Almanac Music (and Poetry): ‘Lacrimosa’ from Mozart’s Requiem

 

 

‘Lacrimosa’ from the Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

 

The following poem, written and redrafted over many years, had its origins in the mid-1980s, when I was an usher at Hoyts Mid-City cinemas in Melbourne.

 

One of the perks of the job was being able to watch movies as I worked, of course; another was seeing films for free in any Hoyts cinema when not on duty. Amadeus, based on the life of Mozart, directed by Milos Forman, was – and remains – an all-time favourite. I have a vivid memory from that time of watching this wonderful film near the end of its run in the largest cinema of Hoyts’ main Melbourne cinema complex (Hoyts Cinema Centre, a little further up the Bourke Street hill from Mid-City), which seated close to a thousand people. Only a couple of others were in attendance. I felt as if I had the whole film to myself. Mozart’s sublime music provided most of the soundtrack. An especially vivid part of the film’s narrative was the section which dealt (in a fictitious way) with the writing of his Requiem Mass in D Minor, of which the ‘Lacrimosa’ section is a particularly evocative part.

 

Mozart died in December 1791, before finishing the Requiem, and the best-known version was completed by Franz Xavier Sussmayr, who had been a pupil and assistant of his, the following year. Constanze, Mozart’s wife, stated that Wolfgang came to believe he was composing the work for his own funeral.

 

Lacrimosa

 

Verging on tears.
Can hear strains from Mozart’s Requiem
… Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus …
I see the prematurely grey
composer on his death-bed,
his funeral at St. Stephen’s,
attended by very few,
the little coffin on a dray
drawn through the city gates,
burial in a pauper’s grave,
gravediggers tossing quicklime,
then walking away in bitter rain.

 

(Note: following is a translation of the Latin lines in the poem, which come from a traditional text of the Catholic Requiem Mass:
“… Full of tears will be that day
When from the ashes shall arise
The guilty man to be judged …”)

 

 

 
‘Lacrimosa’ from Mozart’s Requiem

 

(Acknowledgement: an earlier version of this piece appeared on the Stereo Stories website.)

 

 

 

Read more from Kevin Densley HERE

 

 

Kevin Densley’s latest poetry collection, Sacredly Profane, is available HERE

 

 

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