Venice Easter Week

Today I watched the twins, who had facebook stolen from them at Harvard, enduring the pain of having their chances of being in the winning Boat Race crew steadily taken from them by a stronger crew from Cambridge in the fens. It’s a small world.

I haven’t seen a Boat Race from the side of the Thames since I was a kid. Rowing in eights can be the most beautiful sport to watch. When I went to university, I got in the College eight and endured those days of being shouted at in the freezing cold of misty waters but I still loved it. We never got very far but it was fun overtaking boats on those Heads. When I finally picked up a Saturday afternoon place in a ‘get up’ eight at Quinton, it was a dream rowing over the Boat Race course.

Isn’t it great that those famous (for me anyway!!) twins seemed to think more of winning this traditional race than the Olympic games! It seemed to me, listening to their pre-race enthusiasm, that they will feel more pain losing this race than losing their facebook program to a Harvard fellow student whom they invited to share their project out of kindness and sensibility. But they have got a few million out of the thief and his cohorts so far. There’s a whole book on it but I listened to the serialisation on BBC Radio 4. My impression is that they could only hint at the truth lest Facebook launch a fleet of lawyers in their direction outside the USA. So the raison d’etre of the story of facebook seemed to be that they did it all for sex!!!

The reason for my sudden renewed interest in rowing is that I have only one English language channel on the television in my (quoting the agent who rented it to me) “very very old apartment”. ( I should add that my agent brought round a plumber yesterday in an attempt to stop my bathroom from flooding every time I use the sink or bath – Let’s not exaggerate; it was only to a depth of two or three inches! – and afterwards I was able to stop the flooding by pumping the drain with one of those funny rubber things on a stick!!! Isn’t that wonderful!!!)

Back to the television – this one channel I have here is ‘BBC World News’. In Vienna, my apartment had an English Channel which had hospital soaps and Antiques programmes all day, which is probably a better option than news.

Well, this week of all weeks, when senior clergy seem to be competing to show how out of touch they are – when disgusting things are being done to Palestinian Christians (and Moslems incidentally) in the Old City – and when the iPad is finally released on sale to say nothing of Holy Week, we viewers of ‘BBC World News’ have been assaulted by continual “Row, Row …” adverts between news items. So, I’m sure that many of us watched the Boat Race simply because it wasn’t news. But imagine my surprise to see those famous twins in the Oxford crew!! As I said, it’s a small small world (cue Music!!!).

Easter week means that the Strada Nova in front of my apartment has suddenly become a huge market stretching all the way to the Rialto There also seem to be more people about so the gondoliers are a little happier this week. BILLA has halved the price of Grana Padano broken freshly from the wheel and everybody seems to be buying those funny cakes and Easter eggs.

Whilst in BILLA, I see a uniformed security guard standing next to a pile of Easter eggs. Jokingly, I say, “Are you guarding the eggs, then?” He smiles at me and replies, “Each of those eggs contains five kilos of chocolates!” I am dumbfounded.

As I walk towards La Fenice, I pause on a small bridge and see a gondola full of girls approaching. As I am the most handsome creature around, they wave to me and I return their greeting. The gondolier sees me and, with a sigh of desperation, calls to me saying, “Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada …..!!” I am tempted to answer him with ” … and the great Mississipi ..” (Well it does almost have the same ring about it as “Trinidad”!!!) but the girls are evidently having a great time, although they are presumeably giving their gondolier a hard time because he mistook them for citizens of the US of A!!

Now that the weather is becoming warmer, we all hang around outside La Fenice until they come outside and call us in at the five minute bell. Much in evidence are a few firemen fully dressed in their firefighting gear. It does look strange as they stand guard around the auditorium. This is a reminder of the relatively recent fire which destroyed the theatre, but not during a performance I should point out.

I know nothing of tonight’s conductor Myung-Whun Chung. But his control of the music is wonderful. Just the way he lets us almost ‘feel’ those three magic chords in the Symphony of Psalms is beautiful. The second chord alights SO gently on to that third chord; more gentle than the most affected appogiatura. The brass gives heaps of tone without any overbearing volume. Each phrase is individually shaped to perfection, at least to the conductor’s requirements, I feel. The chorus of La Fenice is 60 strong this evening, just about the correct size for this auditorium. A memorable performance!

