Work
5 January
The last piano concerto
The Concerto in B flat, K. 595, is entered in his own catalogue of works. It is the last of twenty-seven.
January2 ·
The last piano concerto
The Concerto in B flat, K. 595, is entered in his own catalogue of works. It is the last of twenty-seven.
Dances for the balls
As court chamber composer Mozart writes minuets, German dances and contredanses for the balls in the Redoutensaal. This is his official job, the one the court pays for.
February1 ·
Death of Anna von Walsegg
The wife of Count Franz von Walsegg dies at twenty. A few months later the count will anonymously commission a requiem in her memory.
March1 ·
Last appearance as a pianist
At a concert given by the clarinettist Joseph Bähr, Mozart plays the Concerto K. 595. He will not play in public again.
May1 ·
A post at St. Stephen's
The city council appoints him assistant to the Kapellmeister - the man in charge of all the music at the cathedral. There is no salary, but there is the right to succeed him. A steady church post he had long wanted.
June3 ·
Constanze leaves for Baden
Pregnant, Constanze goes to take the waters. Mozart stays in Vienna to work on The Magic Flute and writes to her almost daily. Most of this year's letters come from here.
'Out of sheer boredom'
Out of sheer boredom I composed an aria for the opera today.
The opera is The Magic Flute.
Ave verum corpus
Forty-six bars for choir, written in Baden for the local choirmaster Anton Stoll for the feast of Corpus Christi. One of his simplest and best-known works.
July4 ·
Süssmayr is already around
Tell Süssmayr, that silly fellow, to send me the score of the first act, from the introduction to the finale, so that I can orchestrate it.
Franz Xaver Süssmayr, pupil and assistant, will be finishing the Requiem within six months. To "instrument" a score, as the letter puts it, means to write the orchestral parts under the finished voices: that is exactly the work he will do there too. The tone is domestic, almost familial.
La clemenza di Tito commissioned
Prague orders an opera for the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia. The deadline is a few weeks. The recitatives, by tradition, will be written by Süssmayr.
The Requiem commissioned
The anonymous patron's intermediary brings a letter and an advance. The exact date is unknown; by later accounts it happened in the summer, before the trip to Prague.
A son is born
Constanze gives birth to Franz Xaver Wolfgang, the sixth child. Two will survive: he and Carl Thomas.
August1 ·
Departure for Prague
Mozart, Constanze and Süssmayr travel to the coronation festivities. He finishes Tito on the road and on the spot.
September2 ·
Premiere of La clemenza di Tito
On coronation day, at the Estates Theatre in Prague. The empress, so the story goes, called it 'German rubbish'. The public took it better.
Premiere of The Magic Flute
The Theater auf der Wieden, outside the city walls, Schikaneder's company. Mozart conducts the first performances. He finished the overture and the March of the Priests two days earlier.
October4 ·
'The silent approval'
I have just come back from the opera. It was as full as ever. But what pleases me most is the silent approval. You can see how this opera is gaining ground. And now I have orchestrated almost all of the rondo for Stadler.
The opera is The Magic Flute; the rondo is the finale of the Clarinet Concerto.
The glockenspiel joke
During Papageno's aria with the glockenspiel I went behind the scenes, as I felt like playing it myself. For a joke, when Schikaneder paused, I played an arpeggio. He was startled, looked into the wings and saw me.
The eleventh performance of The Magic Flute. Schikaneder was playing Papageno; Mozart, backstage, played the bells out of turn, and Papageno was left standing there.
Salieri at the theatre
Salieri listened and watched with the greatest attention, and from the overture to the last chorus there was not a single number that did not draw a bravo or bello from him.
Mozart himself invited Salieri and the singer Caterina Cavalieri to The Magic Flute and drove them there in his carriage. Seven weeks before his death.
The Clarinet Concerto
Written for Anton Stadler and for his unusual clarinet, which reaches a few notes lower than an ordinary one. Stadler gives the premiere in Prague. Mozart's last instrumental work.
November2 ·
The last entry in the catalogue
The Little Masonic Cantata, K. 623 - a short piece for singers and orchestra, performed at the opening of the lodge's new rooms on 18 November. Mozart conducts. It is the last work he entered in his own catalogue, and the last he heard performed.
He takes to his bed
Swollen hands and feet, fever, vomiting. Constanze and her sister Sophie nurse him. By later accounts he goes on working on the Requiem in bed.
December4 ·
The evening of 4 December
According to the singer Benedikt Schack, writing thirty-six years later, that evening Mozart and friends sang through the finished parts of the Requiem. The only source; it cannot be checked.
Death
Around one in the morning. He is thirty-five. The physician records the cause as 'severe miliary fever'.
The funeral
A blessing at St. Stephen's, burial at St. Marx cemetery under third-class rules: no headstone, several bodies to a grave. The site was lost.
The memorial service
At St. Michael's, arranged by Schikaneder. Most likely the two finished movements of the Requiem, the Introitus and Kyrie, are sung. The first known hearing of the work.
What came after
1791 - 1800
Eybler starts and stops
Constanze hands the score to Joseph Eybler, a Viennese composer Mozart knew and valued. He fills in the orchestra from the Dies irae to the Confutatis, begins the Lacrimosa and gives up after two bars. Süssmayr will finish it.
The anniversary it was ordered for
One year since Anna von Walsegg's death. The Requiem is not ready.
First complete performance
Vienna, Jahn's Hall, a benefit concert for Constanze. It was arranged by Baron Gottfried van Swieten - a patron of music who supported the family after Mozart's death.
Walsegg conducts 'his' Requiem
Wiener Neustadt. The count copied the score in his own hand and put his own name on it.
A second time, on the anniversary
The pilgrimage church of Maria Schutz near the Semmering. Walsegg performs the Requiem on the anniversary of his wife's death, as he had planned - only two years later.
Süssmayr says what he wrote
In a letter to the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf & Härtel: the Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei are "entirely composed by me", and he repeated the Kyrie fugue at the end "to give the work more unity".
The first edition
Breitkopf & Härtel print the score in Leipzig, with German words under the Latin. From now on the Requiem can be performed without a handwritten copy.
