After recently listening to Handel's "Messiah," I didn't realize how close the subject of "And With His Stripes" was to the fugue subject in Mozart's Requiem "Kyrie" section. The notes, the intervals, are essentially the same. There is only a slight rhythmic variation in Mozart's version, and it is clear he learned his lessons well from his re-orchestration project of Handel's "Messiah."
Mozart used to be invited to music parties by the Baron van Swieten, who was a connisseur of Baroque music. They would often play and listen to music of Bach, and it was Swieten who assigned Mozart the task of re-orchestrating Handel's "Messiah." When I hear the homage Mozart paid to Handel while writing his "Requiem" and Mozart's own words of respect for the composer, I chuckle at the silly words Peter Schaffer put in the words of Mozart in his myth, "Amadeus." When asked at a masquerade party to play Handel, Mozart said, "I don't like him." Yet one more bad judgement by Schaffer.
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