Gabriel Urbain Fauré was born on May 12, 1845, and died on November 4, 1924. He was a French composer, organist, pianist, and teacher. He was one of the most important French composers of his time, and his music influenced many composers in the 20th century. Some of his most famous works include the Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, piano nocturnes, and songs such as Après un rêve and Clair de lune. Although his most well-known and easiest-to-understand works were created early in his life, Fauré wrote many of his most respected pieces later in life, using more complex harmony and melody.

Fauré was born into a family that valued culture but was not especially musical. His talent became clear when he was a young child. At age nine, he was sent to the École Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was trained to become a church organist and choirmaster. One of his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who remained a close friend for life. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest income as an organist and teacher, leaving little time for composing. Later in life, when he became successful in his roles as organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still had little time to compose. He often went to the countryside during summer breaks to focus on writing music. By his final years, Fauré was recognized in France as the leading composer of his time. A special national musical tribute was held in Paris in 1922, led by the president of the French Republic. Outside of France, Fauré’s music was not widely accepted for many years, except in Britain, where he had many supporters during his lifetime.

Fauré’s music is described as connecting the end of the Romantic period with the modern styles of the early 20th century. He was born when Chopin was still composing, and by the time of his death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being performed. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians states that Fauré was the most advanced composer of his generation in France and that his innovations in harmony and melody influenced music education for future generations. During the last 20 years of his life, Fauré suffered from increasing deafness. His earlier music is known for its charm, but his later works are sometimes difficult to understand or seem distant in character, while at other times they are intense and emotional.

Biography

Gabriel Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, in the south of France. He was the fifth son and youngest of six children of Toussaint-Honoré Fauré and Marie-Antoinette-Hélène Lalène-Laprade. According to biographer Jean-Michel Nectoux, the Fauré family has lived in that area since the 13th century. At one time, the family owned a lot of land, but by the 19th century, their wealth had decreased. Fauré’s paternal grandfather, Gabriel, was a butcher, and his son became a schoolteacher. Fauré’s parents married in 1829. His mother was the daughter of a minor noble. Among the six children, only Fauré showed musical talent. His brothers worked in journalism, politics, the army, and government jobs, and his sister lived a traditional life as the wife of a public servant.

As a young child, Fauré lived with a foster mother until he was four years old. In 1849, his father became the director of the École Normale d’Instituteurs, a teacher training school near Foix. Fauré returned to live with his family. A chapel was attached to the school, and Fauré remembered it in his final years.

An old blind woman who visited the school told Fauré’s father about the boy’s musical talent. In 1853, Simon-Lucien Dufaur de Saubiac, a member of the National Assembly, heard Fauré play and encouraged his father to send him to the École Niedermeyer in Paris, where Louis Niedermeyer was starting a music school. After a year of consideration, Fauré’s father agreed, and in October 1854, the nine-year-old boy moved to Paris.

With help from a scholarship from the bishop of his home region, Fauré lived at the school for 11 years. The school had strict rules, dark rooms, average food, and complicated uniforms. However, the music lessons were excellent. Niedermeyer, who aimed to train church musicians, focused on religious music. Fauré studied with several teachers: Clément Loret for the organ, Louis Dietsch for harmony, Xavier Wackenthaler for counterpoint and fugue, and Niedermeyer for piano, plainsong, and composition.

When Niedermeyer died in March 1861, Camille Saint-Saëns took over piano lessons and introduced students to modern music, including works by Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner. Fauré later said that Saint-Saëns opened his eyes to these composers, and he felt deep admiration for him throughout his life. Saint-Saëns supported Fauré’s progress at every stage of his career. Their close friendship lasted until Saint-Saëns died 60 years later.

While at the school, Fauré won many awards, including a premier prix in composition for Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11, his earliest choral work to become part of the regular music repertoire. He left the school in July 1865 as a Laureat in organ, piano, harmony, and composition, with a Maître de chapelle diploma.

After leaving the École Niedermeyer, Fauré became the organist at the Church of Saint-Sauveur in Rennes, Brittany, in January 1866. During his four years there, he taught private piano lessons to earn extra money. Saint-Saëns encouraged him to keep composing, but no works from this time survived. Fauré was unhappy in Rennes and had a tense relationship with the parish priest, who doubted his religious devotion. Fauré was often seen smoking during sermons and once arrived at Mass in his evening clothes after staying out all night. He was asked to resign and soon found a new job as an assistant organist at the church of Notre-Dame de Clignancourt in Paris. He worked there for only a few months before joining the military during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He fought in battles near Le Bourget, Champigny, and Créteil and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

After France’s defeat by Prussia, a short, violent conflict called the Paris Commune broke out in 1871. Fauré fled to Rambouillet, where one of his brothers lived, and then traveled to Switzerland. There, he taught at the École Niedermeyer, which had moved there to avoid the violence in Paris. His first student there was André Messager, who became a lifelong friend and occasional collaborator. Fauré’s music from this time did not directly reflect the war’s chaos, but some of his songs, like L’Absent, Seule!, and La Chanson du pêcheur, showed a deeper, more serious tone.

