Product Description
The piece was commissioned by Count Joseph Deym von Stritetz for use as a funeral mass to be played on a mechanical organ clock in the mausoleum for the recently deceased Generalfeldmarschall (Fieldmarshall) Ernst Gideon von Laudon, part of the Müllersche Kunstgalerie, the wax art gallery and organ museum of "Joseph Müller" (which was the Count Deym's assumed name). This displayed a casket covered with glass, through which one could view a wax figure of the Field Marshall. When the clock struck the hour, a lament was heard: a new one each week, one of which was Mozart's Adagio and Allegro.
Although Mozart intended the piece to be played on a mechanical clockwork organ, he wished later that it could be played on a conventional organ. In a letter to his wife Constanze dated "3rd October, 1790", he wrote, "If it were on a large clock-work with a sound like an organ, I'd be glad to do it; but as it is a thing made up of tiny pipes only, which sound too shrill and childish for me". As time passed, Mozart seemed to be content with the decision, saying later that the work and its installation in the gallery in "fruitlessness and purity and compatibility to the works of art eclipses anything that anyone has ever succeeded in producing".
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