What Really Killed Mozart | Full Life Documentary
The Lost Chord
3,600 views
What really killed Mozart? Not poison, and not Salieri. He took to his bed and was dead fifteen days later; Vienna's own death register names a fever - and this is his whole life, told with his music.
A full-length Mozart documentary: 39 minutes, the whole life in four movements, from the eight-year-old the Royal Society tested in London to the man dead in Vienna at thirty-five after fifteen days.
It is also a listening film. 45 music cues from 30 recordings run across the 39 minutes - the Gran Partita, the Dissonance Quartet, the Linz and Prague symphonies, Symphony No. 40, the Magic Flute overture, Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The mix is calm and audio-first, so it works with your eyes closed.
Why did Mozart die at thirty-five? Not poison. Salieri was an ordinary rival who sat in Mozart's box and shouted bravo seven weeks before the end; the Mozart death scene in Amadeus never happened. Where is Mozart buried? St. Marx cemetery, in a common grave - the regulation burial of Vienna's middle class in 1791, not a pauper's disgrace. Over a hundred causes of death have been proposed in print. This film gives the answer the record supports, and stops there.
Every performance is public domain or Creative Commons; everything on screen is a real object, photographed or scanned; nothing here is AI generated. Sources and the full ledger are in the pinned comment.
CHAPTERS
0:00 What really killed Mozart - and what this film covers
0:56 Movement I: Salzburg, 1756 - the child the Royal Society tested
3:07 Paris, 1778: two letters about his mother's death
4:36 1781: thrown out of the Salzburg court, with a kick
6:17 Movement II: Vienna, 1782 - on his own, and married
7:17 The starling that sang his concerto (Piano Concerto No. 17)
8:23 Mozart and Salieri: the real rivalry (Dissonance Quartet)
10:00 1787: the good and faithful friend - his father dies
11:23 Movement III: 1791, the busiest year of his life
12:28 A stranger's commission - who really ordered the Requiem
13:20 Two operas, twenty-four days apart (Prague Symphony)
14:36 October: roast hare, a prank, the Requiem (Magic Flute overture)
16:36 October 14th: Salieri in Mozart's box, shouting bravo
18:30 November: a judgment, and his last catalogue entry
19:38 Fifteen days: the illness, as it was written down
20:24 December 4th: the sing-through around the bed
22:24 The Lacrimosa: eight bars, then the writing stops - 44s, music alone
24:32 Movement IV: what Vienna wrote down - hitziges Frieselfieber
25:35 The pauper's grave myth: St. Marx cemetery, and the storm that never was
27:55 Two cities in mourning: Vienna and Prague
28:52 What Constanze did next, and how she saved the music
30:34 How the poison story grew: Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Amadeus
33:10 So, what killed Mozart? The honest answer
36:35 Where the music is now - the piece found in Leipzig in 2024
The Lost Chord - the lives behind the music, told with the music. Subscribe: @thelostchord-k6h
▶ All episodes: Composer Documentaries | Full Life Stories...
#Mozart #ClassicalMusic #Documentary
MUSIC CREDITS
Creative Commons Attribution, credit required:
Das Orchester Tsumugi, Fukuoka, cond. Takashi Inoue - K.113, K.129, K.425 "Linz", K.504 "Prague", K.550, and the Don Giovanni overture K.527 (CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Markus Krumpöck, clarinet, Merkur Orchester Wiener Neustadt, cond. Willibald Zwittkovits - Clarinet Concerto K.622 (CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons)
Jon Fylling - the Requiem's Lacrimosa, K.626, sung in Oslo Cathedral on 26 May 2018, the conductor's own recording (CC BY 3.0): mozart: lacrymosa (from requiem) - live Os...
Public domain and CC0, credited by choice: St Matthew's Choir and West London Sinfonia / Philip Hesketh (K.427); Brendan Kinsella, piano (K.333); the Musopen String Quartet (K.421, K.465); the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Musopen (K.620, K.550, K.453, K.525); the US Marine Band (Gran Partita); the US Air Force Band (K.588).
The Lacrimosa at 23:15 stops at bar nine, where Mozart's writing stops - and the choir at the end is that same Oslo evening, still singing it.
IMAGERY AND FOOTAGE - Creative Commons Attribution, credit required:
Evergreen Symphony Orchestra - National Concert Hall, Taipei, 28 April 2022, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=...
Jon Fylling - Mozart's Requiem, Lacrimosa, Oslo Cathedral, 26 May 2018, CC BY 3.0: mozart: lacrymosa (from requiem) - live Os...
Wellcome Collection - O'Neil's "The Last Moments of Mozart"; a venesection after Nicolas Guerard, CC BY 4.0
Belinda Hankins Miller - "Getting Ready For the Movie", 2007, CC BY 2.0
Martin Furtschegger - Kärntner Straße, Vienna, 2012, CC BY 3.0
Everything else is public domain or CC0 from public museums and archives, each named on screen as it appears.
