Gabriel Urbain Fauré (; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his ''
Pavane
The ''pavane'' ( ; it, pavana, ''padovana''; german: Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century (Renaissance).
The pavane, the earliest-known music for which was published in Venice by Ottaviano Petrucci, ...
'',
Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead ( la, Missa pro defunctis) or Mass of the dead ( la, Missa defunctorum), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, ...
, ''
Sicilienne
The siciliana or siciliano (also known as the sicilienne or the ciciliano) is a musical style or genre often included as a movement within larger pieces of music starting in the Baroque music, Baroque period. It is in a slow Meter (music)#Com ...
'',
nocturnes
A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night.
History
The term ''nocturne'' (from French ''nocturne'' 'of the night') was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensembl ...
for piano and the songs
"Après un rêve" and
"Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more
harmonically
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However, ...
and
melodically
A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combinat ...
complex style.
Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a young boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to the
Ecole Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano C ...
, who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the
Église de la Madeleine
, other name =
, native_name =
, native_name_lang = French
, image = Madeleine Paris.jpg
, landscape =
, imagesize =
, caption =
, imagelink ...
and director of the
Paris Conservatoire
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, he was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the
French Republic
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.
Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of
Romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
with the
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born,
Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
and the
atonal
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
music of the
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. ...
were being heard. The ''
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...
'', which describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France, notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.
Biography
Early years
Fauré was born in
Pamiers
Pamiers (; oc, Pàmias ) is a commune and largest city in the Ariège department in the Occitanie region in southwestern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department. It is the most populous commune in the Ariège department, although it ...
,
Ariège, in the south of France, the fifth son and youngest of six children of Toussaint-Honoré Fauré (1810–85) and Marie-Antoinette-Hélène Lalène-Laprade (1809–87).
[Duchen, p. 13] According to the biographer
Jean-Michel Nectoux
Jean-Michel Nectoux (born 20 November 1946) is a French musicologist, particularly noted as an expert on the life and music of Gabriel Fauré. He has published many books on Fauré and other French composers, and has been responsible for major exhi ...
, the Fauré family dates to the 13th century in that part of France.
[Nectoux (1991), p. 3] The family had at one time been substantial landowners, but by the 19th century its means had become reduced. The composer's paternal grandfather, Gabriel, was a butcher whose son became a schoolmaster. In 1829 Fauré's parents married. His mother was the daughter of a minor member of the nobility. He was the only one of the six children to display musical talent; his four brothers pursued careers in journalism, politics, the army and the civil service, and his sister had a traditional life as the wife of a public servant.
[
The young Fauré was sent to live with a foster mother until he was four years old.][Nectoux (1991), p. 4] When his father was appointed director of the École Normale d'Instituteurs, a teacher training college, at Montgauzy, near Foix
Foix (; oc, Fois ; ca, Foix ) is a commune, the former capital of the County of Foix. It is the capital of the department of Ariège as it is the seat of the Préfecture of that department. Foix is located in the Occitanie region of southwe ...
, in 1849, Fauré returned to live with his family. There was a chapel attached to the school, which Fauré recalled in the last year of his life:
An old blind woman, who came to listen and give the boy advice, told his father of Fauré's gift for music.[ In 1853 Simon-Lucien Dufaur de Saubiac, of the ]National Assembly
In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...
, heard Fauré play and advised Toussaint-Honoré to send him to the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse (School of Classical and Religious Music), better known as the École Niedermeyer de Paris
The École Niedermeyer ( en, Niedermeyer School) is a Paris school for church music. It was founded in 1853 by Louis Niedermeyer as successor to the ''Institution royale de musique classique et religieuse'', which had been established and run by A ...
, which Louis Niedermeyer
Abraham Louis Niedermeyer (27 April 180214 March 1861) was a Swiss and naturalized French composer.
He chiefly wrote church music and a few operas. He also taught music and took over the École Choron, renamed École Niedermeyer de Paris, a scho ...
was setting up in Paris.[Nectoux (1991), p. 5] After reflecting for a year, Fauré's father agreed and took the nine-year-old boy to Paris in October 1854.[Nectoux, Jean-Michel]
"Fauré, Gabriel (Urbain)"
''Grove Online'', Oxford Music Online, accessed 21 August 2010
Helped by a scholarship from the bishop of his home diocese, Fauré boarded at the school for 11 years.[Nectoux, p. 6] The régime was austere, the rooms gloomy, the food mediocre, and the required uniform elaborate.[ The musical tuition, however, was excellent.][ Niedermeyer, whose goal was to produce qualified organists and choirmasters, focused on church music. Fauré's tutors were Clément Loret for organ, Louis Dietsch for harmony, Xavier Wackenthaler for ]counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
and fugue
In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the c ...
, and Niedermeyer for piano, plainsong
Plainsong or plainchant (calque from the French ''plain-chant''; la, cantus planus) is a body of chants used in the liturgy, liturgies of the Western Church. When referring to the term plainsong, it is those sacred pieces that are composed in La ...
and composition.[
When Niedermeyer died in March 1861, ]Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano C ...
took charge of piano studies and introduced contemporary music, including that of Schumann
Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
, Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
and Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
. Fauré recalled in old age, "After allowing the lessons to run over, he would go to the piano and reveal to us those works of the masters from which the rigorous classical nature of our programme of study kept us at a distance and who, moreover, in those far-off years, were scarcely known. ... At the time I was 15 or 16, and from this time dates the almost filial attachment ... the immense admiration, the unceasing gratitude I ave
''Alta Velocidad Española'' (''AVE'') is a service of high-speed rail in Spain operated by Renfe, the Spanish national railway company, at speeds of up to . As of December 2021, the Spanish high-speed rail network, on part of which the AVE s ...
had for him, throughout my life."
Saint-Saëns took great pleasure in his pupil's progress, which he helped whenever he could; Nectoux comments that at each step in Fauré's career "Saint-Saëns's shadow can effectively be taken for granted." The close friendship between them lasted until Saint-Saëns died sixty years later.[Copland, Aaron]
"Gabriel Fauré, a Neglected Master"
''The Musical Quarterly'', October 1924, pp. 573–586
Fauré won many prizes while at the school, including a ''premier prix'' in composition for the ''Cantique de Jean Racine
''Cantique de Jean Racine'' (Chant by Jean Racine), Op. 11, is a composition for mixed choir and piano or organ by Gabriel Fauré. The text, "Verbe égal au Très-Haut" ("Word, one with the Highest"), is a French paraphrase by Jean Racine of a L ...
'', Op. 11, the earliest of his choral works to enter the regular repertory.[ He left the school in July 1865, as a ''Laureat'' in organ, piano, harmony and composition, with a '']Maître de chapelle
(, also , ) from German ''Kapelle'' (chapel) and ''Meister'' (master)'','' literally "master of the chapel choir" designates the leader of an ensemble of musicians. Originally used to refer to somebody in charge of music in a chapel, the term ha ...
'' diploma.[Nectoux (1991), p. 502; and Jones, p. 20]
Organist and composer
On leaving the École Niedermeyer, Fauré was appointed organist at the Church of Saint-Sauveur, at Rennes
Rennes (; br, Roazhon ; Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France at the confluence of the Ille and the Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department ...
in Brittany
Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, Historical region, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known ...