This evenings performance of the Tschaikovsky Sixth Symphony is my first chance to hear the complete La Fenice orchestra. It’s a great performance but also very different from all others I have heard. The final movement is a meditation and, taken this way, probably makes more sense after the great movement which preceeds it. The short reverberation time of La Fenice does not really give the symphony anywhere near ideal acoustics but we do hear the attention to detail with greater clarity than usual. It’s a great symphony and this was a very enjoyable performance. There are some youtube URLs for both the works played in this concert at the end of this entry.

The concert at the end of the week includes the Mozart Requiem. This is important to me because, with this work, I will have heard almost all the last works which Mozart finished in the last four months of his life; Titus, Zauberflöte, Requiem. As luck would have it, I score a front seat in the best parterre box directly facing the stage because the ticket holders are not able to use their tickets. Because they have season tickets the seats cannot be resold.

I know nothing of Alain Altinoglu but his rendering of Schumann’s First Symphony is superb. It’s an intricate symphony to conduct because of the number of tempo changes and the difficulty of maintaining continuity. He had chosen to use the Mahler rescoring of the work instead of the original but the spirit is still in this version and Altinoglu captures this perfectly.

So it is a shock when the Mozart Requiem does not go as well as this. One of the solists makes his entry at a completely different tempo to that of the orchestra at one point, which makes me think that there had not just been insufficient rehearsal time but there had been NO rehearsal time!! The first time this happens, everyone else simply churns on in conflict with him but, when it happens a second time, the conductor actually changes the tempo to that of the soloist in question.

The choir does not seem happy and the acoustic applied to their sound makes the result even worse. When the bass line is being doubled by the trombone, it is a modern wide bore instrument playing far too loudly so that it drowns the chorus line and we never even hear the Bass singer in the ‘Tuba Mirum’ when he is singing in company with that loud rich-toned trombone.

But the majesty of this great work comes through in parts when the conductor is able to take control of better rehearsed(?) sections. The chorus is the La Fenice opera chorus. This week they have forty singers whereas they had sixty for the Stravinsky Symphony Psalms. I feel their approach is more worthy of Verdi than Mozart. I would prefer the St Augustin’s Vienna chorus to the sound of the La Fenice. However, I feel the whole ensemble would be happier singing Verdi’s Requiem than the Mozart. I’m appending some Youtube videos of Bohm conducting the Mozart Requiem with my dreamteam soloists at the end of this blogg!!

Here are some youtube URLs for the two works played in the first concert.
Igor Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urruhLut5vE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qHetu9lHq8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=creAgiXRzLw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccQMDSYgXPE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbZXTdl6OSM&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AOFN65Q0Us&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6q9qOjnWTE&NR=1

The Great SEIJI OZAWA /Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Tchaikovsky Symphony No.6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1KCy3l-AQg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZICd9jNIvD4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emsVUX4yfp4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2htkQNnJSw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nJTPuH6jos&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGNKB65Dx0A&feature=related

Just found this … Wow!!!
Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 Barenboim Chicago Symphony Orchestra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-c1LLZaVCA&feature=PlayList&p=D79554204A11D88A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5

Mozart – Requiem – Introitus – 1 – Solti plays through)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3bwGb0glQ&feature=PlayList&p=678DF3A1B39FF735&index=0&playnext=1
(Higher Quality but no play through)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3bwGb0glQ&fmt=18

Here are some separate chunks of Verdi Requiem to relish!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6b6aeYCFcU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEHzOyvtdOY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1woIv05rl1s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImZN8X_LHKQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRSX5-_n7_Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXskq5GHk4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r141cpzjLws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvDxDMbeKL4

‘Playthroughs’ ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqkMbk8eX6Y&feature=PlayList&p=8C63F1C0AEA1329D&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA5B-F6QMC8&feature=PlayList&p=8C41351CADAB796B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=8

Mozart Requiem sections

I. Introitus: Requiem aeternam (Choir and Soprano solo)
II. Kyrie eleison (Choir)
III. Sequentia:
Dies irae (Choir)
Tuba mirum (Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass Solo)
Rex tremendae majestatis (Choir)
Recordare, Jesu pie (Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass Solo)
Confutatis maledictis (Choir)
Lacrimosa dies illa (Choir)
IV. Offertorium:
Domine Jesu Christe (Choir with Solo Quartet)
Versus: Hostias et preces (Choir)
V. Sanctus:
Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth (Choir)
Benedictus (Solo Quartet then Choir)
VI. Agnus Dei (Choir)
VII. Communio:
Lux aeterna (Soprano solo and Choir)

Introit

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion,
et tibi reddetur votum in Ierusalem.
Exaudi orationem meam;
ad te omnis caro veniet.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
A hymn becomes you, O God, in Zion,
and to you shall a vow be repaid in Jerusalem.
Hear my prayer;
to you shall all flesh come.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Kyrie eleison

Kyrie eleison;
Christe eleison;
Kyrie eleison

Lord have mercy;
Christ have mercy;
Lord have mercy.

