Biography
Fauré is best known for one work in particular, his Requiem, which is regularly performed all over the world.
He is also famous for a tune within the Pavane for chorus with orchestra.
This piece is invariably to be found in compilation albums of popular classical favourites.
He was born into a large family, one of six children, and having little contact with his parents was looked after by the nanny.
Fauré’s talent at music became apparent very early on and he was given a free place at a special music school in Paris, where he was taught by another eminent French composer, Camille Saint-Saëns.
He excelled at his studies and started writing music in a very original style, showing a remarkable talent for composing for the human voice, and it is for this medium that he really excelled.
He was a very gifted organist and held a number of prestigious jobs in Paris, one as the assistant to Widor (whose Toccata is very popular as the playout music to many people’s wedding ceremonies in Britain).
The piano was his other favourite instrument, and he composed two wonderful quartets for violin, viola, cello and piano in 1879 and 1886 respectively.
These are among the most charming pieces in the whole chamber music catalogue for this combination.
One or two of his solo works for piano have also found their way into the repertoire of many concert pianists and these include the Barcarolle and Nocturne, whilst his collections of songs contain so many gems it is hard to know which to mention: popular favourites include Nell, Les Berceaux and Claire de Lune.
In 1896 Fauré was appointed to be the chief organist at the Madeleine and also a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire.
He is reputed to have been a fine teacher and was instrumental in developing the talents of Ravel, Schmitt and Nadia Boulanger, among others.
Some years later he was promoted Director of the Conservatoire, a job which carried mixed blessings as it gave him less time for his own composition.
Sadly Fauré went deaf in 1910, and for the last fourteen years of his life this was a severe handicap for him, having a marked effect on his output.
Much of the music from this period is very sombre, bare and transparent in texture and requires sympathetic performance.
Fauré died in 1924 but has left us with the most beautiful collection of music that ensures his place as one of the truly great French composers to have emerged in the late nineteenth century, paving the way for the prodigious talents of Debussy and Ravel.
Pavane
1887, Orchestral
Fauré was always attracted to the cool straight-forwardness of ancient Greek civilisation and wrote many works in this classical style. This is his best known, being a beautiful flute melody played over plucked strings.
Requiem
1889, Choral
Definitely one the best loved of all choral works, this is essentially a reflective piece. The solo treble movement, ‘Pie Jesu’, is stunning and often performed separately.
Pelléas et Mélisande Suite
1898, Orchestral
Fauré wrote a lot of instrumental music for the theatre, the most notable being for Maeterlinck’s ‘Pelleas and Melisande’ – a play based on doomed love. Debussy, Sibelius and Schoenberg all wrote music based on this play, strangely enough, all within five years of one another.