. He took up the post in January 1866. During his four years at Rennes he supplemented his income by taking private pupils, giving "countless piano lessons". At Saint-Saëns's regular prompting he continued to compose, but none of his works from this period survive. He was bored at Rennes and had an uneasy relationship with the parish priest, who correctly doubted Fauré's religious conviction.[ Fauré was regularly seen stealing out during the sermon for a cigarette, and in early 1870, when he turned up to play at ]Mass
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...
one Sunday still in his evening clothes, having been out all night at a ball, he was asked to resign.[Jones, p. 21] Almost immediately, with the discreet aid of Saint-Saëns, he secured the post of assistant organist at the church of Notre-Dame de Clignancourt
Notre-Dame de Clignancourt ( Our Lady of Clignancourt) is a Roman Catholic church located in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. Completed in 1863, the church takes its name from Clignancourt, a small village in the commune of Montmartre that was a ...
, in the north of Paris. He remained there for only a few months. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he volunteered for military service. He took part in the action to raise the siege of Paris, and saw action at Le Bourget
Le Bourget () is a Communes of France, commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the Kilometre zero#France, center of Paris.
The commune features Paris - Le Bourget Airport, Le Bourget Airport, which in turn hos ...
, Champigny and Créteil
Créteil () is a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, Île-de-France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Créteil is the ''préfecture'' (capital) of the Val-de-Marne department as well as the seat of the Arrondissement of Cré ...
. He was awarded a ''Croix de Guerre''.[Duchen, p. 31]
After France's defeat by Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
, there was a brief, bloody conflict within Paris from March to May 1871 during the Commune
A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to:
Administrative-territorial entities
* Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township
** Communes of ...
.[ Fauré escaped to ]Rambouillet
Rambouillet (, , ) is a subprefecture of the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region of France. It is located beyond the outskirts of Paris, southwest of its centre. In 2018, the commune had a population of 26,933.
Rambouillet lies ...
where one of his brothers lived, and then travelled to Switzerland, where he took up a teaching post at the École Niedermeyer, which had temporarily relocated there to avoid the violence in Paris.[ His first pupil at the school was ]André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager (; 30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéra comique, opéras comiques, opérettes and other stage wo ...
, who became a lifelong friend and occasional collaborator.[Jones, p. 27] Fauré's compositions from this period did not overtly reflect the turmoil and bloodshed. Some of his colleagues, including Saint-Saëns, Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (18 ...
and Franck, produced elegies and patriotic odes. Fauré did not, but according to his biographer Jessica Duchen, his music acquired "a new sombreness, a dark-hued sense of tragedy ... evident mainly in his songs of this period including ''L'Absent'', ''Seule!'' and ''La Chanson du pêcheur''."[Duchen, p. 32]
When Fauré returned to Paris in October 1871, he was appointed choirmaster at the Église Saint-Sulpice under the composer and organist Charles-Marie Widor
Charles-Marie-Jean-Albert Widor (21 February 1844 – 12 March 1937) was a French organist, composer and teacher of the mid-Romantic era, most notable for his ten organ symphonies. His Toccata from the fifth organ symphony has become one of the ...
.[ In the course of his duties, he wrote several ]canticle
A canticle (from the Latin ''canticulum'', a diminutive of ''canticum'', "song") is a hymn, psalm or other Christianity, Christian song of praise with lyrics usually taken from biblical or holy texts. Canticles are used in Christian liturgy.
Ca ...
s and motet
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margar ...
s, few of which have survived. During some services, Widor and Fauré improvised simultaneously at the church's two organs, trying to catch each other out with sudden changes of key.[ Fauré regularly attended Saint-Saëns's musical salons and those of ]Pauline Viardot
Pauline Viardot (; 18 July 1821 – 18 May 1910) was a nineteenth-century French mezzo-soprano, pedagogue and composer of Spanish descent.
Born Michelle Ferdinande Pauline García, her name appears in various forms. When it is not simply "Pauli ...
, to whom Saint-Saëns introduced him.[
Fauré was a founding member of the ]Société Nationale de Musique
Lactalis is a French multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, Mayenne, France. The company's former name was Besnier SA.
Lactalis is the largest dairy products group in the world, and is the sec ...
, formed in February 1871 under the joint chairmanship of Romain Bussine
Romain Bussine (4 November 1830 – 20 December 1899) was a French voice teacher, singer, translator and poet active in the second half of the 19th century.
Career
He was born in Paris; and from the late 1860s until his death Bussine was pr ...
and Saint-Saëns, to promote new French music. Other members included Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', whi ...
, Emmanuel Chabrier
Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier (; 18 January 184113 September 1894) was a French Romantic music, Romantic composer and pianist. His Bourgeoisie, bourgeois family did not approve of a musical career for him, and he studied law in Paris and then worked ...
, Vincent d'Indy
Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (; 27 March 18512 December 1931) was a French composer and teacher. His influence as a teacher, in particular, was considerable. He was a co-founder of the Schola Cantorum de Paris and also taught at the Par ...
, Henri Duparc, César Franck, Édouard Lalo
Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo (27 January 182322 April 1892) was a French composer. His most celebrated piece is the ''Symphonie espagnole'', a five-movement concerto for violin and orchestra, which remains a popular work in the standard reper ...
and Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are '' Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther' ...
. Fauré became secretary of the society in 1874.[ Many of his works were first presented at the society's concerts.][Jones, p. 28]
In 1874 Fauré moved from Saint-Sulpice to the Église de la Madeleine
, other name =
, native_name =
, native_name_lang = French
, image = Madeleine Paris.jpg
, landscape =
, imagesize =
, caption =
, imagelink ...
, acting as deputy for the principal organist, Saint-Saëns, during the latter's many absences on tour. Some admirers of Fauré's music have expressed regret that although he played the organ professionally for four decades, he left no solo compositions for the instrument. He was renowned for his improvisations, and Saint-Saëns said of him that he was "a first class organist when he wanted to be".[Nectoux (1991), p. 41] Fauré preferred the piano to the organ, which he played only because it gave him a regular income.[ Duchen speculates that he positively disliked the organ, possibly because "for a composer of such delicacy of nuance, and such sensuality, the organ was simply not subtle enough."
The year 1877 was significant for Fauré, both professionally and personally.][Jones, p. 33] In January his first violin sonata was performed at a Société Nationale concert with great success, marking a turning-point in his composing career at the age of 31.[ Nectoux counts the work as the composer's first great masterpiece. In March, Saint-Saëns retired from the Madeleine, succeeded as organist by ]Théodore Dubois
Clément François Théodore Dubois (24 August 1837 – 11 June 1924) was a French Romantic composer, organist, and music teacher.
After study at the Paris Conservatoire, Dubois won France's premier musical prize, the Prix de Rome in 1861. He bec ...
, his choirmaster; Fauré was appointed to take over from Dubois.[ In July Fauré became engaged to Pauline Viardot's daughter Marianne, with whom he was deeply in love.][ To his great sorrow, she broke off the engagement in November 1877, for reasons that are not clear.][Jones, p. 50] To distract Fauré, Saint-Saëns took him to Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
and introduced him to Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
. This visit gave Fauré a liking for foreign travel, which he indulged for the rest of his life.[ From 1878, he and Messager made trips abroad to see Wagner operas. They saw '']Das Rheingold
''Das Rheingold'' (; ''The Rhinegold''), WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National ...
