Ignaz von Seyfried (1776-1841) was one of the most prominent musical figures in Vienna in the early decades of the nineteenth century, as a composer, music director, teacher and writer. A friend of Beethoven, as a boy he had also known Mozart and played a significant part in fashioning that composer’s posthumous reception in the city. His most enduring contribution to that process was a setting of the ‘Libera me’ text for use in liturgical performances of Mozart’s Requiem, first performed at a memorial requiem service for Beethoven a few weeks after his death in 1827.
