Gabriel Fauré

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"Gabriel Faure" redirects here. For the writer, see Gabriel Faure (writer).

Fauré in 1907

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (French: [ɡabʁiɛl yʁbɛ ̃ fɔʁe]; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924)[n 1] 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, Requiem, nocturnes 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 and melodically complex style.
Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when
he was a small boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to a music college in Paris, where he was
trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns,
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 and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he
retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last
years, Fauré 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. 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 with the modernism 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 and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being
heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 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.

Contents
[hide]

 1Biography
o 1.1Early years
 o 1.2Organist and composer
o 1.3Middle years
o 1.4Head of Paris Conservatoire
o 1.5Last years and legacy
 2Music
o 2.1Vocal music
o 2.2Piano works
o 2.3Orchestral and chamber works
o 2.4Recordings
o 2.5Modern assessment
 3Notes and references
 4Sources
 5External links

Biography[edit]
Early years[edit]
Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, Midi-Pyrénées, 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).[3] According to the biographer Jean-Michel Nectoux, the Fauré family
(pronounced "Faoure"[needs IPA] in the Occitan local dialect) dates to the 13th century in that part of
France.[4] The family had at one time been substantial landowners, but by the 19th century its
means were reduced. The composer's paternal grandfather, Gabriel, was a butcher whose son
became a schoolmaster.[5] 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.[3]
The young Fauré was sent to live with a foster mother until he was four years old.[6] When his
father was appointed director of the École Normale d'Instituteurs, a teacher training college, at
Montgauzy, near Foix, in 1849, Fauré returned to live with his family.[7] There was a chapel
attached to the school, which Fauré recalled in the last year of his life:
I grew up, a rather quiet well-behaved child, in an area of great beauty. ... But the only thing I
remember really clearly is the harmonium in that little chapel. Every time I could get away I ran
there – and I regaled myself. ... I played atrociously ... no method at all, quite without technique,
but I do remember that I was happy; and if that is what it means to have a vocation, then it is a
very pleasant thing.[8]
Fauré as a student, 1864

An old blind woman, who came to listen and give the boy advice, told his father of Fauré's gift for
music.[6] In 1853 Simon-Lucien Dufaur de Saubiac, of the National Assembly,[n 2] 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,
which Louis Niedermeyer was setting up in Paris.[13] After reflecting for a year, Fauré's father
agreed and took the nine-year-old boy to Paris in October 1854.[14]
Helped by a scholarship from the bishop of his home diocese, Fauré boarded at the school for 11
years.[15] The régime was austere, the rooms gloomy, the food mediocre, and the required
uniform elaborate.[9][n 3] The musical tuition, however, was excellent.[9] 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 and fugue, and Niedermeyer for piano, plainsong and composition.[14]
When Niedermeyer died in March 1861, Camille Saint-Saëns took charge of piano studies and
introduced contemporary music, including that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner.[17] 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 [have] had for him, throughout my life."[18]
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."[19] The close friendship between them lasted until Saint-Saëns died sixty years
later.[1] Fauré won many prizes while at the school, including a premier prix in composition for
the Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11, the earliest of his choral works to enter the regular
repertory.[14] He left the school in July 1865, as a Laureat in organ, piano, harmony and
composition, with a Maître de Chapelle diploma.[20]
Organist and composer[edit]
On leaving the École Niedermeyer, Fauré was appointed organist at the Church of Saint-
Sauveur, at Rennes in Brittany. He took up the post in January 1866.[21] During his four years at
Rennes he supplemented his income by taking private pupils, giving "countless piano
lessons".[22] At Saint-Saëns's regular prompting he continued to compose, but none of his works
from this period survive.[23] He was bored at Rennes and had an uneasy relationship with the
parish priest, who correctly doubted Fauré's religious conviction.[24]Fauré was regularly seen
stealing out during the sermon for a cigarette, and in early 1870, when he turned up to play
at Mass one Sunday still in his evening clothes, having been out all night at a ball, he was asked
to resign.[24] Almost immediately, with the discreet aid of Saint-Saëns, he secured the post of
assistant organist at the church of Notre-Dame de Clignancourt, in the north of Paris.[25] 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, Champigny and Créteil.[26] He was awarded a Croix de Guerre.[27]