'' and ''Die Walküre
(; ''The Valkyrie''), WWV 86B, is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on ...
'' at the Cologne Opera
The Cologne Opera (German: Oper der Stadt Köln or Oper Köln) refers both to the main opera house in Cologne, Germany and to its resident opera company. History of the company
From the mid 18th century, opera was performed in the city's court th ...
; the complete ''Ring
Ring may refer to:
* Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry
* To make a sound with a bell, and the sound made by a bell
:(hence) to initiate a telephone connection
Arts, entertainment and media Film and ...
'' cycle at the Hofoper in Munich and at Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Haymarket, London, Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, ...
in London; and ''Die Meistersinger
Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life.
Die may also refer to:
Games
* Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers
Manufacturing
* Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicondu ...
'' in Munich and at Bayreuth
Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of U ...
, where they also saw ''Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival'' ...
''.[Jones, p. 51] They frequently performed as a party piece their joint composition, the irreverent ''Souvenirs de Bayreuth''. This short, up-tempo piano work for four hands sends up themes from ''The Ring''. Fauré admired Wagner and had a detailed knowledge of his music, but he was one of the few composers of his generation not to come under Wagner's musical influence.
Middle years
In 1883 Fauré married Marie Fremiet, the daughter of a leading sculptor, Emmanuel Fremiet
Immanuel ( he, עִמָּנוּאֵל, 'Īmmānū'ēl, meaning, "God is with us"; also romanized: , ; and or in Koine Greek of the New Testament) is a Hebrew name that appears in the Book of Isaiah (7:14) as a sign that God will protect the H ...
.[Jones, p. 52] Nectoux comments that Marie was "without beauty, wit or a fortune ... narrow and cold", but records that "in spite of everything auréstill felt a tenderness towards her". The marriage was affectionate, but Marie was, in Nectoux's phrase, "a stay-at-home", and she did not share her husband's wish to go out in the evenings,[Nectoux, p. 38] and became resentful of his frequent absences, his dislike of domestic life – ''"horreur du domicile"'' – and his love affairs, while she remained at home. Though Fauré valued Marie as a friend and confidante, writing to her often – sometimes daily – when away from home, she did not share his passionate nature, which found fulfilment elsewhere. Fauré and his wife had two sons. The first, born in 1883, Emmanuel Fauré-Fremiet (Marie insisted on combining her family name with Fauré's),[ became a biologist of international reputation. The second son, Philippe, born in 1889, became a writer; his works included histories, plays, and biographies of his father and grandfather.
Contemporary accounts agree that Fauré was extremely attractive to women; in Duchen's phrase, "his conquests were legion in the Paris salons." After a romantic attachment to the singer ]Emma Bardac
Emma Bardac (née Moyse; 10 July 1862 – 20 August 1934) was a French singer and the mutual love interest of both Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy.
Of Jewish descent, Emma married, aged 17, Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac, by whom she had tw ...
from around 1892,[Nectoux (1991), p. 181] followed by another to the composer Adela Maddison
Katharine Mary Adela Maddison, née Tindal (15 December 1862 – 12 June 1929), usually known as Adela Maddison, was a British composer of operas, ballets, instrumental music and songs. She was also a concert producer. She composed a number of ...
,[Orledge, pp. 16–17] in 1900 Fauré met the pianist Marguerite Hasselmans, the daughter of Alphonse Hasselmans. This led to a relationship which lasted for the rest of Fauré's life. He maintained her in a Paris apartment, and she acted openly as his companion.[Nectoux (1991), pp. 282–285]
To support his family, Fauré spent most of his time in running the daily services at the Madeleine and giving piano and harmony lessons. His compositions earned him a negligible amount, because his publisher bought them outright, paying him an average of 60 francs
The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centu ...
for a song, and Fauré received no royalties. During this period, he wrote several large-scale works, in addition to many piano pieces and songs, but he destroyed most of them after a few performances, only retaining a few movements in order to re-use motifs.[ Among the works surviving from this period is the ]Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead ( la, Missa pro defunctis) or Mass of the dead ( la, Missa defunctorum), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, ...
, begun in 1887 and revised and expanded, over the years, until its final version dating from 1901. After its first performance, in 1888, the priest in charge told the composer, "We don't need these novelties: the Madeleine's repertoire is quite rich enough."
As a young man Fauré had been very cheerful; a friend wrote of his "youthful, even somewhat child-like, mirth." From his thirties he suffered bouts of depression, which he described as "spleen
The spleen is an organ found in almost all vertebrates. Similar in structure to a large lymph node, it acts primarily as a blood filter. The word spleen comes . ", possibly first caused by his broken engagement and his lack of success as a composer.[ In 1890 a prestigious and remunerative commission to write an opera with lyrics by ]Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the ''fin de siècle'' in international and ...
was aborted by the poet's drunken inability to deliver a libretto. Fauré was plunged into so deep a depression that his friends were seriously concerned about his health. Winnaretta de Scey-Montbéliard, always a good friend to Fauré, invited him to Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, where she had a ''palazzo
A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...
'' on the Grand Canal. He recovered his spirits and began to compose again, writing the first of his five '' Mélodies de Venise'', to words by Verlaine, whose poetry he continued to admire despite the operatic debacle.
About this time, or shortly afterwards, Fauré's liaison with Emma Bardac began; in Duchen's words, "for the first time, in his late forties, he experienced a fulfilling, passionate relationship which extended over several years". His principal biographers all agree that this affair inspired a burst of creativity and a new originality in his music, exemplified in the song cycle ''La bonne chanson
La Bonne Chanson is a Canadian publishing and independent record label that is "dedicated to the dissemination of French and French-Canadian songs of quality". It was founded in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada
Canada is a country in ...
''. Fauré wrote the ''Dolly Suite
Dolly may refer to:
Tools
*Dolly (tool), a portable anvil
* A posser, also known as a dolly, used for laundering
* A variety of wheeled tools, including:
**Dolly (trailer), for towing behind a vehicle
**Boat dolly or launching dolly, a device fo ...
'' for piano duet
According to the ''Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', there are two kinds of piano duet: "those for two players at one instrument, and those in which each of the two pianists has an instrument to themself." In American usage the former is ...
between 1894 and 1897 and dedicated it to Bardac's daughter Hélène, known as "Dolly".[ Some people suspected that Fauré was Dolly's father, but biographers including Nectoux and Duchen think it unlikely. Fauré's affair with Emma Bardac is thought to have begun after Dolly was born, though there is no conclusive evidence either way.
During the 1890s Fauré's fortunes improved. When ]Ernest Guiraud
Ernest is a given name derived from Germanic word ''ernst'', meaning "serious". Notable people and fictional characters with the name include:
People
*Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553–1595), son of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor
* Ernest, ...
, professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
, died in 1892, Saint-Saëns encouraged Fauré to apply for the vacant post. The faculty of the Conservatoire regarded Fauré as dangerously modern, and its head, Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas ''Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet'' (1868).
Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de ...
, blocked the appointment, declaring, "Fauré? Never! If he's appointed, I resign." However, Fauré was appointed to another of Guiraud's posts, inspector of the music conservatories in the French provinces.[Orledge, p. 15] He disliked the prolonged travelling around the country that the work entailed, but the post gave him a steady income and enabled him to give up teaching amateur pupils.