This is Greek (????e ????s??, ???st? ????s??, ????e ????s??)
Traditionally, each utterance is sung three times.

Gradual

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine;
In memoria æterna erit justus,
ab auditione mala non timebit.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.
He shall be justified in everlasting memory,
and shall not fear evil reports.

Tract

Absolve, Domine,
animas omnium fidelium defunctorum
ab omni vinculo delictorum
et gratia tua illis
succurente mereantur
evadere iudicium ultionis,
et lucis æterne beatitudine perfrui.

Forgive, O Lord,
the souls of all the faithful departed
from all the chains of their sins
and may they deserve
to avoid the judgment of revenge by your fostering grace,
and enjoy the everlasting blessedness of light.

Sequence

Dies iræ, dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla,
teste David cum Sibylla…

Day of wrath! Day of mourning!,
a day that the world will dissolve in ashes,
as foretold by David and the Sibyl

(See Dies Iræ for full text)

Offertory

Domine, Jesu Christe, Rex gloriæ,
libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum
de pœnis inferni et de profundo lacu.
Libera eas de ore leonis,
ne absorbeat eas tartarus,
ne cadant in obscurum;
sed signifer sanctus Michæl
repræsentet eas in lucem sanctam,
quam olim Abrahæ promisisti et semini ejus.

Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory,
free the souls of all the faithful departed
from infernal punishment and the deep pit.
Free them from the mouth of the lion;
do not let Tartarus swallow them,
nor let them fall into darkness;
but may the sign-bearer, Saint Michael,
lead them into the holy light
which you promised to Abraham and his seed.

Hostias et preces tibi, Domine,
laudis offerimus;
tu suscipe pro animabus illis,
quarum hodie memoriam facimus.
Fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam.
Quam olim Abrahæ promisisti et semini ejus.

O Lord, we offer you
sacrifices and prayers in praise;
accept them on behalf of the souls
whom we remember today.
Make them pass over from death to life,
as you promised to Abraham and his seed.

Sanctus

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,
Dominus Deus Sabaoth;
pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua.
Hosanna in excelsis.

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
Hosanna in excelsis.
(reprise)

Holy, Holy, Holy,
Lord God of Hosts;
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Agnus Dei
This is as the Agnus Dei in the Ordinary of the Mass, but with the petitions miserere nobis changed to dona eis requiem, and dona nobis pacem to dona eis requiem sempiternam:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem,
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem,
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem sempiternam.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant them rest,
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant them rest,
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant them rest, eternal.

Communion

Lux æterna luceat eis, Domine,
cum sanctis tuis in æternum,
quia pius es.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine;
et lux perpetua luceat eis ;
cum Sanctis tuis in aeternum,
quia pius es.

May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord,
with your saints forever,
for you are merciful.
Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and may everlasting light shine upon them.
with your saints forever,
for you are merciful.

Libera Me

Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die illa tremenda:
Quando caeli movendi sunt et terra.
Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem.
Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo, dum discussio venerit, atque ventura ira.
Quando caeli movendi sunt et terra.

Dies illa, dies irae, calamitatis et miseriae, dies magna et amara valde.
Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Deliver me, O Lord, from death eternal on that fearful day,
when the heavens and the earth shall be moved,
when thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.
I am made to tremble, and I fear, till the judgment be upon us, and the coming wrath,
when the heavens and the earth shall be moved.
That day, day of wrath, calamity, and misery, day of great and exceeding bitterness,
when thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord: and let light perpetual shine upon them.

In paradisum

In paradisum deducant te Angeli:
in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres,
et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.
Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat,
et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.

May angels lead you into paradise;
may the martyrs receive you at your coming
and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem.
May a choir of angels receive you,
and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest.

