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===Final illness and death===
Mozart's final illness and death are difficult scholarly topics, obscured by Romantic legends and replete with conflicting theories. Scholars disagree about the course of decline in Mozart's health – particularly at what point Mozart became aware of his impending death, and whether this awareness influenced his final works. The Romantic view holds that Mozart declined gradually, and that his outlook and compositions paralleled this decline. In opposition to this, some contemporary scholarship points out correspondence from Mozart's final year indicating that he was in good cheer, as well as evidence that Mozart's death was sudden and a shock to his family and friends.
The actual cause of Mozart's death is also a matter of conjecture. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever"), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. In fact, dozens of theories have been proposed, which include [[trichinosis]], [[Mercury (element)|mercury]] poisoning, and [[rheumatic fever]]. The contemporary practice of bleeding medical patients is also cited as a contributing cause.
Mozart died around 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 while he was working on his final composition, the [[Requiem (Mozart)|Requiem]] (unfinished when he died). His friend and student, [[Franz Xaver Süssmayr]], completed the Requiem after his teacher's passing, an act for which he is alternately praised and scorned by aficionados of classical music.
According to popular legend, Mozart was penniless and forgotten when he died, and was buried in a pauper's grave.
According to popular legend, Mozart was penniless and forgotten when he died, and was buried in a pauper's grave. In fact, though he was no longer as fashionable in [[Vienna]] as he had once been, he continued to have a well-paid job at court and receive substantial commissions from more distant parts of Europe, [[Prague]] in particular. Many of his begging letters survive, but they are evidence not so much of poverty as of his habit of spending more than he earned. He was not buried in a "mass grave", but in a regular communal grave according to the 1783 laws. Though the original grave on [[St. Marx cemetery]] was lost, memorial gravestones have been placed there and on [[Zentralfriedhof]].
In 1809, Constanze married [[Denmark|Danish]] diplomat [[Georg Nikolaus von Nissen]] (1761–1826). Being a fanatical admirer of Mozart, he edited vulgar passages out of many of the composer's letters and wrote a Mozart biography.
==Works, musical style, and innovations==
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