In 1896 Ambroise Thomas died, and Théodore Dubois took over as head of the Conservatoire. Fauré succeeded Dubois as chief organist of the Madeleine. Dubois' move had further repercussions: Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are ''Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther'' ...
, professor of composition at the Conservatoire, had expected to succeed Thomas, but had overplayed his hand by insisting on being appointed for life. He was turned down, and when Dubois was appointed instead, Massenet resigned his professorship in fury. Fauré was appointed in his place. He taught many young composers, including Maurice Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...
, Florent Schmitt
Florent Schmitt (; 28 September 187017 August 1958) was a French composer. He was part of the group known as Les Apaches. His most famous pieces are ''La tragédie de Salome'' and ''Psaume XLVII'' (Psalm 47). He has been described as "one of the ...
, Charles Koechlin
Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin (; 27 November 186731 December 1950), commonly known as Charles Koechlin, was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things ...
, Louis Aubert
Louis François Marie Aubert (19 February 1877 – 9 January 1968) was a French composer.
Biography
Born in Paramé, Ille-et-Vilaine, Louis Aubert was a child prodigy. His parents, recognizing their son's musical talent, sent him to Paris to rec ...
, Jean Roger-Ducasse
Jean Jules Aimable Roger-Ducasse (Bordeaux, 18 April 1873 – Le Taillan-Médoc ( Gironde), 19 July 1954) was a French composer.
Biography
Jean Roger-Ducasse studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Émile Pessard and André Gedalge, and was t ...
, George Enescu
George Enescu (; – 4 May 1955), known in France as Georges Enesco, was a Romanian composer, violinist, conductor and teacher. Regarded as one of the greatest musicians in Romanian history, Enescu is featured on the Romanian five lei.
Biog ...
, Paul Ladmirault
Paul Émile Ladmirault (8 December 1877 – 30 October 1944) was a French language, French composer and Music criticism, music critic whose music expressed his devotion to Brittany. Claude Debussy wrote that his work possessed a "fine dreamy musi ...
, Alfredo Casella
Alfredo Casella (25 July 18835 March 1947) was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.
Life and career
Casella was born in Turin, the son of Maria (née Bordino) and Carlo Casella. His family included many musicians: his grandfather, a f ...
and Nadia Boulanger
Juliette Nadia Boulanger (; 16 September 188722 October 1979) was a French music teacher and conductor. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist.
From a ...
.[ In Fauré's view, his students needed a firm grounding in the basic skills, which he was happy to delegate to his capable assistant ]André Gedalge
André Gedalge (27 December 1856 – 5 February 1926) was a French composer and teacher.
Biography
André Gedalge was born at 75 rue des Saints-Pères in Paris where he first worked as a bookseller and editor, specialising in ''livres de prix' ...
. His own part came in helping them make use of these skills in the way that suited each student's talents. Roger-Ducasse later wrote, "Taking up whatever the pupils were working on, he would evoke the rules of the form at hand ... and refer to examples, always drawn from the masters." Ravel always remembered Fauré's open-mindedness as a teacher. Having received Ravel's String Quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...
with less than his usual enthusiasm, Fauré asked to see the manuscript again a few days later, saying, "I could have been wrong". The musicologist Henry Prunières wrote, "What Fauré developed among his pupils was taste, harmonic sensibility, the love of pure lines, of unexpected and colorful modulations; but he never gave them ecipesfor composing according to his style and that is why they all sought and found their own paths in many different, and often opposed, directions."
Fauré's works of the last years of the century include incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as t ...
for the English premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in ...
's '' Pelléas et Mélisande'' (1898) and ''Prométhée
''Prométhée'', Op. 82, (''Prometheus'') is a ''tragédie lyrique'' (grand cantata) in three acts by the French composer Gabriel Fauré with a French libretto by the Symboliste poets Jean Lorrain and (1865–1940). It was partly based on the o ...
'', a lyric tragedy composed for the amphitheatre at Béziers
Béziers (; oc, Besièrs) is a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Hérault Departments of France, department in the Occitania (administrative region), Occitanie Regions of France, region of Southern France. Every August Béziers hos ...
. Written for outdoor performance, the work is scored for huge instrumental and vocal forces. Its premiere in August 1900 was a great success, and it was revived at Béziers the following year and in Paris in 1907. A version with orchestration for normal opera house-sized forces was given at the Paris Opéra
The Paris Opera (, ) is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the , but continued to be k ...
in May 1917 and received more than forty performances in Paris thereafter.
From 1903 to 1921, Fauré regularly wrote music criticism for ''Le Figaro
''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of reco ...
'', a role in which he was not at ease. Nectoux writes that Fauré's natural kindness and broad-mindedness predisposed him to emphasise the positive aspects of a work.[
]
Head of Paris Conservatoire
In 1905 a scandal erupted in French musical circles over the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...
. Fauré's pupil Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
had been eliminated prematurely in his sixth attempt for this award, and many believed that reactionary elements within the Conservatoire had played a part in it. Dubois, who became the subject of much censure, brought forward his retirement and stepped down at once. Appointed in his place, and with the support of the French government, Fauré radically changed the administration and curriculum. He appointed independent external judges to decide on admissions, examinations and competitions, a move which enraged faculty members who had given preferential treatment to their private pupils; feeling themselves deprived of a considerable extra income, many of them resigned. Fauré was dubbed "Robespierre
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (; 6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794) was a French lawyer and statesman who became one of the best-known, influential and controversial figures of the French Revolution. As a member of the Esta ...
" by disaffected members of the old guard as he modernised and broadened the range of music taught at the Conservatoire. As Nectoux puts it, "where Auber, Halévy and especially Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera ''Robert le di ...
had reigned supreme ... it was now possible to sing an aria by Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau (; – ) was a French composer and music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera an ...
or even some Wagner – up to now a forbidden name within the Conservatoire's walls".[Nectoux (1991), p. 269] The curriculum was broadened to range from Renaissance polyphony to the works of Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
.[
Fauré's new position left him better off financially. However, while he also became much more widely known as a composer, running the Conservatoire left him with no more time for composition than when he was struggling to earn a living as an organist and piano teacher. As soon as the working year was over, in the last days of July, he would leave Paris and spend the two months until early October in a hotel, usually by one of the Swiss lakes, to concentrate on composition.][Nectoux (1991), p. 270] His works from this period include his lyric opera, ''Pénélope
''Pénélope'' is an opera in three acts by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. The libretto, by René Fauchois is based on Homer's ''Odyssey''. It was first performed at the Salle Garnier, Monte Carlo on 4 March 1913. The piece is dedicated to ...
'' (1913), and some of his most characteristic later songs (e.g., the cycle ''La chanson d'Ève
''La chanson d'Ève'', Op. 95, is a song cycle by Gabriel Fauré, of ten mélodies for voice and piano. Composed during 1906–10, it is based on the collection of poetry of the same name by Charles van Lerberghe.Orledge (1979), p. 309 It is F ...
