Mozart

The 35-year-old Mozart died on this date in 1791. “The greatest tragedy in the history of music,” said the distinguished musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon. In the months leading up to his death, Mozart composed a prodigious catalog of swan songs: The Magic Flute, his final piano concerto and string quintet, the Clarinet Concerto, Ave Verum Corpus, and the unfinished Requiem. Did any other artist ever finish on a more exalted note!