Gabriel Fauré

Often confined to the chamber music of Parisian salons, Gabriel Fauré demonstrated his aptitude for all forms, as evidenced by his Requiem, alongside a leading career in the church and at the conservatory. Gabriel Urbain Fauré, the son of a schoolteacher, was born in Pamiers, Ariège, on May 12, 1845. His musical vocation began to take shape at an early age, as he listened to the harmonium in the chapel at Montgauzy, near Foix, where his father had become school principal. So much so that, at just nine years of age, he was sent to Paris to study at the classical and religious music school founded by Louis Niedermeyer and bearing his name, where he trained as an organist, choirmaster and choirmaster. After eleven years of lessons, he graduated at the age of twenty with a second prize in harmony, a first prize in composition and a prize for excellence in piano. Along the way, he met Camille Saint-Saëns, a benevolent teacher who introduced him to the great Romantic composers. The young Fauré composed his first melodies and romances, including Trois Romances pour piano (1863) and Cantique de Jean Racine (1865). In 1866, he obtained his first position as organist at Saint-Sauveur church in Rennes, then returned to Paris when war broke out in 1870. A volunteer in the light infantry, the musician showed his courage and took part in the fighting during the siege of Paris, earning the esteem of the profession. During the Commune, he lived in Rambouillet, then left for Switzerland to teach at the relocated École Niedermeyer, where he met André Messager. Returning to Paris in October 1871, he took up various positions as organist at Notre-Dame de Clignancourt, Saint-Honoré d'Eylau and Saint-Sulpice, where he also directed the choir. He remained close to Saint-Saëns, who welcomed him into his salon, where the singer Pauline Viardot was enthroned, and he became one of the first members of the Société nationale de musique, intended to promote French music, taking on the role of secretary in 1874. Although he failed to marry Marianne Viardot, who broke off their engagement, in 1883 he married the daughter of sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet, Marie Frémiet (1856-1926), who bore him two sons. Meanwhile, in 1877, Fauré succeeded Théodore Dubois for the first time as maître de chapelle at the Madeleine church, after having replaced Saint-Saëns several times and worked as a substitute. Dubois took him to Germany, to Weimar to meet Franz Liszt, and to Cologne to attend performances of Wagner's Tetralogy, without however fully embracing his style, in a French musical milieu where supporters and detractors clashed. Busy with his duties, Fauré spent all his spare time composing, usually in the summer. After a first Sonata for violin and piano (1876) and the Berceuse (1879, orchestrated the following year), he showed his originality in two Piano Quartets (1879 and 1886), Six nocturnes for piano (between 1875 and 1894), alternating with the Six Barcarolles (1880-1896), and often associated with recordings, a famous Ballade op. 19 (1879) and the no less famous Élégie op. 24 for cello and piano (1880), as well as a number of melodies, including Après un rêve (1878) and the cycle La Bonne chanson, based on Paul Verlaine's poetic collection and dedicated to Emma Bardac, Debussy's future wife. To Countess Greffulhe, who supported him in the creation of the Société des grandes auditions musicales, he dedicated the famous Pavane op. 50 (1887), for small symphony orchestra with choir, stylistically close to the Clair de lune from the Deux mélodies op. 46, which he orchestrated in the incidental music Masques et bergamasques op. 112 (premiered at the Opéra-Comique on March 1, 1919). In 1887 and the following year, the composer, who had lost his parents in the space of two years, worked on another work that would make him famous: the Requiem and its illustrious In Paradisum, premiered at the Madeleine on January 16, 1888 and expanded from five to seven movements in 1889, before a version for full orchestra in 1890. In 1893, his popular Sicilienne for cello and piano saw the light of day, before being inserted in an orchestral version in the incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande (1898). Winner of the Prix Chartier from the Académie des Beaux-Arts for his chamber music in 1885, and after a trip to Venice in 1891, Fauré was appointed inspector of provincial conservatories in 1892, before his double appointment in 1896 as titular organist of the Madeleine and professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, succeeding Jules Massenet and training Charles Koechlin, Florent Schmitt, Maurice Ravel, Georges Enesco and Nadia Boulanger, among others. His affair with singer Emma Bardac also produced the four-hand piano suite Dolly (1896), named after his daughter, premiered two years later by Édouard Risler and Alfred Cortot. On August 27, 1900, Prométhée, a lyrical tragedy set to a libretto by Jean Lorrain and André-Ferdinand Hérold after Aeschylus, premiered at the Béziers Arena. After becoming a critic for Le Figaro (1903-1921), the composer became director of the Paris Conservatoire, succeeding Théodore Dubois in 1905. He enforced discipline and revamped course content. By 1903, however, his deafness had worsened to the point of total deafness, but this did not prevent him from continuing to compose chamber music, as witnessed by the completion of two Quintets with piano (premiered in 1906 and 1921 respectively), the melodies La Chanson d'Ève (1910) and L'horizon chimérique (1921), the Piano Trio op. 120 (1923), and the unique and ultimate String Quartet (premiered posthumously in 1925). Elected to the Institut de France in 1909, he premiered his only opera, Pénélope, based on Homer, in Monte-Carlo in 1913, and was awarded the Grand-Croix de la Légion d'honneur in 1920, just as he was retiring from his post. The post-romantic composer, who had forged his own musical path away from fashion, suggesting Impressionism, died of pneumonia on November 4, 1924 at the age of 79, and was given a state funeral in the Madeleine church.