ABOUT REQUIEM The Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left unfinished at the composer’s death on December 5. A completion dated 1792 by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a Requiem Mass to commemorate the February 14 anniversary of his wife’s death.
ABOUT PETITE MESSE SOLENNELLE
Rossini first composed the Mass in 1863, during his regular summer sojourn in his villa at Passy, in the suburbs of Paris. The autograph manuscript of the mass, preserved at the Fondazione Rossini of Pesaro, does indeed bear a total of three autograph dedications (one to the Countess Louise Pillet-Will and two addressed to “Bon Dieu”): all three are dated “Passy, 1863.” A more precise indication is found at the end of the Credo movement, which is signed and dated: “G. Rossini / Laus Deo (Passy) / 10 Juin 1863.”
Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. The choral-orchestral setting of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead is the best known of his large works.
Fauré’s reasons for composing his Requiem are uncertain. One possible impetus may have been the death of his father in 1885, and his mother’s death two years later on New Year’s Eve 1887. However, by the time of his mother’s death he had already begun the work, about which he later declared, “My Requiem wasn’t written for anything – for pleasure, if I may call it that!” The earliest composed music included in the Requiem is the “Libera Me”, which Fauré wrote in 1877 as an independent work.