'', Op. 95, completed in 1910) and piano pieces (Nocturnes Nos. 9–11; Barcarolles Nos. 7–11, written between 1906 and 1914).[
Fauré was elected to the ]Institut de France
The (; ) is a French learned society, grouping five , including the Académie Française. It was established in 1795 at the direction of the National Convention. Located on the Quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the institute m ...
in 1909, after his father-in-law and Saint-Saëns, both long-established members, had canvassed strongly on his behalf. He won the ballot by a narrow margin, with 18 votes against 16 for the other candidate, Widor
Charles-Marie-Jean-Albert Widor (21 February 1844 – 12 March 1937) was a French organist, composer and teacher of the mid-Romantic era, most notable for his ten organ symphonies. His Toccata from the fifth organ symphony has become one of th ...
.[Jones, p. 133] In the same year a group of young composers led by Ravel and Koechlin broke with the Société Nationale de Musique, which under the presidency of Vincent d'Indy had become a reactionary organisation, and formed a new group, the Société musicale indépendante The French société musicale indépendante (SMI) was founded in 1910 in particular by Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Charles Koechlin and Florent Schmitt.
When the SMI was founded, the Société nationale de musique was the main Parisian compan ...
. While Fauré accepted the presidency of this society, he also remained a member of the older one and continued on the best of terms with d'Indy; his sole concern was the fostering of new music.[ In 1911 he oversaw the Conservatoire's move to new premises in the rue de Madrid.][
During this time, Fauré developed serious problems with his hearing. Not only did he start to go deaf, but sounds became distorted, so that high and low notes sounded painfully out of tune to him.][ Landormy, Paul and M. D. Herter]
"Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)"
''The Musical Quarterly'', Vol. 17, No. 3 (July 1931), pp. 293–301
The turn of the 20th century saw a rise in the popularity of Fauré's music in Britain, and to a lesser extent in Germany, Spain and Russia. He visited England frequently, and an invitation to play at Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace () is a London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and royal hospitality. It ...
in 1908 opened many other doors in London and beyond. He was in London for the premiere of Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestr ...
's First Symphony in 1908 and dined with the composer. Elgar later wrote to their mutual friend Frank Schuster that Fauré "was such a real gentleman – the highest kind of Frenchman and I admired him greatly."[ Elgar tried to get Fauré's Requiem put on at the ]Three Choirs Festival
200px, Worcester cathedral
200px, Gloucester cathedral
The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held annually at the end of July, rotating among the cathedrals of the Three Counties (Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester) and originally featu ...
, but it did not finally have its English premiere until 1937, nearly fifty years after its first performance in France.[Anderson, p. 156] Composers from other countries also loved and admired Fauré. In the 1880s Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
had thought him "adorable"; Albéniz and Fauré were friends and correspondents until the former's early death in 1909; Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...
sought his advice; and in Fauré's last years, the young American Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
was a devoted admirer.[
The outbreak of the First World War almost stranded Fauré in Germany, where he had gone for his annual composing retreat. He managed to get from Germany into Switzerland, and thence to Paris. He remained in France for the duration of the war. When a group of French musicians led by Saint-Saëns tried to organise a boycott of German music, Fauré and Messager dissociated themselves from the idea, though the disagreement did not affect their friendship with Saint-Saëns. Fauré did not recognise nationalism in music, seeing in his art "a language belonging to a country so far above all others that it is dragged down when it has to express feelings or individual traits that belong to any particular nation." Nonetheless, he was aware that his own music was respected rather than loved in Germany. In January 1905, visiting ]Frankfurt
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
and Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...
for concerts of his music, he had written, "The criticisms of my music have been that it's a bit cold and too well brought up! There's no question about it, French and German are two different things."
Last years and legacy
In 1920, at the age of 75, Fauré retired from the Conservatoire because of his increasing deafness and frailty.[ In that year he received the Grand-Croix of the ]Légion d'honneur
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...
, an honour rare for a musician. In 1922 the president of the republic, Alexandre Millerand
Alexandre Millerand (; – ) was a French politician. He was Prime Minister of France from 20 January to 23 September 1920 and President of France from 23 September 1920 to 11 June 1924. His participation in Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet at the sta ...
, led a public tribute to Fauré, a national ''hommage'', described in ''The Musical Times
''The Musical Times'' is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom and currently the oldest such journal still being published in the country.
It was originally created by Joseph Mainzer in 1842 as ''Mainze ...
'' as "a splendid celebration at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne may refer to:
* Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities.
*the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970)
*one of its components or linked institution, ...
, in which the most illustrious French artists participated, hich
Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...
brought him great joy. It was a poignant spectacle, indeed: that of a man present at a concert of his own works and able to hear not a single note. He sat gazing before him pensively, and, in spite of everything, grateful and content."[
Fauré suffered from poor health in his later years, brought on in part by heavy smoking. Despite this, he remained available to young composers, including members of ]Les Six
"Les Six" () is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse. The name, inspired by Mily Balakirev's '' The Five'', originates in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in '' ...
, most of whom were devoted to him.[ Nectoux writes, "In old age he attained a kind of serenity, without losing any of his remarkable spiritual vitality, but rather removed from the sensualism and the passion of the works he wrote between 1875 and 1895."][
In his last months, Fauré struggled to complete his ]String Quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...
. Twenty years earlier he had been the dedicatee of Ravel's String Quartet. Ravel and others urged Fauré to compose one of his own. He refused for many years, on the grounds that it was too difficult. When he finally decided to write it, he did so in trepidation, telling his wife, "I've started a Quartet for strings, without piano. This is a genre which Beethoven in particular made famous, and causes all those who are not Beethoven to be ''terrified'' of it." He worked on the piece for a year, finishing it on 11 September 1924, less than two months before he died, working long hours towards the end to complete it.[ Perreau, p. 3] The quartet was premiered after his death; he declined an offer to have it performed privately for him in his last days, as his hearing had deteriorated to the point where musical sounds were horribly distorted in his ear.
Fauré died in Paris from pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...
on 4 November 1924 at the age of 79. He was given a state funeral at the Église de la Madeleine and is buried in the Passy Cemetery
Passy Cemetery (french: Cimetière de Passy) is a small cemetery in Passy, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France.
History
The current cemetery replaced the old cemetery (''l'ancien cimetière communal de Passy'', located on Rue Lekain), ...
in Paris.
After Fauré's death, the Conservatoire abandoned his radicalism and became resistant to new trends in music, with Fauré's own harmonic practice being held up as the farthest limit of modernity, beyond which students should not go.[ His successor, ]Henri Rabaud
Henri Benjamin Rabaud (10 November 187311 September 1949) was a French conductor, composer and pedagogue, who held important posts in the French musical establishment and upheld mainly conservative trends in French music in the first half of t ...
, director of the Conservatoire from 1922 to 1941, declared "modernism is the enemy". The generation of students born between the wars rejected this outdated premise, turning for inspiration to Bartók, the Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School (german: Zweite Wiener Schule, Neue Wiener Schule) was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. ...
, and the latest works of Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
.[Nectoux (1991), p. 469]
In a centenary tribute in 1945, the musicologist Leslie Orrey wrote in ''The Musical Times'', "'More profound than Saint-Saëns, more varied than Lalo, more spontaneous than d'Indy, more classic than Debussy, Gabriel Fauré is the master ''par excellence'' of French music, the perfect mirror of our musical genius.' Perhaps, when English musicians get to know his work better, these words of Roger-Ducasse will seem, not over-praise, but no more than his due."
