all
his works. He had already begun upon his "Requiem," which had been
mysteriously ordered of him by a messenger, who declined to state the
object for which the work was intended. It is now ascertained that the
unknown patron was a Count Walsegg, an amateur desirous of being
thought a great composer. It was his intention to have performed the
work as his own. Mozart was now in low spirits, worn out with work,
late hours and financial worry. The mystery of the "Requiem" preyed
on his imagination none the less that he felt that in it he was
writing some of his noblest and best thoughts. He said: "I am sure
that this will be my own requiem." Nothing could dissuade him from the
idea. It returned again and again. At length he fell ill, poisoned, as
he thought, by some envious rival. No one knows whether there was
anything in the notion that actual poison had been administered,
although there were rivals who had been heard to wish that he were out
of the way. Without having quite finished the "Requiem" he breathed
his last December 5, 1791. His premonition proved correct. The
"Requiem" was given at his own funeral.

This account of the life of Mozart has hardly the merit of an outline,
for within the short thirty-five years of his earthly existence this
great master produced a variety of works in every province of music,
greater than that produced by any other of the great masters, scarcely
excepting the indefatigable and long-lived Haendel.

It is extremely difficult to assign Mozart a definite place in the
musical Pantheon without praising him too highly on the one hand, or
going to the other extreme and belittling his genius by pointing out
the evident fact that noble, beautiful, sprightly, sweet and charming
as were his compositions, he has not left so large an influence upon
the later course of music as quite a number of artists apparently his
inferiors. His influence in music was largely temporary, but none the
less indispensable to musical progress. To the neat and symmetrical
periods of the Haydn symphony and sonata, with their fresh, thematic
treatment, Mozart added a tender grace and sweetness like the
conceptions of a Raphael in painting. He was the apostle of melody. If
he had never written, the art of music would have remained something
quite different from what we know it. And wherever there are lovers
of refined, noble melody, there will the music of Mozart be loved.
Moreover, in his best symphonies, such a