GliArchiEnsemble - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem, K. 626 (Quartet Transcription by Peter Lichtenthal, Arr. for String Ensemble) (2018)

Peter Lichtenthal (b Pressburg [now Bratislava], 10 May 1780; d Milan, 18 Aug 1853). Austrian writer on music and composer. A doctor of medicine by profession, having earned his degree in Vienna, he settled in Milan in 1810 as a censor for the government. He was a close friend of Mozart's son Karl, and an ardent proponent of Mozart's chamber music. He composed about 50 works, including seven ballets for the Teatro alla Scala, church music, orchestral music (about 15 symphonies), chamber music, songs, piano and organ works. A number of these were published; most of his manuscripts are in the Milan Conservatory library.

Lichtenthal's importance lies in his writings, in particular his four-volume Dizionario e bibliografia della musica (1826), which although full of factual errors, and being in significant measure a translation of the dictionaries of Gerber (1790–92), Koch (1802) and Castil-Blaze (1821) and the bibliography of Forkel (1792), is nevertheless a landmark in the development from dilettantism to modern, systematic bibliographic method.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: (b Salzburg, 27 Jan 1756; d Vienna, 5 Dec 1791). Austrian composer, son of Leopold Mozart. His style essentially represents a synthesis of many different elements, which coalesced in his Viennese years, from 1781 on, into an idiom now regarded as a peak of Viennese Classicism. The mature music, distinguished by its melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture, is deeply coloured by Italian opera though also rooted in Austrian and south German instrumental traditions. Unlike Haydn, his senior by 24 years, and Beethoven, his junior by 15, he excelled in every medium current in his time. He may thus be regarded as the most universal composer in the history of Western music.