I love the beginning of Mozart’s Requiem: that first minute before the human voice. I surrender to the long sighs of the bassoon and the clarinet, to the pure solitude of that pre- and post-human world where there is only air: divine. It rises, it rises, the music that fills everything, that enters your chest, caresses the back of your neck, descends down your back, first with a sad sweetness, then with the final weight of death.

Requiem is a musicalization of the liturgy of death. To compose it means to dance the words dedicated to the divine being who will receive the human soul in his glory. Faith, hope, an illusion that makes life bearable: escape, on the wings of death, from end to end, from the prison of pain to the eternal beauty of tranquility. But the requiem is no longer heard by the dead, their senses are turned off. It is for the living who are left behind: consolation, chorus that accompanies the loneliness of loss, vision of the divine, seduction, sign, becoming.

Maybe we shouldn’t say anything about beautiful things, just admire them with our mouths full of silence and wonder.

I imagine Mozart composing his requiem: with a trembling hand he records the divine music that emanated from his being. The story of the composition of this work is one of those novels that write themselves: a sick genius, dies while writing, unconsciously, his own farewell. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died before he turned 36, on Monday, December 5, in Vienna; He died at home, tucked up in his own bed; He died of rheumatic fever due to a simple bacterial infection (it was in 1791). In his short life he composed 21 operas, 17 masses, 60 symphonies, 30 concertos for keyboards and at least 12 for violin and orchestra, 13 for wind and orchestra, 23 serenades, nocturnes, divertissements and marches, 42 works including Lieder and organ pieces , at least 3 canons. He created so much, dazzled, continues and will continue to dazzle, but his life was not enough (never enough) to say goodbye: death overtook him before he could complete the funeral mass begun in July 1791 as a result of a mysterious order (he believes is that Count Franz von Walsegg intended to pass off the work as his own). His widow, persistent Constanze, fearing that the dark master who commissioned the composition from Mozart would demand the return of half of the fee already paid before the work began, and fearing that she too would not pay half of the debt because the work was unfinished, I decided to ask for help. He first turned to the musician Joseph von Eybler and finally decided on Mozart’s student: the great Franz Xaver Süssmayr. And “Mozart’s” Requiem has reached us in Süssmayr’s writings. Scholars believe they have identified the parts each composed, think Süssmayr left out what Eybler contributed and relied on Mozart’s unfinished version to complete the creation.

I imagine Mozart dying to the rhythm of that ineffably beautiful swan song. Maybe we shouldn’t say anything about beautiful things, just admire them with our mouths full of silence and wonder. But we are weak and alone, so we talk, write, comment and share. I love Mozart’s Requiem. I listen to it every time I’m about to write. (OR)