Ave Verum (K618)

Mozart’s final year was a difficult one, as his employment was precarious, his financial situation usually quite desperate, and his wife Constanze frequently in ill health and at the spa in Baden, near Vienna, for treatments. On one such occasion in June of 1791, Mozart visited her and while there composed a short sacramental anthem for his friend Anton Stoll, organist and choirmaster of the Baden parish church. The exquisite Ave verum corpus (K.618) was the first piece of sacred music he had written in over eight years (and the last before his unfinished Requiem), and has proven to be one of his most beloved compositions. Within six months of its writing, Mozart himself hadfallen seriously ill, and died in December of that year.