In his Mémoires Berlioz gives a flavour of his passionate feelings when composing his Requiem.

‘For me the text of the Requiem was a prey I had hunted for a long time. Finally someone had let me get at it. I threw myself at it in a kind of frenzy. My head seemed about to burst with the pressure of my roiling thoughts. No sooner had I sketched out my plan for one section than I came up with the plan for the next one. As I couldn’t write fast enough, I was using shorthand, which has turned out to be enormously useful, particularly in the Lacrymosa. Composers are familiar with the torture and despair caused when all trace of certain ideas – which couldn’t be jotted down fast enough – vanish from the memory and thus are lost forever’.

Hector Berlioz, Mémoires, p.241

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