Pie Jesu

The Pie Jesu combines and paraphrases of the final verse of the Dies irae and the Agnus Dei.

Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem.
Dona eis requiem sempiternam.

O sweet Lord Jesus, grant them rest;
grant them everlasting rest.

This stuff comes from internet sources ……
January 2, 1772: Mozart participates in the premiere of Michael Haydn’s Requiem in C minor.[4]
February 14, 1791: Anna, Count von Walsegg’s wife, died at the age of 20.
mid-July: A messenger (probably Franz Anton Leitgeb, the Count’s steward) arrived with note asking Mozart to write a Requiem Mass.
mid-July: Commission from Domenico Guardasoni, Impresario of the Prague National Theater to compose the opera, La clemenza di Tito, for the festivities surrounding the coronation on September 6 of Leopold II as King of Bohemia.
August: Mozart works mainly on La clemenza di Tito; completed by September 5.
August 25: Mozart leaves for Prague.
September 6: Mozart conducts premiere of La clemenza di Tito.
mid-September – September 28: Revision and completion of The Magic Flute.
September 30: Premiere of The Magic Flute.
October 7: Completed concerto in A for clarinet.
October 8 – November 20: Mozart worked on the Requiem and a Cantata.
November 20: Confined to the bed due to his illness.
December 5: Mozart died shortly after midnight of acute rheumatic fever[citation needed].
December 7: Burial in St. Marx Cemetery.
December 10: Requiem performed in St. Michael for a memorial for Mozart by the staff of the Theater auf der Wieden.
early March 1792: probably the time Süssmayr finished the Requiem.
January 2, 1793: Performance of Requiem for Constanze’s benefit arranged by Gottfried van Swieten.
early December 1793: Requiem delivered to the Count.
December 14 1793: Requiem performed in the memory of the Count’s wife in the church at Wiener-Neustadt.[citation needed]
February 14, 1794: Requiem performed again in Patronat Church at Maria-Schutz on Semmering
1799: Breitkopf & Hartel published the Requiem.
1809: Requiem was performed at Haydn’s funeral on June 15 at Vienna
1825: Debates started over authorship of Requiem.
1833: Eybler suffered stroke while conducting a performance of Mozart’s Requiem. He died in 1846.
October 30, 1849: Requiem was performed at Frédéric Chopin’s funeral.

Composition
At the time of Mozart’s death on 5 December 1791, he had only completed the opening movement (Requiem aeternam) in all of the orchestral and vocal parts. The following Kyrie (a double fugue), and most of the Sequence (from Dies Irae to Confutatis), is complete only in the vocal parts and the continuo (the figured organ bass), though occasionally some of the prominent orchestral parts have been briefly indicated, such as the violin part of the Confutatis and the musical bridges in the Recordare. The last movement of the Sequence, the Lacrimosa, breaks off after only eight bars and was unfinished. The following two movements of the Offertorium were again partially done — the Domine Jesu Christe in the vocal parts and continuo (up until the fugue, which contains some indications of the violin part) and the Hostias in the vocal parts only.

[edit] Constanze Mozart and the Requiem after Mozart’s death
The eccentric count Franz von Walsegg commissioned the Requiem from Mozart anonymously through intermediaries acting on his behalf. The count, an amateur chamber musician who routinely commissioned works by composers and passed them off as his own, wanted a Requiem mass he could claim he composed to memorialize the recent passing of his wife. Mozart received only half of the payment in advance, so upon his death his widow Constanze was keen to have the work completed secretly by someone else, submit it to the count as having been completed by Mozart and collect the final payment. Joseph von Eybler was one of the first composers to be asked to complete the score, and had worked on the movements from the Dies irae up until the Lacrimosa. In addition, a striking similarity between the openings of the Domine Jesu Christe movements in the requiems of the two composers suggests that Eybler at least looked at later sections. Following this work, he felt unable to complete the remainder, and gave the manuscript back to Constanze Mozart.