Music
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
wrote that although Fauré's works can be divided into the usual "early", "middle" and "late" periods, there is no such radical difference between his first and last manners as is evident with many other composers. Copland found premonitions of late Fauré in even the earliest works, and traces of the early Fauré in the works of his old age: "The themes, harmonies, form, have remained essentially the same, but with each new work they have all become more fresh, more personal, more profound."[ When Fauré was born, Berlioz and Chopin were still composing; the latter was among Fauré's early influences. In his later years Fauré developed compositional techniques that foreshadowed the ]atonal
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
music of Schoenberg, and, later still, drew discreetly on the techniques of jazz. Duchen writes that early works such as the ''Cantique de Jean Racine'' are in the tradition of French nineteenth-century romanticism, yet his late works are as modern as any of the works of his pupils.
Influences on Fauré, particularly in his early work, included not only Chopin but Mozart and Schumann. The authors of ''The Record Guide
''The Record Guide'' was an English reference work that listed, described, and evaluated gramophone recordings of classical music in the 1950s. It was a precursor to modern guides such as '' The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music''.
Publ ...
'' (1955), Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, wrote that Fauré learnt restraint and beauty of surface from Mozart, tonal freedom and long melodic lines from Chopin, "and from Schumann, the sudden felicities in which his development sections abound, and those codas in which whole movements are briefly but magically illuminated." His work was based on the strong understanding of harmonic structures that he gained at the École Niedermeyer from Niedermeyer's successor Gustave Lefèvre.[ Lefèvre wrote the book ''Traité d'harmonie'' (Paris, 1889), in which he sets out a harmonic theory that differs significantly from the classical theory of ]Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau (; – ) was a French composer and music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera an ...
, no longer outlawing certain chords as "dissonant
In music, consonance and dissonance are categorizations of simultaneous or successive Sound, sounds. Within the Western tradition, some listeners associate consonance with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability, and dissonance with harshness ...
". By using unresolved mild discords and colouristic effects, Fauré anticipated the techniques of Impressionist
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
composers.[
In contrast with his harmonic and melodic style, which pushed the bounds for his time, Fauré's rhythmic motives tended to be subtle and repetitive, with little to break the flow of the line, although he used discreet syncopations, similar to those found in ]Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...
's works.[ Copland referred to him as "the Brahms of France".][ The music critic Jerry Dubins suggests that Fauré "represents the link between the late German Romanticism of Brahms ... and the French Impressionism of Debussy."
To Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, Fauré's later works do not display the easy charm of his earlier music: "the luscious romantic harmony which had always been firmly supported by a single ]tonality
Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is call ...
, later gave way to a severely monochrome style, full of enharmonic
In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note, interval, or key signature that is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature but "spelled", or named differently. The enharmonic spelling of a written n ...
shifts, and creating the impression of several tonal centres simultaneously employed."
Vocal music
Fauré is regarded as one of the masters of the French art song, or ''mélodie A ''mélodie'' () is a form of French art song, arising in the mid-19th century. It is comparable to the German ''Lied''. A ''chanson'', by contrast, is a folk or popular French song.
The literal meaning of the word in the French language is "melod ...
''.[ Ravel wrote in 1922 that Fauré had saved French music from the dominance of the German '']Lied
In Western classical music tradition, (, plural ; , plural , ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French s ...
''. Two years later the critic Samuel Langford
Samuel Langford (1863 - 8 May 1927) was an influential English music critic of the early twentieth century.
Trained as a pianist, Langford became chief music critic of ''The Manchester Guardian'' in 1906, serving in that post until his death. ...
wrote of Fauré, "More surely almost than any writer in the world he commanded the faculty to create a song all of a piece, and with a sustained intensity of mood which made it like a single thought".["Gabriel Fauré", '']The Manchester Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 5 November 1924, p. 16 In a 2011 article the pianist and writer Roy Howat
Roy Howat (born 1951, Ayrshire, Scotland) is a Scottish pianist and musicologist, who specializes in French music. Howat has been Keyboard Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music in London since 2003, and Research Fellow at the Royal Cons ...
and the musicologist Emily Kilpatrick wrote:
In Copland's view, the early songs, written in the 1860s and 1870s under the influence of Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (18 ...
, except for isolated songs such as "Après un rêve
''Après'' is the sixteenth studio album by American rock singer Iggy Pop.
Background
Consisting partly of covers sung in French, it was released on 9 May 2012 on Thousand Mile Inc after the album was rejected by Virgin EMI Records. Pop said hi ...
" or "Au bord de l'eau", show little sign of the artist to come. With the second volume of the sixty collected songs written during the next two decades, Copland judged, came the first mature examples of "the real Fauré". He instanced "Les berceaux", "Les roses d'Ispahan" and especially " Clair de lune" as "so beautiful, so perfect, that they have even penetrated to America", and drew attention to less well known mélodies such as "Le secret", "Nocturne", and "Les présents".[ Fauré also composed a number of ]song cycle
A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle (music), cycle, of individually complete Art song, songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online''
The songs are either for solo voice ...
s. ''Cinq mélodies "de Venise"
''Cinq mélodies "de Venise"'', Op. 58, is a song cycle by Gabriel Fauré, of five mélodies for voice and piano. Composed in 1891, the cycle is based on five poems by Paul Verlaine,Orledge (1979), p. 295 from the collections ''Fêtes galant ...
'', Op. 58 (1891), was described by Fauré as a novel kind of song suite, in its use of musical themes recurring over the cycle. For the later cycle ''La bonne chanson
La Bonne Chanson is a Canadian publishing and independent record label that is "dedicated to the dissemination of French and French-Canadian songs of quality". It was founded in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada
Canada is a country in ...
'', Op. 61 (1894), there were five such themes, according to Fauré. He also wrote that ''La bonne chanson'' was his most spontaneous composition, with Emma Bardac singing back to him each day's newly written material. Among later works were cycles drawn from the poems of Charles van Lerberghe
Charles van Lerberghe (21 October 1861 – 26 October 1907) was a Belgian author who wrote in French and was particularly identified with the symbolist movement. The growing atheism and anticlerical stance evident in his later work made it popula ...
, ''La chanson d'Ève
''La chanson d'Ève'', Op. 95, is a song cycle by Gabriel Fauré, of ten mélodies for voice and piano. Composed during 1906–10, it is based on the collection of poetry of the same name by Charles van Lerberghe.Orledge (1979), p. 309 It is F ...
'' (1910) and ''Le jardin clos
''Le jardin clos'', Op. 106, is a song cycle by Gabriel Fauré, of eight mélodies for voice and piano. It is based on eight poems from the collection ''Entrevisions'' by Charles van Lerberghe.Orledge (1979), pp. 312–313 Fauré composed the c ...
'' (1914).
The Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead ( la, Missa pro defunctis) or Mass of the dead ( la, Missa defunctorum), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, ...
, Op. 48, first performed in 1888, was not composed to the memory of a specific person but, in Fauré's words, "for the pleasure of it." It has been described as "a lullaby of death" because of its predominantly gentle tone. Fauré omitted the Dies irae, though reference to the day of judgment appears in the Libera me, which, like Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the h ...
