mannheim Theatre, the bass. They were at the first bars of the Lacrimosa when Mozart began to weep bitterly, laid the score on one side, and eleven hours later, at one o'clock in the morning . . . departed this life. [Note: Schack and Gerle sang in the original production of "The Magic Flute"]
From an interview with Constanze by Mary and Vincent Novello, 1829:
It was about six months before Mozart died that he was impressed with the horrid idea that someone had poisoned him . . . he came to her one day and complained that he felt great pain in his loins and a general languor spreading over him . . . . The engagement for the Requiem hurt him much as it fed these sad thoughts that naturally resulted from his weak state of health.
The great success of a little Masonic ode which he wrote at this instant cheered his spirits for a time, but his melancholy forebodings again returned in a few days, when he again set to work on the Requiem. On one occasion he himself with Süssmayr and Madame Mozart tried over part of the Requiem together, but some of the passages so excited him that he could not refrain from tears, and was unable to proceed. . . .
Constanze also confirmed the truth of his having said only three days before he died, "I am appointed to a situation which will afford me leisure to write in future just what I like myself, and I feel I am capable of doing something worthy of the fame I have acquired, but instead I find that I must die."
From Franz Xaver Süssmayr's letter to the first publisher of the Requiem, 1800:
I owe too much to the teaching of that great man to stand by silently and allow a work to be published as his, when the greater part of it is mine, for I am convinced that my work is unworthy of his great name . . . . How it came about that I was entrusted with the completion of the Requiem . . . was as follows. Mozart's widow foresaw, no doubt, that there would be a demand for the works her husband left behind him; death surprised him while he was yet at work on the Requiem. The task of completing the work was therefore offered to several masters. Some were unable to undertake it because of the pressure of work; other, however, did not wish to hazard their own talent at the side of Mozart's. Eventually the task came to me, because it was known that while Mozart yet lived I had often sung and played through with him the movements that were already composed; that he had frequently talked to me about the detailed working of this composition, and explained to me the how and the wherefore of his instrumentation. The most that I can wish for is that I may have succeeded at least well enough for conoisseurs to be able to find here and there in it a few signs of his unforgettable teaching.
Of the "Requiem" [introit] with Kyrie, "Dies irae," and "Domine Jesu Christe," Mozart completed the 4 vocal parts and the figured bass; of the instrumentation, however, he indicated only the motivic idea here and there . . . . I finished the "Dies irae" from . . . "Judicandus homo reus" etc. The Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei were wholly composed by me; but, in order to give the work greater uniformity, I took the liberty of repeating the Kyrie fugue at the line "cum sanctis" etc.
From Constanze's letter to a family friend who had defended Mozart's authorship of the Requiem, 1827:
You should have had an answer from me long ago, had I not solemnly promised my husband, of blessed memory, not to utter a word in the debate about the Requiem, in order not to bring all these creatures about my ears. But now I can do no less than tell you, and all Mozart's friends, the true story of the Requiem, which is as follows: Mozart . . . often said to me that he undertook this work . . . with the greatest of pleasure, because [sacred music] was his favorite genre, and he would do it and compose it with such diligence that his friends and enemies alike would study it after his death: "if only I live long enough, for this must be my masterpiece and my swan song." And he did indeed work at it very diligently; but as he felt himself growing weak, Süssmayr often had to sing through what had been written with him and with me, and thus Süssmayr learned a lot from Mozart. I can still hear Mozart saying to Süssmayr, as he often did: "Ey, there you are again, like a dying duck in a thunderstorm; you won't understand that for a long time." Then he would take the pen and write, I suppose, important passages that were too much for Süssmayr.
The one reproach that can be made against Mozart is that he was not very tidy with his paper and sometimes mislaid something that he had started; rather than spend a long time looking for it, he wold write it again; thus it came about that a thing could be written twice, and yet be no different from what he had mislaid, for once he had drawn an idea up out of the turmoil of his thoughts it was as solid as a rock and was never altered, as can be seen in his scores, which are so beautifully, punctiliously, and cleanly written, with not one note altered, for sure. Let us suppose that Süssmayr did in fact find some fragments by Mozart (for the Sanctus, etc.), the Requiem would nevertheless still be Mozart's work.
My asking Eybler to finish it came about because I was annoyed with Süssmayr at the time (I don't remember why), and Mozart himself had a high opinion of Eybler, and I thought that anyone could finish it, since all the important passages had been set out already. And so I sent for Eybler and told him of my wish, but since he declined at once with fair words, he never laid hands on it. This is the truth, I can assure you, my dear friend, as a woman of honor!
From a statement by one of Walsegg's musicians, 1829, not published until 1964:
Count von Walsegg . . . was a passionate lover of music and the theatre; hence every week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, each time fully three hours' long, quartets were played and on Sundays theatre, in which latter Herr Count himself . . . took part, . . . and the entire, numerous household . . . . To help with the quartet-playing Herr Count engaged two excellent artists . . . as violist and . . . as violoncellist; Herr Count played the violoncello in string quartets, and in flute quartets he played the flute, and usually I played the second violin or the viola . . . .
So that we would not lack for new quartets . . . Herr Count . . . was in touch with many composers, yet without ever revealing his identity; and they delivered to him works of which he retained the sole ownership, and for which he paid well. [The part for the Count was often easy to play, with the other parts more difficult] and that made the Herr Count laugh. . . .
[The Count] generally copied [the scores] in his own hand . . . . The quartets were then played, and we had to guess who the composer was. Usually we suggested it was the Count himself, because from time to time he actually composed some small things; he smiled and was pleased that we (as he thought) had been mystified; but we were amused that he took us for such simpletons. We were all young, and thought this an innocent pleasure which we gave to our lord. . . .
Can anyone blame Herr Count if he made a joke, privately, only with us his servants, and called the Requiem his composition, but only in front of us? Far worse liberties were taken with his property . . . . Madame Widow Mozart and her circle may not have known about the contract which her late husband made . . . , according to which Herr Count von Walsegg was to have been the sole owner of the commissioned Requiem; otherwise . . . they would not have sent, without his knowledge and permission, a copy to be sold to the music publisher . . . . One can imagine what an impression it made on the Herr Count, when he learned that the score of his property had appeared publicly in print in Leipzig. Herr Count actually intended at first to take serious action against the Widow Mozart, but the matter was settled in good faith, thanks to his kind heart . . . .
That Herr Count wanted to mystify with the Requiem, as he had done with the quartets, was well known to all of us; in our presence he always said it was his composition, but when he said that he smiled. . . .
Source: Christoph Wolff, Mozart's Requiem: Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score, transl. Mary Whittal (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994) with some adaptations by Peter Jeffery based on the original German edition: Christoph Wolff, Mozarts Requiem: Geschichte, Musik, Dokumente, Partitur des Fragments (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991).