The task was then given to another composer, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who had already helped the ailing Mozart in writing the score, since in his final days the composer’s limbs had become extremely swollen. Süssmayr borrowed some of Eybler’s work in making his completion, and added his own orchestration to the movements from the Dies Irae onward (the Kyrie was orchestrated before either Süssmayr or Eybler began their work), completed the Lacrimosa, and added several new movements which a Requiem would normally comprise: Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. He then added a final section, Lux aeterna by adapting the opening two movements which Mozart had written to the different words which finish the Requiem Mass, which according to both Süssmayr and Mozart’s wife was done according to Mozart’s directions. Whether or not that is true, some people consider it unlikely that Mozart would have repeated the opening two sections if he had survived to finish the work completely. However, the fact that the work ends with a recapitulation of the first movement creates a work which, overall, displays characteristics of sonata form, which may help to authenticate the idea for the repetition of the first movement as the final movement. As has often been stated, Mozart was not the only composer to do this, and many requiems written before his repeat the first movement as the last. (In regular Masses a similar practice existed where the last movement, the Agnus Dei, was indicated only by the words “ut Kyrie”, “as the Kyrie”.)

Other composers may have helped Süssmayr. The elder composer Maximilian Stadler is suspected of having completed the orchestration of the Domine Jesu for Süssmayr. The Agnus Dei is suspected by some scholars to have been based on instruction or sketches from Mozart because of its similarity to a section from the Gloria of a previous Mass (K.220) by Mozart, as was first pointed out by Richard Maunder. Many of the arguments dealing with this matter, though, center on the perception that if part of the work is high quality, it must have been written by Mozart (or from sketches), and if part of the work contains errors and faults, it must have been all Süssmayr’s doing. A frequent meta-debate is whether or not this is a fair way to judge the authorship of the parts of the work.

Another controversy is the suggestion that Mozart left explicit instructions for the completion of the Requiem on “little scraps of paper.” It is commonly believed this claim was made by Constanze Mozart after it was public knowledge that the Requiem was actually completed by Süssmayr as a way to increase the impression of authenticity.

The completed score, initially by Mozart but largely finished by Süssmayr, was then dispatched to Count Walsegg complete with a counterfeited signature of Mozart and dated 1792. The various complete and incomplete manuscripts eventually turned up in the 19th century, but many of the figures involved did not leave unambiguous statements on record as to how they were involved in the affair. Despite the controversy over how much of the music is actually Mozart’s, the commonly performed Süssmayr version has become widely accepted by the public. This acceptance is quite strong, even when alternate completions provide logical and compelling solutions for the work. A completion dating from 1819 by Sigismund Neukomm has recently been recorded under the baton of Jean-Claude Malgoire. Salzburg-born Neukomm, a student of Joseph Haydn, provided a concluding Libera me, Domine for a performance of the Requiem on the feast of St Cecilia in Rio de Janeiro at the behest of Nunes Garcia.

The confusion surrounding the circumstances of the Requiem’s composition was created in a large part by Mozart’s wife, Constanze. Constanze had a difficult task in front of her. She had to keep secret the fact that the Requiem was unfinished at Mozart’s death, so she could collect the final payment from the commission. For a period of time, she also needed to keep secret the fact that Süssmayr had anything to do with the composition of the Requiem at all in order to allow Count Walsegg the impression that Mozart wrote the work entirely himself. Once she received the commission, she needed to carefully promote the work as Mozart’s so she could continue to receive revenue from the work’s publication and performance. During this phase of the Requiem’s history, it was still important that the public accepted that Mozart wrote the whole piece, as it would fetch larger sums from publishers and the public if it were completely by Mozart.

It is Constanze’s efforts that created the flurry of half-truths and myths almost instantly after Mozart’s death. She contributed to numerous rumors of Mozart’s murder by the Italian composer Antonio Salieri. In 1791, Mozart received a mysterious commission by a stranger to compose a Requiem. Supposedly, the patron of this commission was Franz von Walsegg, who wanted to compose the Requiem in memory of his late wife. Although Mozart accepted the commission, he began to work on an opera, La clemenza di Tito, in Prague. Suddenly, Mozart became extremely ill in Prague and needed medical attention upon his return to Vienna. As soon as Mozart came back to Vienna, he began working on the Requiem. However, he felt extremely depressed, and started to speak of death. According to Constanze, Mozart even declared that he was composing the Requiem for himself, and that he had been poisoned. His symptoms worsened, and he began to complain about the painful swelling of his body and high fever. Nevertheless, Mozart continued his work on the Requiem, and even on the last day of his life, he was explaining to his assistant how he intended to finish the Requiem. Source materials written soon after Mozart’s death contain serious discrepancies which leave a level of subjectivity when assembling the “facts” about Mozart’s composition of the Requiem. For example, at least three of the conflicting sources, both dated within two decades following Mozart’s death, cite Constanze Mozart (Mozart’s wife) as their primary source of interview information. In 1798, Friedrich Rochlitz, the German biographical author and amateur composer, published a set of Mozart anecdotes which he claimed to have collected during his meeting with Constanze in 1796.[1] The Rochlitz publication makes the following statements:

