Requiem

The Requiem in D minor, K. 626, is a Requiem Mass by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). Mozart composed part of the Requiem in Vienna in late 1791, but it was unfinished at his death on 5 December the same year. A completed version was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had commissioned the piece for a requiem service on 14 February 1792 to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of his wife Anna, who had died at the age of 20 on 14 February 1791.

The autograph manuscript shows the finished and orchestrated movement of the Introit in Mozart's hand, and detailed drafts of the Kyrie, the Sequence (the latter including the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa), and the Offertorium. First Joseph Eybler and then Franz Xaver Süssmayr filled in the rest, composed additional movements, and made a clean copy of the completed parts of the score for delivery to Walsegg, imitating Mozart's musical handwriting but clumsily dating it "1792." It cannot be shown to what extent Süssmayr may have depended on now lost "scraps of paper" for the remainder; he later claimed the Sanctus and Benedictus and the Agnus Dei as his own.