I wrote before how I found the fugues in Handel's "Messiah" and Mozart's "Requiem" strikingly similar - at least in their use of the falling diminished 7th interval. With Handel, he set the words "And With His Stripes," a piece I was listening to a lot on my way to work today.
Mozart took Handel a step further in his Requiem during the "Kyrie." He uses only a slightly altered rhythmic version of Handel's motif, but creates a double fugue with a second subject. In the end it all fits so perfectly well together and seems inevitable as most great music does, yet as a composer myself, I marvel at this amazing feat of executing a very difficult task of creating a fugue let alone a double fugue.
Mozart pays homage to Handel, a man whose music he reorchestrated for "Messiah." There can be no coincidence between Mozart's intimate familiarity with Handel's composition and the masterful "Kyrie" fugue in Mozart's "Requiem."
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