Staff and students of the École Niedermeyer, 1871. Fauré in front row second from left; André Messager in
middle row second from right
After France's defeat by Prussia, there was a brief, bloody conflict within Paris from March to
May 1871 during the Commune.[27] Fauré escaped to Rambouillet 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.[27] His first pupil at the school
was André Messager, who became a lifelong friend and occasional collaborator.[28] Fauré's
compositions from this period did not overtly reflect the turmoil and bloodshed. Some of his
colleagues, including Saint-Saëns, Gounod 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."[29]
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.[28] In the course of his
duties, he wrote several canticles and motets, few of which have survived.[30] 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.[29] Fauré regularly attended Saint-Saëns's
musical salons and those of Pauline Viardot, to whom Saint-Saëns introduced him.[14]
Fauré was a founding member of the Société Nationale de Musique, formed in February 1871
under the joint chairmanship of Romain Bussine and Saint-Saëns, to promote new French
music.[31] Other members included Georges Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d'Indy, Henri
Duparc, César Franck, Édouard Lalo and Jules Massenet.[32] Fauré became secretary of the
society in 1874.[33] Many of his works were first presented at the society's concerts.[33]

Fauré in 1875

In 1874 Fauré moved from Saint-Sulpice to the Église de la Madeleine, acting as deputy for the
principal organist, Saint-Saëns, during the latter's many absences on tour.[34] 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.[35] He was renowned for his
improvisations,[36] and Saint-Saëns said of him that he was "a first class organist when he wanted
to be".[37] Fauré preferred the piano to the organ, which he played only because it gave him a
regular income.[37] 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."[38]
The year 1877 was significant for Fauré, both professionally and personally.[39] 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.[39] Nectoux counts the work as the
composer's first great masterpiece.[40] In March, Saint-Saëns retired from the Madeleine,
succeeded as organist by Théodore Dubois, his choirmaster; Fauré was appointed to take over
from Dubois.[39] In July Fauré became engaged to Pauline Viardot's daughter Marianne, with
whom he was deeply in love.[39] To his great sorrow, she broke off the engagement in November
1877, for reasons that are not clear.[41] To distract Fauré, Saint-Saëns took him to Weimar and
introduced him to Franz Liszt. This visit gave Fauré a liking for foreign travel, which he indulged
for the rest of his life.[41] From 1878, he and Messager made trips abroad to see Wagner operas.
They saw Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at the Cologne Opera; the complete Ring cycle at
the Hofoper in Munich and at Her Majesty's Theatre in London; and Die Meistersinger in Munich
and at Bayreuth, where they also saw Parsifal.[42] 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.[43] Fauré admired Wagner and had a detailed
knowledge of his music,[44] but he was one of the few composers of his generation not to come
under Wagner's musical influence.[n 4]
Middle years[edit]

Painting of Gabriel Fauré, John Singer Sargent, 1889

In 1883 Fauré married Marie Fremiet, the daughter of a leading sculptor, Emmanuel Fremiet.[46][n
5]
The marriage was affectionate, but Marie became resentful of Fauré's frequent absences, his
dislike of domestic life – "horreur du domicile" – and his love affairs, while she remained at
home.[46] 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.[47] 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.[48] The second son, Philippe, born in 1889, became a writer; his works
included histories, plays, and biographies of his father and grandfather.[49]
Contemporary accounts agree that Fauré was extremely attractive to women;[n 6] in Duchen's
phrase, "his conquests were legion in the Paris salons."[51] After a romantic attachment to the
singer Emma Bardac from around 1892,[52] followed by another to the composer Adela
Maddison,[53] 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.[54]

