Fauré, Requiem

In program notes for the Fauré Requiem, John Bawden writes:

Of the many settings of the Requiem, this is probably the most widely loved. In comparison with the large-scale masterpieces of Verdi, Brahms and Berlioz, Faure’s setting seems gentle and unassuming, yet it is this very quality of understatement which contributes so eloquently to the work’s universal appeal. 

Yes, you won’t find anything approaching the outward drama and excitement of Verdi’s Dies irae. Much of the work is gentle and unassuming. “Understatement” is one way to describe it, but I think of it more in terms of control. There is a pent-up energy in this work, something like an undertow, often propelled by a clear and insistent bass line. The energy breaks the surface only occasionally, and is all the more dramatic for being held back for sustained periods.

Much of the work is written in two- and three-part counterpoint. The choir often features a single voice or multiple voices in unison. The vocal melodies have a simplicity suitable for liturgical texts, but the instrumental melodies can be more sweeping, especially in the Agnus dei.

To my mind it’s the horns that mark the clear high point in this work, where the energy finally breaks the surface: the Hosanna in the Sanctus (at 17:20). (Okay, I was a horn player, so I have a bias.) I have another bias in favor of the kind of robust musical setting Fauré gives the Sanctus, short-lived though it is. It seems too often couched in subdued tones. How does this text from Isaiah 6:3-4 not call for something monumental?

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts
Heaven and earth all full of thy glory.
Glory be to thee, O Lord most High.

The text comes from Isaiah 6, where Isaiah tells us that as the Lord sat high and exalted and the angels cried these words to one another, “the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.” Nothing soothing in that scene. The Requiem’s other musical high points tend to be punctuated by the horns.

Still, there is plenty of serenity in the work, especially the Pie Jésu and In Paradisum. Fauré commented on his approach in a 1902 interview (published in Comoedia in 1954):

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. The music of Gounod has been criticized for its overinclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist’s nature? 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.

We looked at Fauré’s biography and professional life in an earlier Performance Pick, his Piano Trio, Op. 120.