Mozart, Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus

(1756-1791)

   Better known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A famous Austrian composer, pianist, and conductor, who may have experienced a * compound hallucination. In 1791, Mozart was visited by an unknown person who requested him to write a requiem. This person, who remained unknown to Mozart, was later tentatively identified by historians as Franz Anton Leitgeb (or Leutgeb), a man who supposedly acted on behalf of Count Franz von Walsegg-Stuppach (1763-1827), who was in the habit of publishing commissioned musical pieces under his own name. However, others have suggested that the unknown visitor was none other than a *personification, i.e. a compound hallucination depicting a human being. As the British surgeon Walter Cooper Dendy (1794-1871) wrote in 1847, "The Requiem of Mozart... was written by desire of a solemn personage, who repeatedly, [Mozart] affirmed, called on him during its composition, and disappeared upon completion. The requiem was soon chanted over his own grave; and the man in black was, I believe, but a phantom of his own creations."

   References

   Dendy, W.C. (1847). The philosophy of mystery. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.