#sussmayr

Mozart died at the age of 35, and for the last 9 days of his life, had racking pains and a high fever which did not break. He had rashes on his arms, and for many years, people suspected it was lead poisoning. Recent studies, however, suggest that it was not a case of lead poisoning. Instead, they say it was a strep infection.
However, if he was poisoned, who poisoned him?
Some believe this person was Salieri, who is commonly considered Mozart’s rival. But would he kill Mozart? Salieri was more successful than Mozart. Salieri was never jealous of Mozart. In fact it seems to be the opposite. And also, they had shown a sign of friendship in Mozart’s last two years, when Mozart invited Salieri to collaborate with him on an opera.
This seems to prove that it could not be Salieri who poisoned Mozart.
Mozart, in his last few hours, was writing his Requiem in D minor, and he famously said “It seems to me that I am writing a requiem for myself.” He died while writing it and it is now impossible to tell till where Mozart had written and where his student Sussmayr took over. Sussmayr didn’t bother writing in Mozart’s original manuscript. Instead, he copied the whole thing, and wrote his own ending in that. Mozart’s original Manuscript was stolen from his deathbed.
When Mozart’s original manuscript was found in Brussels in the 19th century, the last page was torn, and the last few notes which are visible to us were the first 8 bars of Lacrimosa.