Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) worked as a composer, organist, pianist, and teacher. He stood as a leading figure among French composers of his time, and his approach to music left a mark on many who came after him in the 20th century. People know him best for pieces like his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, piano nocturnes, and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune." His earlier, more accessible works are his most famous, but he produced many of his most admired compositions later in life, when his style grew more complex in harmony and melody.

Fauré came from a cultured family that was not particularly musical. His talent showed up early, and at age nine he entered the École Niedermeyer music college in Paris to train as a church organist and choirmaster. One of his teachers there was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. After finishing college in 1865, Fauré made a modest living as an organist and teacher, which left him little time to compose. Even when he gained success in middle age, holding major posts like organist at the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still struggled to find time for writing music. He would retreat to the countryside during summer holidays to focus on composition. By his final years, France recognized him as its leading composer. In 1922, a national musical tribute was held for him in Paris, led by the president of the Republic. Outside France, his music took decades to catch on, except in Britain, where he had many fans during his lifetime.

Critics describe Fauré’s music as a bridge between the end of Romanticism and the modernism of the early 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing; by the time he died, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School had emerged. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians calls him the most advanced composer of his generation in France and notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations shaped how harmony was taught later. In his last twenty years, he grew increasingly deaf. Unlike the charm of his earlier work, his later pieces can feel elusive and withdrawn, or at other times turbulent and impassioned.

Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, in southern France, the youngest of six children and the fifth son of Toussaint-Honoré Fauré and Marie-Antoinette-Hélène Lalène-Laprade. According to biographer Jean-Michel Nectoux, the family traces back to the 13th century in that region. They had once owned substantial land, but by the 1800s their means had shrunk. His paternal grandfather, also named Gabriel, was a butcher whose son became a schoolmaster. His parents married in 1829. His mother was the daughter of a minor noble. Fauré was the only one of the six children to show musical talent; his four brothers went into journalism, politics, the army, and the civil service, while his sister lived a traditional life as a public servant’s wife.

As a young child, Fauré lived with a foster mother until he was four. In 1849, when his father became director of the École Normale d’Instituteurs in Montgauzy, near Foix, Fauré returned home. A chapel was attached to the school, and he later recalled: “I grew up, a rather quiet well-behaved child, in an area of great beauty. … But the only thing I remember really clearly is the harmonium in that little chapel. Every time I could get away I ran there – and I regaled myself. … I played atrociously … no method at all, quite without technique, but I do remember that I was happy; and if that is what it means to have a vocation, then it is a very pleasant thing.” An old blind woman who came to listen advised his father about Fauré’s gift. In 1853, Simon-Lucien Dufaur de Saubiac, a member of the National Assembly, heard him play and urged Toussaint-Honoré to send him to the École Niedermeyer in Paris, which Louis Niedermeyer was establishing. After a year of thought, his father agreed, and in October 1854, the nine-year-old Fauré went to Paris.

With a scholarship from his home diocese’s bishop, Fauré boarded at the school for 11 years. The conditions were harsh—austere rules, gloomy rooms, mediocre food, and an elaborate uniform—but the music teaching was excellent. Niedermeyer aimed to produce skilled organists and choirmasters, focusing on church music. Fauré’s teachers included Clément Loret for organ, Louis Dietsch for harmony, Xavier Wackenthaler for counterpoint and fugue, and Niedermeyer himself for piano, plainsong, and composition. After Niedermeyer died in March 1861, Saint-Saëns took over piano studies and introduced modern works by Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner. Fauré later said, “After allowing the lessons to run over, he would go to the piano and reveal to us those works of the masters from which the rigorous classical nature of our programme of study kept us at a distance … At the time I was 15 or 16, and from this time dates the almost filial attachment … the immense admiration, the unceasing gratitude I [have] had for him, throughout my life.” Saint-Saëns took great pleasure in his pupil’s progress and helped him whenever possible; Nectoux notes that Saint-Saëns’s influence can be taken for granted at every step of Fauré’s career. Their close friendship lasted until Saint-Saëns died sixty years later. Fauré won many prizes at the school, including a first prize.