Fauré’s Requiem

Gabriel Fauré was born in 1845, the youngest of six children. At an early age, his musical talent was recognized by a blind lady who heard him play a harmonium (a small reed organ). At music school he was a favorite student of Camille Saint-Saens. After age 20, he held various organist positions to pay the bills, but his passion was composition. Specializing in shorter works for voice and chamber ensembles, he usually composed in his head and resorted to the piano only to verify difficult chords.

Saint-Saens often encouraged Fauré to be more ambitious and produce more works. However, Fauré would not rush a work into print. “I have never been able to resist…polishing and repolishing a piece and brooding over it endlessly.” Perhaps this is why Requiem evolved during more than 17 years.

Requiem’s first version (movements 1, 3, 4, 5, &7) was performed January 16, 1888. Though his parents had recently died, he maintained that he wrote Requiem “for the pleasure of it.” An expanded version with 7 movements, horn, and trumpet appeared in 1893. A third version with full orchestration was performed in July 1900 at the Paris World Exhibition.

Fauré’s Requiem is a brilliantly balanced work centered around the soprano solo, Pie Jesu. Alternating on each side of this pinnacle are chorus and baritone solo movements. Except for a brief “Hosanna” explosion in Sanctus and dark tones of “Dies irae” in Libera Me, Requiem is filled with tenderness, serenity, compassion, pardon, and hope. From its powerful opening chord to its concluding vision of angels and paradise, Fauré’s Requiem is considered by many to be a masterpiece when compared to other Requiems. Student and biographer Émile Vuillermoz said, “This is the only one of its kind.” Saint-Saens wrote to Fauré, “Your Pie Jesu is the only Pie Jesu, just as Mozart’s Ave Verum is the only Ave Verum.”

As moving as Requiem is to believers, some historians describe Fauré as an agnostic. Yet, hours before dying, he said to his sons, “You will hear it said of my work: ‘after all, what was it?’…You must not worry about that. It is bound to happen…there is always a period of temporary oblivion. But that is of no importance; I have done what I could…and now, judge me, O my God!” Unfortunately, a few weeks before dying, Fauré destroyed almost all of his drafts, sketches, and unpublished manuscripts: “I never liked revealing my projects before they had taken shape, and even before they were completely finished.”

Jean K. Potratz

15 February 1999