Berceuse for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 16

• Fauré composed this piece in 1879, for violin and piano, and orchestrated it the next year.¹

“A charming Berceuse for violin which the audience demanded to be repeated.”

Music critic Eugène Gigout, in his review of the work’s first performance, Feb. 14, 1880 ²

“The receptive audience gave the young choirmaster from the Madeleine the liveliest indications of satisfaction.”

Eugène Gigout. Fauré was the choirmaster at the Church of La Madeleine in Paris³

1. Jean-Michel Nectoux, “Fauré, Gabriel,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed September 26, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009366.
2. Quoted in Michel Duchesneau, “The Triumph of a Genre,” in Tom Gordon, ed., Regarding Fauré (New York: Routledge, 2013), 66.
3. Ibid.