Requiem, Op. 48

Composer: FAURÉ, Gabriel
  • Fauré composed his Requiem in 1877 and revised it in 1887–93. The original version was for chamber orchestra and organ; he arranged the work for full orchestra in 1900.1
  • Fauré’s Requiem premiered in Paris at the Société des concerts du Conservatoire on July 12, 1900. Paul Taffanel conducted the performance.2
  • Unlike many composers, whose impetus to write a Requiem was the death of a specific person, Fauré claimed that he wrote his Requiem simply “for the pleasure of it.”3

“It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.” 

Gabriel Fauré on his Requiem, in an interview with Louis Aguettant on July 12, 1902.4

“As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.”

Gabriel Fauré on his Requiem, in an interview with Louis Aguettant on July 12, 1902.5

Sources

  1. Jean-Michel Nectoux, “Fauré, Gabriel,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 25, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009366.
  2. “Requiem, Op. 48 (Fauré, Gabriel),” IMSLP, accessed February 26, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/Requiem%2C_Op.48_(Faur%C3%A9%2C_Gabriel).
  3. Jean-Michel Nectoux, “Fauré, Gabriel,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 25, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009366.
  4. Quoted in Robert Orledge, Gabriel Fauré (UK: Eulenburg, 1979), 115.
  5. Ibid.

Cut IDs

46304 46337 46401 10809 46444 45082 13810 45082 21595 45082 46337 45082