7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7

also composed the score to Emanuel Schikaneder’s Die
Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), and received another com-
mission, for a requiem, to be composed under conditions
of secrecy. In July Constanze gave birth to their sixth child,
one of the two to survive. Mozart’s letters to her show that
he worked first on Die Zauberflöte before he left for Prague
near the end of August. Pressure of work, however, was
such that he took with him to Prague, along with Constanze,
his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who almost certainly com-
posed the plain recitatives for the new opera.
Mozart was back in Vienna by the middle of September;
his clarinet concerto was finished by September 29, and
the next day Die Zauberflöte had its premiere. The opera
became the most loved of all of Mozart’s works for the
stage. Mozart had been ill during the weeks in Prague, but
in October he managed to write a Masonic cantata and to
work steadily on the commissioned requiem. Later in
November he was ill and was confined to bed, and on
December 5 he died of a severe fever. Constanze Mozart
was anxious to have the requiem completed, as a fee was
due. She handed it first to Joseph Eybler, who supplied
some orchestration, and then to Süssmayr, who produced
a complete version, writing several movements. This has
remained the standard version of the work, if only because
of its familiarity.

Ludwig van Beethoven

(baptized Dec. 17, 1770, Bonn, archbishopric of Cologne
[Germany]—d. March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria)

A

s the creator of some of the most influential pieces
of music ever written, German composer Ludwig
van Beethoven bridged the 18th-century Classical period
and the new beginnings of Romanticism. His greatest