Mozart was unaware of his commissioner’s identity at the time he accepted the project.
He was not bound to any date of completion of the work
He stated that it would take him around four weeks to complete.
He requested, and received, 100 ducats at the time of the first commissioning message.
He began the project immediately after receiving the commission.
His health was poor from the outset; he fainted multiple times while working
He took a break from writing the work to visit the Prater with his wife.
He shared with his wife that for certain he was writing this piece for his own funeral.
He spoke of “very strange thoughts” regarding the unpredicted appearance and commission of this unknown man.
He noted that the departure of Leopold to Prague for the coronation was approaching.
The most highly disputed of these claims is the last one, the chronology of this setting. According to Rochlitz, the messenger arrives quite some time before the departure of Leopold for the coronation, yet we have record of his departure occurring in mid-July 1791. However, Constanze was in Baden during all of June to mid-July, she would not have been present for the commission or the drive they were said to have taken together.[1] Furthermore, The Magic Flute (except for the Overture and March of the Priests) was completed by mid-July. La clemenza di Tito was commissioned by mid-July.[1] There was no time for Mozart to work on the Requiem on the large scale indicated by the Rochlitz publication in the time frame provided.

Also in 1798, Constanze is noted to have given another interview to Franz Xaver Niemetschek[2], another biographer looking to publish a compendium of Mozart’s life. He published his biography in 1808, containing the following claims about Mozart’s receipt of the Requiem commission:

Mozart received the commission very shortly before the Coronation of Emperor Leopold II, and before he received the commission to go to Prague.
He did not accept the messenger’s request immediately; he wrote the commissioner and agreed to the project stating his fee, but urging that he could not predict the time required to complete the work.
The same messenger appeared later, paying Mozart the sum requested plus a note promising a bonus at the work’s completion.
He started composing the work upon his return from Prague.
He fell ill while writing the work
He told Constanze “I am only too conscious,” he continued, “my end will not be long in coming: for sure, someone has poisoned me! I cannot rid my mind of this thought.”
Constanze thought that the Requiem was overstraining him; she called the doctor and took away the score.
On the day of his death he had the score brought to his bed.
The messenger took the unfinished Requiem soon after Mozart’s death.
Constanze never learned the commissioner’s name.
This account, too, has fallen under scrutiny and criticism for its accuracy. According to letters, Constanze most certainly knew the name of the commissioner by the time this interview was released in 1800.[2] Additionally, the Requiem was not given to the messenger until some time after Mozart’s death.[1] This interview contains the only account of the claim that Constanze took the Requiem away from Wolfgang for a significant duration during his composition of it from Constanze herself[1]. Otherwise, the timeline provided in this account is historically probable. However, the most highly accepted text attributed to Constanze is the interview to her second husband, Georg Nikolaus von Nissen.[1] After Nissen’s death in 1826, Constanze released the biography of Wolfgang (1828) that Nissen had compiled, which included this interview. Nissen states:

Mozart received the commission shortly before the coronation of Emperor Leopold and before he received the commission to go to Prague.
He did not accept the messenger’s request immediately; he wrote the commissioner and agreed to the project stating his fee, but urging that he could not predict the time required to complete the work.
The same messenger appeared later, paying Mozart the sum requested plus a note promising a bonus at the work’s completion.
He started composing the work upon his return from Prague.
The Nissen publication lacks information following Mozart’s return from Prague

References:

http://www.mozartproject.org/index.html
Wikipedia
Braunbehrens, Volkmar. Mozart in Vienna. New York, 1990.
Deutsch, Otto Erich. Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford, 1965.
Einstein, Alfred. Mozart, His Character, His Work. New York, 1962.
Giegling, Weinmann and Sievers, eds. Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis samtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts. 6th edition. Wiesbaden, 1964.
Sadie, Stanley. The New Grove Mozart. New York, 1983.
Zaslaw, Neal, and Cowdery, William, eds. The Compleat Mozart. New York, 1990

Keith of Ninewells