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.

The Kent State shootings happened while my mother was attending nearby Oberlin College. Oberlin’s response was to engage the entire student body in a performance of Mozart‘s Requiem in Washington DC.

I was in college when 9/11 happened. Remembering my mother’s story, a handful of students and I organized a performance of the same piece. We managed to engage so many students that our school was forced to shut down for the day, and some of our esteemed faculty even donated their voices to the cause.

Requiems have long been a regular part of church music. It’s not until Mozart, though, that they became a dramatic personal statement. After him, Berlioz, Brahms, Faure, Verdi, and Durufle wrote their own, and more or less solidified the concert Requiem as a standard form of composition. Still, when you talk about great Requiems, Mozart’s is the one by which all others are judged. And why not? It’s one of the most stunning things ever written. And it helps us express the many complex emotions that come with a tragedy like the one that happened in the US fifteen years ago.

There are two big myths surrounding this piece (and contributing to its popularity) – both were started by Mozart’s widow. First myth: a mysterious stranger (or a rival composer) commissioned the work. Second myth: Mozart believed he was writing his own funeral music. But they make for smashing good stories, anyway.