Piano Music - Gabriel Fauré

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📖 “Fauré in his Requiem, composed for the church of La Madeleine, was perhaps the only one to elevate the church music of his day to the rank of an admirable work of art."
Jacques Chailley
40000 Years of Music (1964)

📖 “The play of the graceful, fleeting liunes described by Fauré's music may be compared to the gesture of a beautiful woman without either suffering from comparison."
Claude Debussy
In Gil Blas (1903)

📖 “… he [Fauré] breaks out against certain petty nationalist tendencies which try to limit the scope and style of our contemporary art to the inspiration which evoked the ethereal delicacy of the old masters of the clavichord, and upholds the value of foreign influences which broaden our horizon; at the same time he declares himself incapable of understanding 'how school discipline can cramp expressive power, how it can get in the way of free inspiration, or why it cannt itself be made to yield emotion.'
The music born of such beliefs, as its composer clearly shows, is unlikely to bring us those crude licences, those arrogant, superficial, novelties which certain writers consider the necessary sop to originality, or evem an evidence of the genuine thing.
This dignified acceptance of harmonic rule, this self-imposed discipline, is far from weakening an art which can be original without denying the past, independent without pushing tradition aside; it seems, on the contrary, to give M. Fauré's thought an added richness and a singular piquancy.
It is that his musical imagination has no need to flog itself into activity with any ovelty of from or with the help of an evocative or suggestive argument, or order to reveal its creative force and awaken in us the echo of feelings hithero unexpressed.
It carries with it an expressive value which enables him to dispense with the assistance of the striking or the picturesque effect. It regulares the idiom of a style disciplined to follow the delicate course of a new thought. It evolves freely amid rules whose order and logic are thus supported and rejuvenated. And neither learning not culture has left on M. Fauré the deplorable imprint alleged so violently by the enemies of the classics and by those who despise academicism.
They only made it easlier for him to recognize the guiding principles, persisting under the changing face of beauty through the ages, that would help the harmonious flowering of his tender genius and insight. And, using a language which has never tried to astonish or to compel attention, he has set on his masterpieces the hallmark of a surprising and oermanent freshness."
Alfred Cortot French Piano Music (1932)

📖 “In my opinion M. Fauré's real pianistic originality is revealed in the works of a contemplative or softly impassioned nature, where an intimate emotion inspires a style that is deeply intense and controlled at the same time, expressed in a pianistic language which seems to exhale a secret warmth. It is to be felt in the emotional mood of the Nocturnes, where the night's dreamy ecstasy matches a rapturous or melancholy song; or in the exotic languor of the Barcarolles, where the soft splash of water mingles with the happy murmer of love; or in the grave serenity which breathes through many of the Préludes, and the splendid Variations."
Alfred Cortot French Piano Music (1932)

📖 “The explanation of M. Fauré's work, up to about Op., 38 … lies in the fleeting, sensuous delight of living day by day, the seductive richness of dreams, the emotions and longings of youth. Later, up to the ninth Nocturne, it lies in the motional hglow of maturity, the consious, passionate conflict of feeling. And lastly, from the time of Penelope and including it, it lies ina transcendent quality of grave sustained beauty and fervour to which a refining and etherealizing musical style communicates a sort of moral serenity."
Alfred Cortot French Piano Music (1932)

Gabriel Fauré

1845 - 1924
Gabriel Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher.

📖 "For me, art, and especially music, exist to elevate us as far as possible above everyday existence."

📖 “To know an art really well, one must know everything about it, both its origins and its development.” – Gabriel Fauré
At the Piano with Gabriel Fauré (1963) by Marguerite Long

📖 “How many times have I asked myself what use music is? And what am I translating? What feelings? What ideas? How can I express something I do not understand myself?” – Gabriel Fauré
At the Piano with Gabriel Fauré (1963) by Marguerite Long

📖 "And I always enjoy seeing sunlight play on the rocks, the water, the trees and plains. What variety of effects, what brilliance and what softness... I wish my music could show as much diversity."

📖 "If one has not heard Wagner at Bayreuth, one has heard nothing! Take lots of handkerchiefs because you will cry a great deal! Also take a sedative because you will be exalted to the point of delirium!"

📖 "Mozart's music is particularly difficult to perform. His admirable clarity exacts absolute cleanness: the slightest mistake in it stands out like black on white. It is music in which all the notes must be heard."

