Fauré
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) was a French composer whose refined harmonic language bridged Romanticism and 20th-century modernism.
In Depth
Fauré was a master of French mélodie (art song), chamber music, and choral composition. His Requiem, notable for its gentle serenity and omission of the Dies irae, is one of the most performed choral works. His song cycles La Bonne Chanson and L'Horizon chimérique are pinnacles of the French art song tradition.
As director of the Paris Conservatoire from 1905, he reformed its curriculum and taught a generation of composers including Ravel and Nadia Boulanger. His late works — piano quintets, string quartet, and nocturnes — display an increasingly elliptical, harmonically adventurous style that puzzled contemporaries but anticipated later developments. Progressive deafness in his final years isolated him increasingly from the musical world.
Fauré's Requiem is sometimes called the "Requiem of a man who doesn't believe in death" — he deliberately omitted the terrifying Dies irae to focus on eternal rest and peace.