Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 莫扎特 Chapter 6 An Untimely End

Despite the great popularity of his operas, Mozart still struggled to make enough money. The fickle 1 members of the court and the nobility were always in search of something new. They began to lose interest in Mozart’s work. His reputation suffered. He again had to ask his friends to lend him money. His father had died in 1787. Mozart brooded over the many quarrels they had when Leopold was alive. Mozart’s own health was not good. He was often sick or in pain.



Yet despite all the troubles in his life, Mozart never stopped writing his exceptional music. He composed his last three symphonies in about three months. Unfortunately, he never had the chance to hear them played. It is amazing to think that he could hear all the different parts—strings, woodwinds, brass—in his head. He was so accurate that the music is performed today exactly as it was written. There were no corrections at all, because Mozart did not need to make them.



In July 1791, a very strange thing happened. Mozart was alone in his house. A stranger wearing dark clothes and a dark hood 2 came to the door. The stranger brought with him an unsigned letter. The letter asked Mozart to write a requiem 3. A requiem is a piece of music composed to honor a person who has died. The letter promised Mozart a lot of money for the job. Who wanted the music written? And who was it for? Mozart did not know.



For the next several months, Mozart worked on the requiem. He thought about it all the time. His health got worse and worse. Sometimes Mozart felt like he was writing the requiem for his own funeral. Soon he could not get out of bed. It became hard for him to breathe.



On December 4, 1791, he asked his friends to join him at his bedside. Together, they sang different parts of the requiem. On December 5, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died. He was only thirty-five. The requiem remained unfinished, though the parts that he did complete are considered some of the most beautiful music he ever wrote.



His wife Constanze was grief-stricken when he died; she was also worried. What would happen to her and their children? A friend made the arrangements for Mozart’s small funeral and burial in St.



Marx Cemetery 4, about three miles outside central Vienna. No stone or statue marked the spot where the great composer was buried.



After Mozart’s death, Constanze married a man who became a loving stepfather to Karl Thomas and Franz Xaver. Although Mozart was gone, his music was not forgotten. And, in the end, that was what mattered most to Mozart. In 1842, a statue of Mozart was put up in Salzburg, his hometown. In 1856, one hundred years after Mozart had been born, there were big celebrations in Salzburg and Vienna. Karl Thomas, who was still alive, was there for the festivities in honor of his father.



Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote more than 600 works. That is an astonishing number for any composer. It is even more astonishing when we think about how young he was when he died. Among these works were:



 41 symphonies



27 piano concertos 5



25 violin concertos



27 concert arias 6



23 string quartets



18 Masses



22 operas



More than 200 years after he lived, people continue to play, listen to, and cherish Mozart’s music. In 2002, on the one-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks, choirs 7 around the world sang Mozart’s requiem for a span of twenty-four hours in a global effort to honor those who died.



Although Mozart lived only a brief time, his music will live forever, bringing joy to listeners and musicians all over the world.