There are many myths and much romance about the Mozart Requiem. While I absolutely loved "Amadeus" and it inspired me to become a composer myelf, I was treated to a fair dose of myth about the Mozart Requiem and had to seek the facts out concerning this amazing work.
One of the myths is that Salieri commissioned the Requiem of Mozart. This is certainly not true. It was commisioned by Count Walsegg-Stuppach, a nobleman who commissioned a Requiem from Mozart in honor of his recently deceased wife. However, Mozart did eventually come to believe he was working on the piece as his own funeral music as he felt his health slip away. Hollywood ran away with this bit of fact and turned it into Salieri using the Requiem commission as a fatal weapon to kill Mozart. Mozart did believe he was poisoned, but there is no evidence he actually was. Mozart is said by some to have become quite delerious and paranoid near the end of his life - two symptoms consistent with renal failure - at least one of the causes of his death.
While Mozart is said to have had friends come to his bedside to rehearse the Requiem, he certainly did not dictate the Requiem to Salieri as he did in "Amadeus." His pupil who eventually finished the Requiem, Sussmayr, was probably given some instructions for completion, but the whole story nobody will probably ever know. It is one of the great mysteries in music history.
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