Fauré and Marie in 1889

To support his family, Fauré spent most of his time in running the daily services at the Madeleine
and giving piano and harmony lessons.[55] His compositions earned him a negligible amount,
because his publisher bought them outright, paying him an average of 60 francs for a song, and
Fauré received no royalties.[56]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.[14] Among the works surviving from this
period is the Requiem, begun in 1887 and revised and expanded, over the years, until its final
version dating from 1901.[57] 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."[58]
As a young man Fauré had been very cheerful; a friend wrote of his "youthful, even somewhat
child-like, mirth."[59] From his thirties he suffered bouts of depression, which he described as
"spleen", possibly first caused by his broken engagement and his lack of success as a
composer.[14] In 1890 a prestigious and remunerative commission to write an opera with lyrics
by Paul Verlaine 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.[60] Winnaretta de Scey-Montbéliard,[n 7] always a good friend to Fauré, invited him
to Venice, where she had a palazzo on the Grand Canal.[61] 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.[62]

Emma Bardac

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".[63] 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.[64] Fauré wrote the Dolly Suite for piano duet between 1894 and 1897 and dedicated it
to Bardac's daughter Hélène, known as "Dolly".[14][n 8] 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.[65]
During the 1890s Fauré's fortunes improved. When Ernest Guiraud, professor of composition at
the Paris Conservatoire, 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, blocked the appointment, declaring, "Fauré? Never! If he's appointed, I
resign."[66] However, Fauré was appointed to another of Guiraud's posts, inspector of the music
conservatories in the French provinces.[67] 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.[68]
Clockwise from top left: Saint-Saëns, Thomas, Massenet, Dubois

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, professor of composition at the Conservatoire, had expected to
succeed Thomas, but had overplayed his hand by insisting on being appointed for life.[69] He was
turned down, and when Dubois was appointed instead, Massenet resigned his professorship in
fury.[70] Fauré was appointed in his place.[71] He taught many young composers, including Maurice
Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Charles Koechlin, Louis Aubert, Jean Roger-Ducasse, George
Enescu, Paul Ladmirault, Alfredo Casella and Nadia Boulanger.[14] 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.[72] 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."[73] Ravel always remembered Fauré's open-mindedness as a
teacher. Having received Ravel's String Quartet with less than his usual enthusiasm, Fauré
asked to see the manuscript again a few days later, saying, "I could have been wrong".[74] 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 [recipes] for composing according to his style and that is why they all sought and
found their own paths in many different, and often opposed, directions."[75]
Fauré's works of the last years of the century include incidental music for the English premiere
of Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande (1898) and Prométhée, a lyric tragedy composed
for the amphitheatre at Béziers. 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 in May 1917 and received more than
forty performances in Paris thereafter.[n 9]
From 1903 to 1921, Fauré regularly wrote music criticism for Le Figaro, 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.[14]
Head of Paris Conservatoire[edit]
Maurice Ravel

In 1905 a scandal erupted in French musical circles over the country's top musical prize, the Prix
de Rome. Fauré's pupil Ravel 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.[77] Dubois, who became the subject of much censure, brought forward his retirement and
stepped down at once.[78] 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.[79] Fauré was dubbed
"Robespierre" 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 had reigned supreme ... it was now possible to sing an aria by Rameau or
even some Wagner – up to now a forbidden name within the Conservatoire's walls".[80] The
curriculum was broadened to range from Renaissance polyphony to the works of Debussy.[80]
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.[81] 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.[82] His works from this period include his lyric opera, Pénélope (1913), and some of
his most characteristic later songs (e.g., the cycle La chanson d'Ève, Op. 95, completed in 1910)
and piano pieces (Nocturnes Nos. 9–11; Barcarolles Nos. 7–11, written between 1906 and
1914).[14]

