Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) K626 Requiem in D minor, Hostias, last page
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This page is possibly the last Mozart wrote: when he died the manuscript score of the Requiem consisted of 46 leaves, or 92 pages, 80 of which contained the music for the Introït and Kyrie, the Sequence up until the Lacrymosa, and the Offertorium. There is also the possibility that Mozart might have left some sketches of the remaining movements (the “Zettelchen” mentioned by Abbé Maximilian Stadler in writing to the journal Cäcilia in 1826): we have one such page comprising two contrapuntal sketches for the Rex tremendæ and the closing Amen fugue of the Sequence. The vast majority of pages would have looked much like the page above: the choir parts and instrumental bass filled out, the remainder of the orchestration sketchy or otherwise blank.

The page shown above is the recto of folio 45 of Mozart’s original manuscript. This numbering changed when the manuscript was divided into several sections after Mozart’s death and subsequently re-bound with the 54 folios of Süssmayr’s manuscript in 1839, when it became folio 99 recto; both sets of numbers are visible in the top right-hand corner of the fac simile. The music shown is bars 44 to 54 of the Hostias, which sets the words fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam (grant them, Lord, that they may pass from death to life).

Like the rest of the draft, the top two staves are the violin parts; 11 bars of the first violin has been written down by Mozart, but only 2 bars in the second violin to cover the gap where the choir is silent. The first of the five blank staves would have been the viola part; it is likely 2 of the remaining staves would have been for basset horns and bassoons (two instruments each sharing a stave). Of the remaining instruments at his disposal it is possible Mozart might have employed trumpets and drums in E flat (but this would require a different crook from the rest of the mass); the possibility of three obbligato trombones is more convincing, since the music is written in triple time, and in the masonic “wisdom” key of three flats.

The last instruction on the page is “quam olim / da capo” indicating that to complete the Offertorium, the music for the words quam olim Abrahæ promisisti et semini eius should be repeated from the preceding Domine. It is a sad fact that while the score was on display at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958, a thief vandalised the bottom right hand corner of the page, and stole a fragment containing the very last words “quam olim / d: c:”. This was also one of the pages recently on display at the National Library of Australia, which I had occasion to view the manuscript in mid-January of 2002.