How Does Requieme Represent Mozart's Death

While the opera “Don Giovanni” of Mozart is used to denote Leopold’s influence on Mozart and Salieri’s artifice, “Requiem” is employed to portray Mozart’s later years and the moment of death in Amadeus. In reality, Mozart’s “Requiem,” which is known as a Mass for dead – the music offered for the repose of the soul of one or more deceased persons in the context of a funeral – is a work left unfinished at Mozart’s death. Although Mozart’s Requiem was actually composed for Franz von Walsegg to commemorate his dead wife, the work played in Amadeus seems to be used to effectively describe Mozart’s miserable final years and his death caused by Salieri. In other words, “Requiem” in Amadeus is an important musical symbol regarding the death of the
626, Lacrimosa” is played in the scene of Mozart’s death and his funeral. The melody of “Requiem, K. 626, Lacrimosa,” which starts from the high-pitch tone and goes down slowly and then rises again, gives an impression that the music is wailing in mourning for Mozart as the word “Lacrimosa” is a Latin word for “weeping.” For the music played in the last moment of Mozart’s life, Kim Jong-Hwan addresses that “the tunes of string instrument in the music sound like expressing doleful emotions too” (“Symbols in the Film Amadeus” 122). Moreover, he states that “the music inserted in the final moment of Mozart’s life works as the powerful symbol which arouses the tragic beauty of his life, in Amadeus” (123). Even though the scene is describing the death of one human, with the description of Mozart composing his last masterpiece even in the last moment of his life, the film shows the genius’s tragic but beautiful death caused because of his outstanding talent gifted by God. To sum up, in Amadeus, Mozart’s “Requiem, K. 626” employed repeatedly in the series of episodes which lead Mozart to death is significant to demonstrate Mozart’s miserable later life and the end of his