Lacrimosa: lyrics and translation
- Lacrimosa dies illa,Tearful will be that day,The strings rock back and forth from the first bars, and this swaying holds for almost the whole movement.
- qua resurget ex favillawhen from the ashes risesA build-up: the sopranos climb for four bars. On the next line, 'judicandus homo reus', after bar eight, Mozart stopped. Everything after this was written by Süssmayr.
- judicandus homo reus.the guilty person, to be judged.
Mozart's manuscript stops here. From this point on, it is Süssmayr.
- Huic ergo parce, Deus,So spare this one, O God,
- pie Jesu Domine,merciful Lord Jesus,
- dona eis requiem. Amen.give them rest. Amen.Two quiet chords on "Amen". Mozart left a sketch for a fugue on this word; Süssmayr did not use it.
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The manuscript: first page of the Lacrimosa
Leaf 87 of the working score, written in Mozart's hand, 1791. This page holds bars 1-5. The last three bars are on the reverse of the leaf, shown below.
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About
The strings rock like interrupted breathing. The soprano line climbs higher and higher and breaks off. This is the best known music in the Requiem - and the last Mozart worked on.
The strings begin with a quiet rocking figure, as if someone cannot steady their breathing. The choir takes it up calmly, but at 'qua resurget ex favilla' the soprano line climbs chromatically, semitone by semitone, and the force builds towards 'judicandus homo reus'. Right here, after bar eight, Mozart's writing ends. Süssmayr wrote the rest of the movement, and the close is two quiet chords on 'Amen'.
Worth knowing
A change of voice: the whole Sequence said "I" (salva me, recordare me). Here it is "homo reus" in the third person and "dona eis", "give them". The voice of the living over the dead.
In 1962 a sheet of Mozart's sketches was found in the Berlin State Library: sixteen bars of a fugue on the word "Amen", next to drafts for the Rex tremendae and for The Magic Flute. It seems the whole day of wrath was meant to end with it. Süssmayr did not use that sheet, and in 1991 the American scholar Robert Levin built a full movement out of the sketch - in his version it comes straight after the Lacrimosa.
The music here moves in threes: every step divides into three beats, and that is what makes it rock, like a cradle or like weeping. The violins begin with two quiet sighs before the choir has even entered.
One of the best-known melodies of the Requiem, yet only eight bars of it are in Mozart's hand. Everything that follows is Süssmayr.
The first person Constanze asked to finish the Requiem was Joseph Eybler, a Viennese composer Mozart knew and valued. On 21 December 1791 he promised in writing to complete the work by spring, filled in the orchestra from the Dies irae to the Confutatis, added two bars of soprano to the Lacrimosa - and stopped. Those two bars can still be seen in the manuscript, right after Mozart's last notes.
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