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The work was commissioned by Joseph Deym-Müller, the owner of a "collection
of rarities" in Vienna. After the death of Field-Marshal Laudon in 1790 he
acquired an exhibition room in the Himmelfortgasse in which he put on show a
life-size wax figure of Laudon in a glass coffin "artificially illuminated", and
called the whole thing a mausoleum. To heighten the effect of the exhibition
he ordered from Mozart a piece of funerary music to be played on an automatic
organ; Mozart composed two. This one was played for the first time after the
collection was moved and transformed into an "Elysium" for the Emperor Joseph
II who had also died. There has been no trace of the instrument since the
death of Deym's widow in 1821.
As suggested by Haselböck in the Universal Orgel Edition I omit the repeated
chords in bars 154 and 155.
Let no one complain that this performance sounds too mechanical; the work
was written for a machine.As far as I know, all recordings of this work are of arrangements for fingers and do not conform exactly to the original score.
Colin R. Merton 23 May 2003
This NoteWorthy file uses a non standard font. This can be obtained as follows:
Boxmarks - Scriptorium download at http://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful/boxmarks.zip