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The month of July, 1791, found Mozart at home in Vienna at work on a magic opera to help his friend Salieri, who had taken a little theater in the suburb of Wieden. One day he was visited by a stranger, a tall man, who said he came to commission Mozart to compose a Requiem. He would neither give his own name nor that of the person who had sent him.
Stephen Heller remarked that this study reminded him of the first bar of the Kyrie rather the Requiem Aeternam of Mozart's Requiem. It is safe to say that the fifth study in E minor is less often heard in the concert room than any one of its companions. I cannot recall having heard it since Annette Essipowa gave that famous recital during which she played the entire twenty-seven studies.
The rest of the million francs was set aside for a memorial chapel on the site of the accident, and for the celebration of masses and a grand requiem in the church of St Germain l'Auxerrois on the following day a ceremony which was to be repeated annually.
Cherubini's Second Requiem in D minor, for male voices only, was used. Weak with old age and sorrow, Father Newman had almost to be led to the pulpit, but the simple vigour of language and the lucidity of style so peculiarly his own remained what they had ever been.
He further requested his wife to keep his death secret until she had informed Albrechtsberger of it, 'for the situation of assistant organist at the Stephen Church ought to be his before God and the world. The doctor came and ordered cold applications on Mozart's burning head.... The last movement of his lips was an endeavor to indicate where the kettledrums should be used in the 'Requiem. I think I still hear the sound."
The day before his death he said to his wife, "Oh, that I could only once more hear my 'Flauto Magico!" humming, in scarcely audible voice, the lively bird-catcher song. The same day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, he called his friends together, and asked for the score of his nearly completed "Requiem" to be laid on his bed.
About three years after her marriage, at the time of the Abbe de Sponde's death, Mademoiselle Armande joined Madame du Bousquier as they were leaving Saint-Leonard's, where they had gone to hear a requiem said for him. The generous demoiselle thought that on this occasion she owed her sympathy to the niece in trouble.
Of the works of the great composers who wrote both classes of music, those which are devoted to religious subjects will be found vastly superior in almost every instance, with the one exception of Mozart's and in the case of this composer, his Mass in B flat and the Requiem will bear comparison with any of his operas.
The wonderful Piano Quintette, one of his greatest works, the German Requiem, the Cantata Rinaldo and many beautiful songs came into being during this period. Every little while concert tours and musical journeys were undertaken, where Brahms often combined with other artists in giving performances of his compositions.
They were of the old merchant marine which contributed something fine and imperishable to the story of the United States. Down the wind, vibrant and deep-throated, comes their own refrain for a requiem: We're outward bound this very day, Good-bye, fare you well, Good-bye, fare you well. We're outward bound this very day, Hurrah, my boys, we're outward bound.
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