Fauré at the turn of the century

Fauré was elected to the Institut de France 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.[83][n 10] 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. 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.[83] In 1911 he oversaw the
Conservatoire's move to new premises in the rue de Madrid.[82]
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.[85]
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.[86] He visited England frequently, and an invitation to
play at Buckingham Palace in 1908 opened many other doors in London and beyond.[87] He
attended the London premiere of Elgar's First Symphony, in 1908, and dined with the composer
afterwards.[88] 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."[89] Elgar tried to get
Fauré's Requiem put on at the Three Choirs Festival, but it did not finally have its English
premiere until 1937, nearly fifty years after its first performance in France.[89] Composers from
other countries also loved and admired Fauré. In the 1880s Tchaikovsky had thought him
"adorable";[90] Albéniz and Fauré were friends and correspondents until the former's early death in
1909;[91] Richard Strauss sought his advice;[92]and in Fauré's last years, the young
American Aaron Copland was a devoted admirer.[1]
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.[93] 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.[n 11] 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."[96] Nonetheless, he was aware
that his own music was respected rather than loved in Germany. In January 1905,
visiting Frankfurt and Cologne 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."[97]
Last years and legacy[edit]
In 1920, at the age of 75, Fauré retired from the Conservatoire because of his increasing
deafness and frailty.[14] In that year he received the Grand-Croix of the Légion d'honneur, an
honour rare for a musician. In 1922 the president of the republic, Alexandre Millerand, led a
public tribute to Fauré, a national hommage, described in The Musical Times as "a splendid
celebration at the Sorbonne, in which the most illustrious French artists participated, [which]
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."[85]
National hommage to Fauré, 1922. Fauré and President Millerand are in the box between the statues

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, most of whom
were devoted to him.[85][n 12] 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."[14]
In his last months, Fauré struggled to complete a string quartet. 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."[99] 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.[100] The quartet was premiered after his death;[101] 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.[102]
Fauré died in Paris from pneumonia 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 in Paris.[103]
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.[104] His successor, Henri Rabaud, director of the
Conservatoire from 1922 to 1941, declared "modernism is the enemy".[105] The generation of
students born between the wars rejected this outdated premise, turning for inspiration to Bartók,
the Second Viennese School, and the latest works of Stravinsky.[104]
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."[106]

Music[edit]
Main article: List of compositions by Gabriel Fauré
Manuscript page of the Requiem

Aaron Copland 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."[1] When Fauré was born, Berlioz and Chopin
were still composing; the latter was among Fauré’s early influences.[107] In his later years Fauré
developed compositional techniques that foreshadowed the atonal music of Schoenberg,[108] and,
later still, drew discreetly on the techniques of jazz.[109] 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.[110]
Influences on Fauré, particularly in his early work, included not only Chopin but Mozart and
Schumann. The authors of The Record Guide(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."[111] His
work was based on the strong understanding of harmonic structures that he gained at the École
Niedermeyer from Niedermeyer's successor Gustave Lefèvre.[14] 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, no longer outlawing certain chords as "dissonant".[n 13] By using
unresolved mild discords and colouristic effects, Fauré anticipated the techniques
of Impressionist composers.[112]
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's works.[14] Copland
referred to him as "the Brahms of France".[1] The music critic Jerry Dubins suggests that Fauré
"represents the link between the late German Romanticism of Brahms ... and the French
Impressionism of Debussy."[113]
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, later gave way to a severely monochrome style, full of enharmonic shifts, and
creating the impression of several tonal centres simultaneously employed."[114]
Vocal music[edit]
Fauré is regarded as one of the masters of the French art song, or mélodie.[14] Ravel wrote in
1922 that Fauré had saved French music from the dominance of the German Lied.[115] Two years
later the critic Samuel Langford 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".[116] In a 2011 article the pianist and writer Roy Howat and the
musicologist Emily Kilpatrick wrote:
His devotion to the mélodie spans his career, from the ever-fresh "Le papillon et la fleur" of 1861
to the masterly cycle L'horizon chimérique, composed sixty years and more than a hundred
songs later. Fauré's songs are now core repertoire for students and professionals, sung in
conservatories and recital halls throughout the world.[117]

