Requiem, K. 626

Four years before composing his Requiem, Mozart wrote in a letter to his father: "Since death [...] is the final stage of our lives, I have become acquainted with this best and truest friend of man in recent years, so its image not only holds nothing frightening to me, but is rather something reassuring and consoling". However, in 1791, when death came knocking at his door, his sentiments seemed to have changed: perhaps this duality is what inspired the contrasting nature of his Requiem, oscillating between terrifying accents (as in the famous Dies irae) and tender, languishing melodies (like the sublime Lacrimosa). Separated from his mentor and friend Haydn, facing great financial difficulties, and afflicted with a fatal illness, Mozart died with his pen in his hand, as if breathing his last breath of life note by note into this final work. Sacred music par excellence (matched only by Verdi's Requiem), Mozart's Requiem seems to have one foot in Paradise, embracing "traces of transcendence" (Karl Barth) within itself.