📖 “I have been reserved all my life … and have only been able to let myself go in certain situations."
In Letter to his wife Marie (1921)

📖 “In whatever realm of thought one takes - literature, science, art - an education which is not based on the study of the classics can be neither complete not fundamental… In the wide reaches of the human spirit, all those who seemed to create ideas and styles hither unknown have only been expressing, through the medium of their own individualities, what others have already thought and said before them."
Gabriel Fauré quoted in Alfred Cortot French Piano Music (1932)

Quotes by Gabriel Fauré

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Some Recordings of Fauré's Music

Gabriel Fauré - Dolly Suite, op. 56
Germaine Thyssens and Henriette Puig Roget, piano

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) - L’oeuvre pour piano / Complete Piano Works - Germaine Thissens-Valentin (Century's Recording)

Fauré - Après un rêve
Kiri Te Kanawa

Gabriel Fauré's Piano Music

— Fugue à trois parties, F, c1862

— Sonata, F, 6 April 1863

Op 17 Trois romances sans paroles, ?1863 (1880)

— Mazurke, B♭, c1865

— Gavotte, c♯, 16 May 1869, incl. in Sym., op.20, and Masques et bergamasques, op.112

— Petite fugue, a, 30 June 1869, as op.84/3 (1902)

— Prélude et fugue, e, Nov–Dec 1869, only fugue pubd, as op.84/6 (1902)

Op. 84 Huit pièces brèves, 1869–1902 (1902), titled by publisher against Fauré’s wishes: 1 Capriccio, E♭; 2 Fantaisie, A♭; 3 Fugue, a; 4 Adagietto, e; 5 Improvisation, c♯; 6 Fugue, e; 7 Allegresse, C; 8 Nocturne no.8, D♭

Op. 32 Mazurka, B♭, c1875 (1883)

Op. 33/1 Nocturne no.1, e♭, c1875 (1883)

Op. 19 Ballade, F♯, 1877–9 (1880), orchd 1881

Op. 25 Impromptu no.1, E♭, 1881 (1881)

Op. 26 Barcarolle no.1, a, ?1881 (1881)

Op. 33/2 Nocturne no.2, B, c1881 (1883)

Op. 30 Valse-caprice no.1, A, ?1882 (1883)

Op. 31 Impromptu no.2, f, May 1883 (1883)

Op. 33/3 Nocturne no.3, A♭, 1883 (1883)

Op. 34 Impromptu no.3, A♭, 1883 (1883)

Op. 38 Valse-caprice no.2, D♭, July 1884 (1884)

Op. 37 Nocturne no.5, B♭, Aug 1884 (1885)

Op. 36 Nocturne no.4, E♭, 1884 (1885)

Op. 41 Barcarolle no.2, G, Aug 1885 (1886)

Op. 42 Barcarolle no.3, G♭, 1885 (1886)

Op. 44 Barcarolle no.4, A♭, 1886 (1887)

Op. 59 Valse-caprice no.3, G♭, 1887–93 (1893)

Op. 62 Valse-caprice, no.4, A♭, 1893–4 (1894)

Op. 63 Nocturne no.6, D♭, 3 Aug 1894 (1894)

Op. 66 Barcarolle no.5, f♯, 18 Sept 1894 (1894)

Op. 73 Thème et variations, c♯, 1895 (London and Paris, 1897)

Op. 70 Barcarolle no.6, E♭, ?1895 (London and Paris, 1896)

— Prelude, C, 1897, in I. Philipp: Etudes d’octaves (1897)

Op. 74 Nocturne no.7, c♯, 1898 (1899)

Op. 84/8 Nocturne no.8, D♭, 1902 (1902)

Op. 90 Barcarolle no.7, d, Aug 1905 (1905)

Op. 91 Impromptu no.4, D♭, 1905–6 (1906)

Op. 96 Barcarolle no.8, D♭, 1906 (1908)

Op. 97 Nocturne no.9, b, ?1908 (1909)

Op. 99 Nocturne no.10, b, Nov 1908 (1909)

Op. 101 Barcarolle no.9, a, 1908–9 (1909)

Op. 102 Impromptu no.5, f♯, 1908–9 (1909)

Op. 103 Nine Preludes, D♭, c♯, g, F, d, e♭, A, c, e, 1909–10 (1910–11)

Op. 104/1 Nocturne no.11, f♯, 1913 (1913)

Op. 104/2 Barcarolle no.10, a, Oct 1913 (1913)

Op. 105 Barcarolle no.11, g, 1913 (1914)

Op. 106bis Barcarolle no.12, e♭, Sept 1915 (1916)

Op. 107 Nocturne no.12, e, Aug–Sept 1915 (1916)

Op. 116 Barcarolle no.13, C, Feb 1921 (1921)

Op. 119 Nocturne no.13, b, 31 Dec 1921 (1922)

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