Music Throwback Saturday: Mozart Requiem

And of those, more than 100 are for the Mozart Requiem in D Minor K. 626, including The Big Lebowski and Robot & Frank. The movie Lucy used the Introitus: Requiem Aeternam. Life of Brian went with Dies irae. Both Eyes Wide Shut and The Wolverine were fond of Rex Tremendae Majestatis. Here is X-Men 2 using Dies irae.

Of course, the movie Amadeus used several movements, including Dies Irae, Rex Tremendae, Confutatis, and the segment I hear most often, even in car commercials, Lacrimosa. Here is the Lacrimosa scene in Amadeus.

The movie also explains, as does the Wikipedia, that the Requiem was incomplete upon the composer’s death on December 5, 1791 at the age of 35. “Mozart’s widow Constanze was responsible for a number of stories surrounding the composition of the work, including the claims that Mozart received the commission from a mysterious messenger who did not reveal the commissioner’s identity, and that Mozart came to believe that he was writing the requiem for his own funeral.” However, the film took some liberties with the facts.

I love requiems in general, and, as I’ve noted, the Mozart Requiem is one of my favorite pieces of music I was in choirs that have performed it thrice in my life, in 1985 and at some point in the 1990s at Trinity United Methodist Church, and in 2002, with Albany Pro Musica, as part of the commemoration of the first anniversary of 9/11. So I never used Cyberbass to learn the work, though it could be useful for you.