Today's Playlist - Gabriel Faure

I have been listening to the music of Gabriel Faure a lot this past week. Or rather, I have been listening to two of his works a lot this week

Faure was a major figure in the world of French classical music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a composer, an organist and pianist, a teacher, and the director of the Paris Conservatory. Faure was one of the foremost composers of his time, but this week I concentrated on listening to Opus 48 and Opus 50.

Requiem in D Minor (Opus 48) is one of my favourite classical pieces of all time. Most requiems are written to commemorate a specific individual, but Faure stated that he composed his requiem "for the pleasure of it". Although he composed it after the death of his father, Faure explained the piece's significance in slightly different terms:

“Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”

The piece runs about 35 minutes long and consists of seven movements, including my two favourite parts -- the Piu Jesu and In paradisum, which is traditionally included in the Order of Burial instead of a Mass for the dead. The libretto is sung entirely in Latin, but the words and music blend so well that the voices become another instrument.

Faure once commented that someone described the Requiem as a "lullaby of death". If you listen to Opus 48 you will agree with this observation, but you will probably join me in feeling that the Requiem is also a lullaby of life. Like many other beautiful works of art, the piece provides reassurance that there is a meaning and a purpose to life that we often only suspect exists.

Opus 50, the Pavane in F Sharp Minor, provides me with a similar glimpse at the "face of God", if you will. A pavane (or pavan) is a slow, stately dance that originated in the Spanish court in the 17th century. Although Faure's Pavane was meant for orchestra and not dancing, it retains the elegance one would expect from a court dance.

Pavane in F Sharp Minor reminds me of nothing so much as the ocean. It begins softly -- almost too quiet to hear -- and builds to a series of musical climaxes that rise and fall like the ebbing and flowing of the tides. As was the case with the Requiem, there is something comforting about Opus 50, something that provides an intimation of the existence of God.