Among the works Mozart composed during 1791, the final year of his life, were three written for a mechanical organ or musical clock. They were the result of a commission from Count Joseph Deym von Strzitez, an eccentric Viennese aristocrat who had recently opened a monument dedicated to the memory of the late Field-Marshal Laudon. Deym owned several curious mechanical organs powered by clockwork, one of which was designed to play suitably solemn music in the mausoleum. Despite the composer's dislike of the instrument, which he claimed was "childish", K.594 is the most imposing of the works Deym commissioned from Mozart, with deeply felt outer sections that contrast starkly with an extrovert central section. After Mozart's death a description of the monument reported: "Every hour one hears a suitable funeral music which the unforgettable composer Mozart wrote especially for it... It surpasses in precision and clarity everything which was ever attempted or designed for this kind of artistic product".



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