, he added to the normal liturgical text. Fauré revised the Requiem over the years, and a number of different performing versions are now in use, from the earliest, for small forces, to the final revision with full orchestra.
Fauré's operas have not found a place in the regular repertoire. ''Prométhée'' is the more neglected of the two, with only a handful of performances in more than a century. Copland considered ''Pénélope
''Pénélope'' is an opera in three acts by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. The libretto, by René Fauchois is based on Homer's ''Odyssey''. It was first performed at the Salle Garnier, Monte Carlo on 4 March 1913. The piece is dedicated to ...
'' (1913) a fascinating work, and one of the best operas written since Wagner; he noted, however, that the music is, as a whole, "distinctly non-theatrical."[ The work uses ]leitmotif
A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglici ...
s, and the two main roles call for voices of heroic quality, but these are the only ways in which the work is Wagnerian. In Fauré's late style, "tonality is stretched hard, without breaking." On the rare occasions when the piece has been staged, critical opinion has generally praised the musical quality of the score, but has varied as to the dramatic effectiveness of the work. When the opera was first presented in London in 1970, in a student production by the Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...
, Peter Heyworth
Peter Lawrence Frederick Heyworth (3 June 1921 – 2 October 1991) was an American-born British music critic and biographer. He wrote a two-volume biography of Otto Klemperer and was a prominent supporter of avant-garde music.
Life and career
Pet ...
wrote, "A score that offers rich rewards to an attentive ear can none the less fail to cut much ice in the theatre. ... Most of the music is too recessive to be theatrically effective." However, after a 2006 production at the Wexford Festival
Wexford Festival Opera () is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in south-eastern Ireland during the months of October and November.
The festival began in 1951 under Tom Walsh and a group of opera lovers who quickly gener ...
, Ian Fox wrote, "Fauré's ''Pénélope'' is a true rarity, and, although some lovely music was anticipated, it was a surprise how sure the composer's theatrical touch was."
Piano works
Fauré's major sets of piano works are thirteen nocturne
A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night.
History
The term ''nocturne'' (from French '' nocturne'' 'of the night') was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensembl ...
s, thirteen barcarolle
A barcarolle (; from French, also barcarole; originally, Italian barcarola or barcaruola, from ''barca'' 'boat') is a traditional folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style. In classical music, two of the ...
s, six impromptu
An impromptu (, , loosely meaning "offhand") is a free-form musical composition with the character of an ''ex tempore'' improvisation as if prompted by the spirit of the moment, usually for a solo instrument, such as piano. According to ''Allgeme ...
s, and four valses-caprices. These sets were composed across the decades of his career, and display the change in his style from uncomplicated youthful charm to a final enigmatic, but sometimes fiery introspection, by way of a turbulent period in his middle years.[ His other notable piano pieces, including shorter works, or collections composed or published as a set, are ''Romances sans paroles'', ]Ballade
Ballad is a form of narrative poetry, often put to music, or a type of sentimental love song in modern popular music.
Ballad or Ballade may also refer to:
Music Genres and forms
* Ballade (classical music), a musical setting of a literary ballad ...
in F major, Mazurka
The mazurka (Polish: ''mazur'' Polish ball dance, one of the five Polish national dances and ''mazurek'' Polish folk dance') is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character de ...
in B major, ''Thème et variations'' in C major, and ''Huit pièces brèves''. For piano duet
According to the ''Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', there are two kinds of piano duet: "those for two players at one instrument, and those in which each of the two pianists has an instrument to themself." In American usage the former is ...
, Fauré composed the ''Dolly Suite
Dolly may refer to:
Tools
*Dolly (tool), a portable anvil
* A posser, also known as a dolly, used for laundering
* A variety of wheeled tools, including:
**Dolly (trailer), for towing behind a vehicle
**Boat dolly or launching dolly, a device fo ...
'' and, together with his friend and former pupil André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager (; 30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéra comique, opéras comiques, opérettes and other stage wo ...
, an exuberant parody of Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
in the short suite ''Souvenirs de Bayreuth''.
The piano works often use arpeggiated
A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves.
An arpeggio () is a type of broken chord, in which the notes that compose a chord are played ...
figures, with the melody interspersed between the two hands, and include finger substitutions natural for organists. These aspects make them daunting for some pianists. Even a virtuoso like Liszt said that he found Fauré's music hard to play. The early piano works are clearly influenced by Chopin. An even greater influence was Schumann
Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
, whose piano music Fauré loved more than any other. In Copland's view, it was with the sixth Nocturne that Fauré fully emerged from any predecessor's shadow.[ The pianist ]Alfred Cortot
Alfred Denis Cortot (; 26 September 187715 June 1962) was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his poeti ...
said, "There are few pages in all music comparable to these."[ The critic Bryce Morrison has noted that pianists frequently prefer to play the charming earlier piano works, such as the Impromptu No. 2, rather than the later piano works, which express "such private passion and isolation, such alternating anger and resignation" that listeners are left uneasy. In his piano music, as in most of his works, Fauré shunned virtuosity in favour of the classical lucidity often associated with the French.][ He was unimpressed by purely virtuoso pianists, saying, "the greater they are, the worse they play me."
]
Orchestral and chamber works
Fauré was not greatly interested in orchestration, and on occasion asked his former students such as Jean Roger-Ducasse
Jean Jules Aimable Roger-Ducasse (Bordeaux, 18 April 1873 – Le Taillan-Médoc ( Gironde), 19 July 1954) was a French composer.
Biography
Jean Roger-Ducasse studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Émile Pessard and André Gedalge, and was t ...
and Charles Koechlin
Charles-Louis-Eugène Koechlin (; 27 November 186731 December 1950), commonly known as Charles Koechlin, was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things ...
to orchestrate his concert and theatre works. In Nectoux's words, Fauré's generally sober orchestral style reflects "a definite aesthetic attitude ... The idea of timbre was not a determining one in Fauré's musical thinking".[Nectoux (1991), p. 259] He was not attracted by flamboyant combinations of tone-colours, which he thought either self-indulgent or a disguise for lack of real musical invention.[ He told his students that it should be possible to produce an orchestration without resorting to ]glockenspiel
The glockenspiel ( or , : bells and : set) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the vibraphone.
The glo ...
s, celesta
The celesta or celeste , also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to an upright piano (four- or five-octave), albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music box ( ...
s, xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the ...
s, bells or electrical instruments.[Duchen, p. 132] Debussy admired the spareness of Fauré's orchestration, finding in it the transparency he strove for in his own 1913 ballet ''Jeux
''Jeux'' (''Games'') is a ballet written by Claude Debussy. Described as a "poème dansé" (literally a "danced poem"), it was written for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. Debussy initially objected to the ...
''; Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-kno ...
, by contrast, described Fauré's orchestration as "a leaden overcoat ... instrumental mud". Fauré's best-known orchestral works are the suites '' Masques et bergamasques'' (based on music for a dramatic entertainment, or ''divertissement comique''), which he orchestrated himself, '' Dolly'', orchestrated by Henri Rabaud
Henri Benjamin Rabaud (10 November 187311 September 1949) was a French conductor, composer and pedagogue, who held important posts in the French musical establishment and upheld mainly conservative trends in French music in the first half of t ...
, and '' Pelléas et Mélisande'' which draws on incidental music for Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize i ...
