The Healing Journey

December 5, 2023

It has been called “one of the greatest expressions of grief in the world.” Mozart’s Requiem in D minor is a Mass that remained unfinished when he died at 35 years old on December 5, 1791.

One version of the choral masterpiece was completed by Austrian composer Franz Xaver Süssmayr and delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had commissioned it to mark the first anniversary of his 20-year-old wife Anna’s death.

However, Mozart’s wife Constanze believed the composer was writing the piece for himself, since he realized his death was only days away as he lay in bed.

“Mozart knew what it was to experience life interrupted,” said Annilese Miskimmon, the Artistic Director of the English National Opera. “He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy. Of his own six children, only two survived. Death wasn’t an abstract idea. It pursued him from birth until his death in 1791, which was the most productive and successful year of his life. The Requiem in D minor was his final work.”

As a Catholic, Mozart was familiar with services for the repose of the dead, and he set the text of the funeral liturgy to music, inspiring new life into traditional prayers, which ask God to accept the soul of the deceased into Heaven.

“Mozart’s Requiem grapples with the mystery of death,” Miskimmon says. “Composed by a man on the edge of consciousness, Mozart willed his last creation into life with his final breaths.”

To view a performance of Mozart’s Requiem by the National Orchestra of France, go to:
(https://youtu.be/Dp2SJN4UiE4?si=2HcNgfMMrWRA29kN)

For a translation of the Requiem from Latin into English, go to:
(http://manlywarringahchoir.org.au/files/2011/01/English-Translation-of-Mozart-Requiem.pdf)

In the months after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Requiem was performed in communities around the world as an expression of global grief … and a statement about our common humanity.

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All of us will express our grief in our own personal way, regardless of whether we are renowned artists or ordinary people, beloved by God.