'To the memory of my grandson Maurice Gounod'

Charles Gounod wrote the Requiem, one of his finest pieces, between 1889 and Palm Sunday 1891, the date he added 'fin' to the foot of his manuscript. It is likely he continued to revise the work until 21 February 1893, the day he sent the score to the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. According to his friend and student Henri Busser, just three days before his death, Gounod was still rivetted: "...on 15 October 1893, he was still playing passages of "his" Requiem at the piano when he had a fit of apoplexy. Though out of breath, he still tried to continue singing the duet from the Benedictus with his daughter, then carefully put the manuscript away...In the afternoon he was felled by a stroke and lost consciousness. He never emerged from the ensuing coma, and died in the small hours of 18 October..."

The "Dies Irae" does not begin with a stormy eruption but is marked by a haunting, rhythmic, mysterious motive. The most terrifying verses about horror, death and judgement are set to the work's most beautiful passages, serene, celestial, as if the heavens were opening: the "Recordare", sung by a soprano and taken up by the chorus.