's play; the stage version was orchestrated by Koechlin, but Fauré himself reworked the orchestration for the published suite.[
In the ]chamber
Chamber or the chamber may refer to:
In government and organizations
* Chamber of commerce, an organization of business owners to promote commercial interests
*Legislative chamber, in politics
* Debate chamber, the space or room that houses delib ...
repertoire, his two piano quartets, in C minor
C minor is a minor scale based on C, consisting of the pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature consists of three flats. Its relative major is E major and its parallel major is C major.
The C natural minor scale is:
:
Cha ...
and G minor
G minor is a minor scale based on G, consisting of the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has two flats. Its relative major is B-flat major and its parallel major is G major.
According to Paolo Pietropaolo, it is the cont ...
, particularly the former, are among Fauré's better-known works.[Sackville-West, p. 265] His other chamber music includes two piano quintet
In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments, most commonly a string quartet (i.e., two violins, viola, and cello). The term also refers to the group of musicians that plays a pian ...
s, two cello sonata
A cello sonata is usually a sonata written for solo cello with piano accompaniment. The most famous Romantic-era cello sonatas are those written by Johannes Brahms and Ludwig van Beethoven. Some of the earliest cello sonatas were written in the 1 ...
s, two violin sonata
A violin sonata is a musical composition for violin, often accompanied by a keyboard instrument and in earlier periods with a bass instrument doubling the keyboard bass line. The violin sonata developed from a simple baroque form with no fixed form ...
s, a piano trio
A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments, usually a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in classical chamber music. The term can also refer to a group of musi ...
and a string quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...
. Copland (writing in 1924 before the string quartet was finished) held the second quintet (in C minor, Opus 115) to be Fauré's masterpiece: "... a pure well of spirituality ... extremely classic, as far removed as possible from the romantic temperament."[ Other critics have taken a less favourable view: ''The Record Guide'' commented, "The ceaseless flow and restricted colour scheme of Fauré's last manner, as exemplified in this Quintet, need very careful management, if they are not to become tedious."][ Fauré's last work, the ]String Quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...
, has been described by critics in ''Gramophone
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
'' magazine as an intimate meditation on the last things, and "an extraordinary work by any standards, ethereal and other-worldly with themes that seem constantly to be drawn skywards."
Recordings
Fauré made piano rolls of his music for several companies between 1905 and 1913. Well over a hundred recordings of Fauré's music were made between 1898 and 1905, mostly of songs, with a few short chamber works, by performers including the singers Jean Noté
Jean-Baptiste Noté (6 May 1858 in Tournai – 1 April 1922 in Brussels) was a Belgian operatic baritone. He graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Ghent in 1884 with first prizes in singing and lyrical declamation. He made his professional ...
and Pol Plançon
Pol Henri Plançon (; 12 June 1851 – 11 August 1914) was a distinguished French operatic bass (''basse chantante''). He was one of the most acclaimed singers active during the 1880s, 1890s and early 20th century—a period often referred to as ...
and players such as Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud (; 27 September 18801 September 1953) was a French violinist.
Biography
Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the ...
and Alfred Cortot
Alfred Denis Cortot (; 26 September 187715 June 1962) was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his poeti ...
. By the 1920s a range of Fauré's more popular songs were on record, including "Après un rêve" sung by Olga Haley, and "Automne" and "Clair de lune" sung by Ninon Vallin
Eugénie "Ninon" Vallin (8 September 1886 22 November 1961) was a French soprano who achieved considerable popularity in opera, operetta and classical song recitals during an international career that lasted for more than four decades.
Career ...
. In the 1930s better-known performers recorded Fauré pieces, including Georges Thill
Georges Thill (14 December 1897 – 17 October 1984) was a French opera singer, often considered to be his country's greatest lyric-dramatic tenor. Born in Paris, his career lasted from 1924 to 1953, peaking during the 1930s.
Career
A pupil of ...
("En prière"), and Jacques Thibaud
Jacques Thibaud (; 27 September 18801 September 1953) was a French violinist.
Biography
Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the ...
and Alfred Cortot
Alfred Denis Cortot (; 26 September 187715 June 1962) was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his poeti ...
(Violin Sonata No. 1 and Berceuse). The Sicilienne from ''Pelléas et Mélisande'' was recorded in 1938.
By the 1940s there were a few more Fauré works in the catalogues. A survey by John Culshaw
John Royds Culshaw, OBE (28 May 192427 April 1980) was a pioneering English classical record producer for Decca Records. He produced a wide range of music, but is best known for masterminding the first studio recording of Wagner's ''Der Rin ...
in December 1945 singled out recordings of piano works played by Kathleen Long
Kathleen (Ida) Long CBE (7 July 189620 March 1968) was an English pianist and teacher.
Life and career
Long was born in Brentford, a suburb of London in the UK. McVeagh, Diana"Long, Kathleen"''Grove Music Online'', Oxford Music Online, accessed ...
(including the Nocturne No. 6, Barcarolle No. 2, the Thème et Variations, Op. 73, and the Ballade Op. 19 in its orchestral version conducted by Boyd Neel
Louis Boyd Neel O.C. (19 July 190530 September 1981) was an English, and later Canadian conductor and academic. He was Dean of the Royal Conservatory of Music at the University of Toronto. Neel founded and conducted chamber orchestras, and cont ...
), the Requiem conducted by Ernest Bourmauck
Ernest Bourmauck (18.. – 1944) was a French choir leader and conductor. Very little is known about him except that he worked closely with Gabriel Fauré, particularly premiering the French composer's Requiem and Francis Poulenc's Mass in G mino ...
, and seven songs sung by Maggie Teyte
Dame Maggie Teyte (born Margaret Tate; 17 April 188826 May 1976) was an English operatic soprano and interpreter of French art song.
Early years
Margaret Tate was born in Wolverhampton, England, one of ten children of Jacob James Tate, a succ ...
. Fauré's music began to appear more frequently in the record companies' releases in the 1950s. ''The Record Guide
''The Record Guide'' was an English reference work that listed, described, and evaluated gramophone recordings of classical music in the 1950s. It was a precursor to modern guides such as '' The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music''.
Publ ...
'', 1955, listed the Piano Quartet No. 1, Piano Quintet No. 2, the String Quartet, both Violin Sonatas, the Cello Sonata No. 2, two new recordings of the Requiem, and the complete song cycles ''La bonne chanson'' and ''La chanson d'Ève''.
In the LP and particularly the CD era, the record companies have built up a substantial catalogue of Fauré's music, performed by French and non-French musicians. Several modern recordings of Fauré's music have come to public notice as prize-winners in annual awards organised by ''Gramophone
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
'' and the BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
. Sets of his major orchestral works have been recorded under conductors including
(1996). Fauré's main chamber works have all been recorded, with players including the
. The complete piano works have been recorded by
(2002). Fauré's songs have all been recorded for CD, including a complete set (2005), anchored by the accompanist
, among others. The Requiem and the shorter choral works are also well represented on disc. ''
. ''Prométhée'' has not been recorded in full, but extensive excerpts were recorded under
(1980).
'' that Fauré is widely regarded as the greatest master of French song, and that alongside the ''mélodies'', the chamber works rank as "Fauré's most important contribution to music".