What Really Killed Mozart | Full Life Documentary

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.