‘I have always wanted to compose a Requiem as I always thought it should be part of the output of a composer. However, once my parents died within a very short time from one another, it became a musical and spiritual necessity. I was terrified before I started composing each single movement, particularly because of the examples of the great masterworks of the past, but I just carried on with a bowed head and hoped for a bit of inspiration. Of all the movements, I never thought that the one of which I was most afraid, the Lacrimosa, with its melody imitating sobs and drops of tears, would turn out quite so well, as also the Lux aeterna, with its beams of light coming from various directions in the sky, and the peaceful sadness of the ending with the Libera me, a grandiose pleading of Freedom from Eternal Death.’

– Elisabetta Brusa