In Copland's view, the early songs, written in the 1860s and 1870s under the influence
of Gounod, except for isolated songs such as "Après un rêve" 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".[1] Fauré also composed a number
of song cycles. Cinq mélodies "de Venise", 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, Op. 61 (1894), there were five such themes, according to Fauré.[118] 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.[67]

Cantique de Jean Racine

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A shorter choral work by
Fauré

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The Requiem, Op. 48, was not composed to the memory of a specific person but, in Fauré's
words, "for the pleasure of it." It was first performed in 1888. It has been described as "a lullaby
of death" because of its predominantly gentle tone.[119] Fauré omitted the Dies irae, though
reference to the day of judgment appears in the Libera me, which, like Verdi, he added to the
normal liturgical text.[120] 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.[121]
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.[122]Copland
considered Pénélope (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."[1] The work
uses leitmotifs, 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."[123] 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, Peter Heyworth 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."[124] However, after a 2006 production at the Wexford
Festival, 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."[125]
Piano works[edit]
Main article: Piano music of Gabriel Fauré
 Berceuse from Dolly

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The Berceuse from Dolly by
Gabriel Fauré.

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Fauré's major sets of piano works are thirteen nocturnes, thirteen barcarolles, six impromptus,
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.[1] His other
notable piano pieces, including shorter works, or collections composed or published as a set,
are Romances sans paroles, Ballade in F♯ major, Mazurka in B♭ major, Thème et variations in C
♯ major, and Huit pièces brèves. For piano duet, Fauré composed the Dolly Suite and, together
with his friend and former pupil André Messager, an exuberant parody of Wagner in the short
suite Souvenirs de Bayreuth.[126]
The piano works often use arpeggiated 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.[42][n
14]
The early piano works are clearly influenced by Chopin.[129] An even greater influence
was Schumann, whose piano music Fauré loved more than any other.[130] In Copland's view, it
was with the sixth Nocturne that Fauré fully emerged from any predecessor's shadow.[1] The
pianist Alfred Cortot said, "There are few pages in all music comparable to these."[1] 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.[131] In
his piano music, as in most of his works, Fauré shunned virtuosity in favour of the classical
lucidity often associated with the French.[112] He was unimpressed by purely virtuoso pianists,
saying, "the greater they are, the worse they play me."[132]
Orchestral and chamber works[edit]
Fauré was not greatly interested in orchestration, and on occasion asked his former students
such as Jean Roger-Ducasse and Charles Koechlin 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".[133] 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.[14] He told his students that it should be possible to
produce an orchestration without resorting to glockenspiels, celestas, xylophones, bells or
electrical instruments.[134] Debussy admired the spareness of Fauré's orchestration, finding in it
the transparency he strove for in his own 1913 ballet Jeux; Poulenc, by contrast, described
Fauré's orchestration as "a leaden overcoat ... instrumental mud".[135] 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,[136] Dolly, orchestrated
by Henri Rabaud,[137] and Pelléas et Mélisande which draws on incidental music for Maeterlinck's
play; the stage version was orchestrated by Koechlin, but Fauré himself reworked the
orchestration for the published suite.[134]
 Pièce for Oboe and Harp

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Arranged for bassoon and
piano, performed by
Kathleen Walsh (bassoon)
and Amy Crane (piano)

Élégie

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Performed by Hans
Goldstein (cello) and Eli
Kalman (piano)

Fantasie

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Performed by Alex Murray
(flute) and Martha
Goldstein (piano)