When Fauré returned to Paris in October 1871, he became the choirmaster at the Église Saint-Sulpice under Charles-Marie Widor. During his work, he wrote several religious pieces, though few remain today. He and Widor sometimes played the church’s two organs at the same time, trying to outdo each other with sudden musical changes. Fauré attended Saint-Saëns’s music salons and those of Pauline Viardot, whom Saint-Saëns introduced to him.

Fauré was one of the founders of the Société Nationale de Musique, an organization started in 1871 to promote new French music. Other members included Georges Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d’Indy, Henri Duparc, César Franck, Édouard Lalo, and Jules Massenet. Fauré became the society’s secretary in 1874, and many of his works were first performed at its concerts.

In 1874, Fauré moved to the Église de la Madeleine, where he served as deputy organist for Saint-Saëns during the latter’s frequent absences on tour. Some people have noted that Fauré, despite being a skilled organist for 40 years, never wrote solo pieces for the instrument. He was famous for his improvisations, and Saint-Saëns said Fauré was “a first-class organist when he wanted to be.” Fauré preferred the piano, which he played mainly for income. His biographer, Jessica Duchen, suggested he disliked the organ because it lacked the subtlety he valued as a composer.

Music

Aaron Copland wrote that although Fauré's works can be divided into "early," "middle," and "late" periods, there is not a big difference between his early and late styles, unlike many other composers. Copland noticed that even Fauré's earliest works showed ideas that would later appear in his music, and some of his later works still had elements from his early style. He said, "The themes, harmonies, and forms stayed the same, but with each new piece, they became more fresh, more personal, and more deep." When Fauré was born, composers like Berlioz and Chopin were still writing music. Chopin was one of Fauré's early influences. In his later years, Fauré developed techniques that were similar to the atonal music of Schoenberg and later used some methods from jazz. Duchen wrote that early works like Cantique de Jean Racine followed the French romantic style of the 19th century, but his later works were as modern as those of his students.

Fauré was influenced by composers such as Chopin, Mozart, and Schumann in his early years. Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, authors of The Record Guide (1955), wrote that Fauré learned restraint and beauty from Mozart, tonal freedom and long melodies from Chopin, and sudden musical ideas and magical endings from Schumann. His understanding of harmony came from his studies at the École Niedermeyer, where his teacher, Gustave Lefèvre, wrote a book called Traité d'harmonie (1889). This book introduced a harmonic theory that was different from the classical theory of Rameau, allowing certain chords that were once called "dissonant." Fauré used these techniques, which were later used by Impressionist composers.

Fauré's rhythmic patterns were often subtle and repeated, creating a smooth flow, though he sometimes used syncopations similar to those in Brahms's music. Copland called him "the Brahms of France." Music critic Jerry Dubins said Fauré connected the late German Romanticism of Brahms with the French Impressionism of Debussy.

Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor noted that Fauré's later works lacked the charm of his earlier music. They wrote that the rich romantic harmony of his early years, which relied on a single key, was replaced by a serious, monochrome style with many key changes, creating the feeling of multiple keys being used at once.

Fauré is considered a master of the French art song, or mélodie. Ravel wrote in 1922 that Fauré helped French music avoid being dominated by the German Lied. In 1924, critic Samuel Langford said Fauré had the ability to create songs that felt like a single, complete thought. In 2011, Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick wrote that Copland believed Fauré's early songs, written in the 1860s and 1870s under the influence of Gounod, showed little of his future style, except for a few songs like Après un rêve or Au bord de l'eau. Copland said the first truly mature examples of Fauré's style appeared in the second volume of his collected songs, which included works like Les berceaux, Les roses d'Ispahan, and Clair de lune. He also praised less well-known songs like Le secret, Nocturne, and Les présents. Fauré wrote several song cycles, including Cinq mélodies "de Venise", Op. 58 (1891), which used recurring musical themes. His later cycle La bonne chanson, Op. 61 (1894), used five such themes. Fauré said La bonne chanson was his most spontaneous work, with the singer Emma Bardac helping him by singing new material each day. Later cycles were based on poems by Charles van Lerberghe, such as La chanson d'Ève (1910) and Le jardin clos (1914).

