I dug out my copy of Mozart’s Requiem to listen to this week, a piece I became obsessed with when I was sixteen (having watched Amadeus for the first time, don’t tell anyone!).
A lot of people are interested in all of the myths surrounding its composition: dying genius, conspiracy theories, and so on. But for me, one of the most interesting things to think about is the actual meaning of this “Mass for the Dead”.
This idea comes from the original religious sense of the Requiem. But since we now usually hear Mozart’s masterpiece in secular settings, it also has meaning beyond its liturgical place.