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In the chamber repertoire, his two piano quartets, particularly the first, are among Fauré's better-
known works.[138] His other chamber music includes two piano quintets, two cello sonatas,
two violin sonatas, a piano trio and a string quartet. Copland (writing in 1924 before the string
quartet was finished) held the second quintet to be Fauré's masterpiece: "... a pure well of
spirituality ... extremely classic, as far removed as possible from the romantic
temperament."[1] 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."[138] Fauré's last work,
the String Quartet, has been described by critics in Gramophone magazine as an intimate
meditation on the last things,[139] and "an extraordinary work by any standards, ethereal and
other-worldly with themes that seem constantly to be drawn skywards."[140]
Recordings[edit]
Fauré made piano rolls of his music for several companies between 1905 and 1913.[n 15] 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 and Pol
Plançon and players such as Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot.[142] By the 1920s a range of
Fauré's more popular songs were on record, including "Après un rêve" sung by Olga
Haley,[143] and "Automne" and "Clair de lune" sung by Ninon Vallin.[144] In the 1930s better-known
performers recorded Fauré pieces, including Georges Thill ("En prière"),[145] and Jacques
Thibaud and Alfred Cortot (Violin Sonata No. 1 and Berceuse).[146] The Sicilienne from Pelléas et
Mélisande was recorded in 1938.[147]
By the 1940s there were a few more Fauré works in the catalogues. A survey by John
Culshaw in December 1945 singled out recordings of piano works played by Kathleen
Long(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), the Requiem conducted by
Ernest Bourmauck, and seven songs sung by Maggie Teyte.[148] Fauré's music began to appear
more frequently in the record companies' releases in the 1950s. The Record Guide, 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.[149]
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 and the BBC.[n 16] Sets of his major orchestral works have been recorded under
conductors including Michel Plasson (1981)[150] and Yan Pascal Tortelier (1996).[151] Fauré's main
chamber works have all been recorded, with players including the Ysaÿe Quartet, Domus, Paul
Tortelier, Arthur Grumiaux, and Joshua Bell.[152] The complete piano works have been recorded
by Kathryn Stott (1995),[153] and Paul Crossley (1984–85),[154] with substantial sets of the major
piano works from Jean-Philippe Collard (1982–84),[155] Pascal Rogé (1990),[156] and Kun-Woo
Paik (2002).[157] Fauré's songs have all been recorded for CD, including a complete set (2005),
anchored by the accompanist Graham Johnson, with soloists Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Felicity
Lott, John Mark Ainsley and Jennifer Smith, among others.[158] The Requiem and the shorter
choral works are also well represented on disc.[159] Pénélope has been recorded twice, with casts
headed by Régine Crespin in 1956, and Jessye Norman in 1981, conducted respectively
by Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht and Charles Dutoit.[160] Prométhée has not been recorded in full, but
extensive excerpts were recorded under Roger Norrington (1980).[161]
Modern assessment[edit]
A 2001 article on Fauré in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians concludes thus:
Fauré's stature as a composer is undiminished by the passage of time. He developed a musical
idiom all his own; by subtle application of old modes, he evoked the aura of eternally fresh art; by
using unresolved mild discords and special coloristic effects, he anticipated procedures of
Impressionism; in his piano works, he shunned virtuosity in favor of the Classical lucidity of the
French masters of the clavecin; the precisely articulated melodic line of his songs is in the finest
tradition of French vocal music. His great Requiem and his Élégie for Cello and Piano have
entered the general repertoire.[112]

Fauré's biographer Nectoux writes in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 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".[14] The critic Robert
Orledge writes, "His genius was one of synthesis: he reconciled such opposing elements
as modality and tonality, anguish and serenity, seduction and force within a single non-eclectic
style, as in the Pelléas et Mélisande suite, his symphonic masterpiece. The quality of constant
renewal within an apparently limited range ... is a remarkable facet of his genius, and the spare,
elliptical style of his single String Quartet suggests that his intensely self-disciplined style was still
developing at the time of his death".[162]