It must be pure genius

I heard this being discussed on the radio the other morning in between beating my alarm-clock into snooze submission. I'm never that coherant in the morning, but I think I got the details in this case.

Handel wrote Messiah in three weeks (24 days, actually).

There are approximately a quarter of a million (250,000) notes in Messiah.

So let's see....Twenty-four days equate to 576 hours which means there were 2304 fifteen-minute periods. He scored at a clip of 104 notes per quarter hour...7 notes a minute. And that is assuming he worked around the clock for three weeks!

I cannot imagine that kind of output. He must've had it all worked out in his head and simply had to transcribe it. But still, even then...

My mind is boggled.