There’s a lie we like to tell ourselves: bullies are mean because they are actually insecure, depressed, unloved, and lonely. That might make us feel better when someone is picking on us, but the truth of the matter is, bullies are jerks who are living the good life at the top of the social ladder.

And that’s why there are stories like Don Juan: seducer, rapist, murderer, liar, and just about the most horrible person you can dream up. Mozart‘s operatic version of the story, Don Giovanni, begins with the main character seducing the daughter of a knight, before then killing her father – with no regrets for any of his actions. The opera concludes with a triumphant moment of justice, when the murdered knight appears as a ghost who offers Giovanni one last chance to repent – Giovanni, however, would never stoop so low. The knight grabs him by the hand and pulls him down to hell. Everybody else then casually sits around and agrees that Giovanni had what was coming to him.

I’ve written about Mozart‘s Requiem before – how it has become the Requiem by which we judge all other Requiems. The music runs the gamut of musical expression, and you could argue that it’s unabashed display of dark emotions foreshadows the end of the classical era and the beginning of the romantic.

The work is shrouded in mystery and legend. This is largely the fault of Mozart’s widow Constanze, who started spreading lies about the piece the day after Mozart died. This wasn’t completely her fault – if word got out that the piece was unfinished at the time of his death, she wouldn’t receive the payment for the work. She secretly had some of Mozart’s students finish the composition; to this day there is disagreement as to who finished which movements. She was aware that the person who commissioned the work might try to pass it off as his own music (the person was famous for doing so.) But, she also claimed that Mozart was poisoned and that he knew he was writing his own funeral music. That’s just good for business.

However, it’s important to note that in general, human beings like to make legends out of things they love, even if the legends end up being gross exaggerations of the truth. For example, he didn’t get tossed into a pauper’s grave, he had a regular middle-class tomb. His burial was not unattended, and there was no dark storm that day.

Like yesterday’s post, there is much scholarship surrounding this work, so it’s fair to say we know what parts Mozart wrote and which parts were finished by another composer. Even if it’s not 100% Mozart, it’s still a marvelous work, and the dark circumstances surrounding it add to its mysterious flavor. Listening to the Dies Irae, I can’t help but feel that Mozart was genuinely afraid of his own death.

This week, I wanted to listen to a certain piece of music on the way to work. I didn’t have it on CD, but I pulled it up on my phone … but my phone refused to connect to my car’s Bluetooth! I was furious … my desires weren’t instantly gratified. Poor me.

Before recorded music, there was only one way to hear music – either you made the music yourself, or you listened to a live performance. This also meant that if hearing the newest, hottest music meant a lot more than turning on a radio, TV, or computer. You had to get a score, then you had to get it performed. And often, that meant you heard the latest symphony played not by an orchestra, but by on a keyboard – very often, a piano-duet (often called “piano four hands”  – one piano, two players; not to be confused with two pianos, two players, popularly called “dueling pianos”).

Four-hand piano music makes a ton of sound, and can cover the many moving parts of a complex symphony. Besides getting new music heard, four-hand scores are often the first thing a composer writes when preparing a large-scale opera or symphony – this way s/he can hear the piece and make edits before s/he takes the time to write out all the orchestra parts (a long and laborious process.) However, four-hand music is more than just playing orchestral works – many composers have written pieces specifically for this genre. Franz Schubert wrote his Fantasia in F minor in his last year (he died at 31). It was a gift for his student, whom he loved; she didn’t love him back. The gravity, weight, and maturity of this piece is a regular part of Schubert’s late works (like Winterreise), as he was preparing himself for a death he knew was coming (he suffered from late-stage syphilis.)