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I. Adagio – Allegro II. Andante con moto III. Menuetto – Allegretto IV. Finale – Allegro

The E flat major symphony was composed in the summer of 1788, along with the G minor (K 550) and C major (K 551) symphonies, in a burst of creative activity remarkable even by Mozart's extraordinary standards. We can safely describe it as being among the very best of Mozart's symphonies although the other two in the set have become better known and more popular. We know little about the circumstances of their composition. However, Mozart rarely if ever wrote for the sake of it. A letter has survived addressed to Mozart's well intentioned and generous fellow Freemason, Puchberg, from whom the composer hoped for help in relieving the grim existential circumstances. “I can offer to those who lend to me, sufficient evidence of my character and earnings”, he writes, but then adds for safety “ten days ago, since I have lived here, I have worked more than I did in the last flat for two months.” He also mentions the E flat major symphony as security for repayments on his steadily mounting debts.
Mozart's increasingly unpleasant personal problems are totally absent from this joyous, life affirming symphony (If we can ever point to such things in Mozart's music, then it is the G minor symphony where we had better look closest).
The first movement commences with a truly dramatic slow introduction that leads to the entrancing principal theme in three four time, reminiscent of a noble dance, perhaps a minuet. However, this is an entirely stylised dance, and creates the impression that we are looking on at the swirling crowd from behind a distant vale. The instrumental melodies are virtually vocal in character, and the frequent appearance of the scale-like themes welds the entire movement into a unit.
The pointed rhythms of the slow movement have reminded certain analysts of a “humanist hymn”, which conceivably relates to ideas linked to Freemasonry. Mozart uses clarinets instead of the customary oboes, which possessed a symbolic meaning in his Masonic music. The festive march character is not alien to Mozart's  personality either, and the movement is echoed in Schubert's C major symphony. The passion of the central section perhaps does give us an insight into Mozart's mental state at the time.
The third movement is far less abstract and transfigured, evoking the atmosphere of peasant dancing. The final movements contains a single theme which Mozart treats in a variety of forms, and the symphony ends amid great joy and humour.

There have been a host of masterpieces in music history, to which over time, various stories have attached themselves, often making them more popular as a result. Sometimes, they even result in the work picking up a nickname. The majority of these have proven apocryphal, but one of the most extraordinary stories of all, the one surrounding Mozart’s Requiem, has, against the odds, turned out to be true.

In the last year of his life, Mozart was working feverishly on the Magic Flute. He was visited by a mysterious stranger who would not name himself and who commissioned a requiem mass from the composer. On a number of occasions, the man appeared dressed in black, to hurry Mozart along. At this time, Mozart was seriously ill. It makes the often stated assertion that Mozart felt he was writing his own Requiem all the more credible. Indeed, his illness proved fatal, and Mozart was unable to complete it. Even on his last day on earth, Mozart was still humming the work’s melodies.

After his death, Mozart’s most likeable pupil, Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed the score. Music scholars are still debating whether Süssmayr was working from sketches or else from his own imagination, when he produced the missing Sanctus, Benedictus and first part of the Agnus Dei. In any event, he produced a passable imitation of Mozart’s style, something that is a credit to his humility and also shows that a composer of middling abilities is able just occasionally to approach the level of a master. It transpired that the mysterious man in black was a shady aristocrat, Count Walsegg, who to maintain the fiction that he was himself a composer, was in the habit of making commissions from local composers (and of course, denying the true provenance of the works he paid them for). The first performance of the Requiem probably took place in the chapel of Walsegg’s mansion, which was performed as a requiem to his wife (composed by himself, naturally). Constanze, Mozart’s widow, soon made the work public under Mozart’s own name and ensured its publication.

Süssmayr was not the first person to attempt a completion. Originally, Mozart’s widow asked conductor Joseph Eybler to undertake the work, but he was unable to measure up to the task at hand. Modern scholars believe that a far larger part of the Requiem is original Mozart than was originally believed. The Requiem and Kyrie, most of the Dies irae, Tuba Mirum, Rex tremendae, Recordare, Confutatis, Domine Jesu and the first eight bars of the Lacrymosa survive in Mozart’s own hand. It would seem that Süssmayr composed only the central section of the Benedictus and the Hosanna, and perhaps the first half of the Agnus dei.

Mozart’s entire oeuvre is a kind of process of synthesis. In his work all the characteristics of German, Italian and French music unite. In the last period of his life, he added to this “spatial” synthesis a “temporal” one. In all these works, including the Magic Flute and above all the Requiem, he manages to integrate the baroque practise of independent voices and counterpoint with his own classical style built around melody and thematic contrasts. Needless to say, the end result is miraculously complete and beautiful.

The Requiem also gave Mozart room for exploring another kind of antithesis. Mozart was a profoundly dramatic composer, not just in his stage works but even in his most abstract instrumental pieces. His mature church music is largely theatre music without a stage, and this is also reflected in his treatment of the Latin text. Although he paid great respect to the liturgical demands and rules, the Requiem is as much music drama as church music. Just think of the depiction of the final judgement, or else the evocation of the happiness of the next world. This drama even plays itself out within individual movements. It is truly a masterly synthesis, and from its very first bars, with it questions of life and death, addresses people of all eras. For this reason, it is one of the great compositions of music and art.