1. Mozart’s Requiem

Shortly before his death in 1791, the famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was contacted by a mysterious stranger and commissioned to write a Requiem to be played at a ceremony for the man’s deceased wife. Mozart, who was ailing from an unidentified illness, supposedly took the task as a sign of his own impending mortality, and even came to believe that the piece he was composing was actually a requiem for his own funeral. Mozart died before the piece could be completed, and the missing movements were finished by one of his students, Franz Sussmayr. The piece was then given to the mysterious patron, who turned out to be Franz Von Walsegg, an eccentric count who was known for secretly commissioning works of music and then passing them off as his own compositions. Mozart’s wife Constanze eventually identified the piece as belonging to her husband, but beyond this the story is filled with rumors and half truths, and to this day it is not known for certain which parts of the Requiem were altered or added on later, or just why the famed composer became so paranoid and fearful in his final days.