Fauré's Requiem, Op. 48, first performed in 1888, was not written for a specific person but for "the pleasure of it." It has been called a "lullaby of death" because of its gentle tone. Fauré left out the Dies irae but included a reference to the day of judgment in the Libera me, as Verdi did. He revised the Requiem over time, and many different versions are now used, from small ensembles to full orchestras.

Fauré's operas are not often performed. Prométhée is rarely staged, while Pénélope (1913) was called a fascinating work by Copland, though he said the music was "distinctly non-theatrical." The opera uses leitmotifs and requires strong voices for the main roles, but these are the only Wagnerian elements. In Fauré's late style, "tonality is stretched hard, without breaking." Critics have praised the music of Pénélope but have been divided about its dramatic impact. When it was first performed in London in 1970, some said the music was too quiet for the stage, but after a 2006 performance in Wexford, others praised Fauré's theatrical skill.

Fauré's major piano works include thirteen Nocturnes, thirteen Barcarolles, six Impromptus, and four Valse-Caprices. These were written over his lifetime and show his style changing from youthful charm to deeper, more complex music. Other piano pieces include Romances sans paroles, Ballade in F♯ major, Mazurka in B♭ major, Thème et variations in C♯ minor, and Huit pièces brèves. For piano duet, he wrote the Dolly Suite and a short, humorous piece called Souvenirs de Bayreuth with his friend André Messager.

Fauré's piano works often use arpeggiated patterns, with the melody shared between the two hands. These techniques, common for organists, can be challenging for pianists. Even a skilled pianist like Liszt found Fauré's music difficult to play. His early piano works were influenced by Chopin, but Schumann's music had a greater impact on him. Copland said Fauré fully developed his own style with his sixth Nocturne. Pianist Alfred Cortot called these pieces "few pages in all music comparable to these." Critic Bryce Morrison noted that many pianists prefer to play Fauré's earlier, more charming works, like Impromptu No. 2, rather than his later, more intense pieces, which express "private passion and isolation."

Notes, references and sources

• Anderson, Robert (1993). Elgar. London: J M Dent. ISBN 0-460-86054-2.
• Duchen, Jessica (2000). Gabriel Fauré. London: Phaidon. ISBN 0-7148-3932-9.
• Johnson, Graham; Richard Stokes (2009). Gabriel Fauré: The Songs and Their Poets. Farnham, Kent, England, and Burlington, Vt: Ashgate. ISBN 0-7546-5960-7.
• Jones, J Barrie (1989). Gabriel Fauré: A Life in Letters. London: B T Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-5468-7.
• March, Ivan, ed. (2007). The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2008. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-103336-3.
• Moore, Jerrold Northrop (1987). Elgar: A Creative Life. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks. ISBN 0-19-284014-2.
• Morrison, Bryce (1995). Notes to The Complete Piano Music of Gabriel Fauré. London: Hyperion Records. OCLC 224489565.
• Murray, David (1997). "Fauré, Gabriel." In The Penguin Opera Guide, edited by Amanda Holden. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051385-X.
• Nectoux, Jean-Michel (1984). Gabriel Fauré: His Life Through Letters. Translated by J A Underwood. London: Boyars. ISBN 0-7145-2768-8.
• Nectoux, Jean-Michel (1991). Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life. Translated by Roger Nichols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23524-3.
• Near, John R. Charles-Marie Widor: Symphonie pour orgue et orchestre, opus 42 [bis]. Middleton: A-R Editions. ISBN 0-89579-515-9.
• Nichols, Roger (1987). Ravel Remembered. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-14986-3.
• Oliver, Michael (1991). "Fauré: Requiem." In Choral Music on Record, edited by Alan Blyth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36309-8.
• Orledge, Robert (1979). Gabriel Fauré. London: Eulenburg Books. ISBN 0-903873-40-0.
• Perreau, Stephan (2000). Notes to Ravel and Fauré String Quartets. Hong Kong: Naxos Records. OCLC 189791192.
• Ravel, Maurice (1922). "Les Mélodies de Gabriel Fauré." In Hommage musical à Fauré (in French), edited by Henry Prunières. Paris: La revue musicale. OCLC 26757829.
• Rosen, David (1995). Verdi: Requiem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-39767-7.
• Sackville-West, Edward; Desmond Shawe-Taylor (1955). The Record Guide. London: Collins. OCLC 500373060.
• Vallas, Léon (1951). César Franck. Translated by Hubert Foss. London: Harrap. OCLC 910827.