MOZART | Requiem

The legendary Mozart Mass for the Dead is one of the most famous works of classical music in history. This is because it was inextricably linked with the most significant events in history, bearing the mark of mourning and uniting people in their love for truth, goodness, and beauty. And although each of us knows the gloomy Introitus, the dramatic Confutatis or Rex tremendis, the beautiful Lacrimosa, Mozart's Requiem remains one of those pieces that we listen to – or rather experience – many times, and at the same time always for the first time. And that's just one of the many aspects that make this memorial service one of the most mysterious works in music history.


We all know the story of a mysterious client who entrusts a seriously ill Mozart to write a Requiem, then repeatedly encouraging him to work and rushing him. About a young composer who, dying, races against time to write down as much as possible of the mourning music that he already has in his mind. A piece written for an anonymous commissioner turns into a mass for the dead, which Mozart writes for himself. About friends who gather around his bed the night before the composer's death to present him with already written vocal parts. Finally, about the students who try to collect the manuscripts scattered in agony and complete a monumental work.

But what do we not know? We do not know how it happened that Mozart's Requiem is played around the world at its most meaningful moments. Why in a short moment, between the raising of the conductor's baton and the sound of the first note, all the participants shudder as if a metaphysical force was passing through the crowd? Why does such a well-known work sound a bit different each time? Why does every artist remember each performance? Why do we finally return to Requiem over and over again – also in Szczecin – in various places in time and space?

That is why Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem remains a mystery that neither musicians nor scholars can describe. We can only repeat after Karol Wojtyła: "Oh music! you rise like a puff in front of the people, / a puff green with grass, white with clouds. / You say. People, listen! Because He is Love and Goodness. "