5 Comments
What Really Killed Mozart | Full Life Documentary
The Lost Chord
3,600 views
What really killed Mozart? Not poison, and not Salieri. He took to his bed and was dead fifteen days later; Vienna's own death register names a fever - and this is his whole life, told with his music.
A full-length Mozart documentary: 39 minutes, the whole life in four movements, from the eight-year-old the Royal Society tested in London to the man dead in Vienna at thirty-five after fifteen days.
It is also a listening film. 45 music cues from 30 recordings run across the 39 minutes - the Gran Partita, the Dissonance Quartet, the Linz and Prague symphonies, Symphony No. 40, the Magic Flute overture, Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The mix is calm and audio-first, so it works with your eyes closed.
Why did Mozart die at thirty-five? Not poison. Salieri was an ordinary rival who sat in Mozart's box and shouted bravo seven weeks before the end; the Mozart death scene in Amadeus never happened. Where is Mozart buried? St. Marx cemetery, in a common grave - the regulation burial of Vienna's middle class in 1791, not a pauper's disgrace. Over a hundred causes of death have been proposed in print. This film gives the answer the record supports, and stops there.
Every performance is public domain or Creative Commons; everything on screen is a real object, photographed or scanned; nothing here is AI generated. Sources and the full ledger are in the pinned comment.
CHAPTERS
0:00 What really killed Mozart - and what this film covers
0:56 Movement I: Salzburg, 1756 - the child the Royal Society tested
3:07 Paris, 1778: two letters about his mother's death
4:36 1781: thrown out of the Salzburg court, with a kick
6:17 Movement II: Vienna, 1782 - on his own, and married
7:17 The starling that sang his concerto (Piano Concerto No. 17)
8:23 Mozart and Salieri: the real rivalry (Dissonance Quartet)
10:00 1787: the good and faithful friend - his father dies
11:23 Movement III: 1791, the busiest year of his life
12:28 A stranger's commission - who really ordered the Requiem
13:20 Two operas, twenty-four days apart (Prague Symphony)
14:36 October: roast hare, a prank, the Requiem (Magic Flute overture)
16:36 October 14th: Salieri in Mozart's box, shouting bravo
18:30 November: a judgment, and his last catalogue entry
19:38 Fifteen days: the illness, as it was written down
20:24 December 4th: the sing-through around the bed
22:24 The Lacrimosa: eight bars, then the writing stops - 44s, music alone
24:32 Movement IV: what Vienna wrote down - hitziges Frieselfieber
25:35 The pauper's grave myth: St. Marx cemetery, and the storm that never was
27:55 Two cities in mourning: Vienna and Prague
28:52 What Constanze did next, and how she saved the music
30:34 How the poison story grew: Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Amadeus
33:10 So, what killed Mozart? The honest answer
36:35 Where the music is now - the piece found in Leipzig in 2024
The Lost Chord - the lives behind the music, told with the music. Subscribe: @thelostchord-k6h
▶ All episodes: Composer Documentaries | Full Life Stories...
#Mozart #ClassicalMusic #Documentary
MUSIC CREDITS
Creative Commons Attribution, credit required:
Das Orchester Tsumugi, Fukuoka, cond. Takashi Inoue - K.113, K.129, K.425 "Linz", K.504 "Prague", K.550, and the Don Giovanni overture K.527 (CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Markus Krumpöck, clarinet, Merkur Orchester Wiener Neustadt, cond. Willibald Zwittkovits - Clarinet Concerto K.622 (CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons)
Jon Fylling - the Requiem's Lacrimosa, K.626, sung in Oslo Cathedral on 26 May 2018, the conductor's own recording (CC BY 3.0): mozart: lacrymosa (from requiem) - live Os...
Public domain and CC0, credited by choice: St Matthew's Choir and West London Sinfonia / Philip Hesketh (K.427); Brendan Kinsella, piano (K.333); the Musopen String Quartet (K.421, K.465); the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Musopen (K.620, K.550, K.453, K.525); the US Marine Band (Gran Partita); the US Air Force Band (K.588).
The Lacrimosa at 23:15 stops at bar nine, where Mozart's writing stops - and the choir at the end is that same Oslo evening, still singing it.
IMAGERY AND FOOTAGE - Creative Commons Attribution, credit required:
Evergreen Symphony Orchestra - National Concert Hall, Taipei, 28 April 2022, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=...
Jon Fylling - Mozart's Requiem, Lacrimosa, Oslo Cathedral, 26 May 2018, CC BY 3.0: mozart: lacrymosa (from requiem) - live Os...
Wellcome Collection - O'Neil's "The Last Moments of Mozart"; a venesection after Nicolas Guerard, CC BY 4.0
Belinda Hankins Miller - "Getting Ready For the Movie", 2007, CC BY 2.0
Martin Furtschegger - Kärntner Straße, Vienna, 2012, CC BY 3.0
Everything else is public domain or CC0 from public museums and archives, each named on screen as it appears.
Curious which version of what killed him you grew up with. For me it was the poison story, by far.
And which composer should we cover next?