Music moves me all the more when the methods used are clear, correct, precise, and even concise.—Fauré

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) wrote those words in 1896 at the age of fifty-one. By then he had composed a quantity of orchestral music, but there were no symphonies or concertos, and none to follow. Instead, he applied his principles of clarity, precision and concision to smaller musical forms. Composition for Fauré was primarily “for music’s sake”—the pure idea.
Fauré was the youngest of six children and a precocious talent. When he was nine, his parents sent him to the Niedermeyer school in Paris, known for its training in church music, and that training influenced Fauré throughout his career. In 1861, Saint-Saëns arrived at the school to teach piano, broadening Fauré’s outlook with music of Wagner and Liszt, and a lifelong friendship formed between them.
Fauré started his professional career as an organist but was pulled away for service in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. After returning to church music, he was deeply moved at hearing the Wagner’s Ring cycle. He managed to take the best aspects of Wagner without joining the legions of Wagner imitators of the day. In 1896, he obtained a professorship of composition at the Paris Conservatory, where his influence was felt for decades through influential students like Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger. He eventually became director of the Conservatory, which proved a mixed blessing, as he found less and less time for composition. Worse yet, his hearing started to fail, forcing him to pare down his harmonic language and leaving him looking outdated and obsolete during the rush of late Impressionism and modernism that was sweeping through France.
Fauré wrote Cantique de Jean Racine, op. 11 is for mixed chorus and piano or organ. Written by the nineteen year old composer in 1864-5, the piece won him first prize when he graduated from the Niedermeyer school. It was first performed on August 4 the following year, with accompaniment of strings. The accompaniment has also been arranged for strings and harp by John Rutter. The text, Verbe égal au Trés-Haut, is a paraphrase by Jean Racine (Hymnes traduites du Bréviaire romain, 1688) of the pseudo-ambrosian hymn for Tuesday matins, Consors paterni luminis.

Fauré began his Requiem, op. 48 in the summer of 1887. The original version had only five movements and premiered in that form at the Madeleine Church in Paris (where Fauré was organist) on January 16, 1888, as part of a “first-class” funeral for a wealthy parishioner. The Offertory and Libera Me were added later. In discussions with his publisher, Fauré opted for further revisions in the instrumentation. The final version, in which Fauré’s pupil Roger Ducasse may have made many of the revisions, was premiered in 1900 and the published score emerged in 1901. Fauré was candid with conductors of his Requiem, loudly stating his preference for a bright, vigorous soprano soloist as opposed to “old goats who have never known love,” and for “a soothing bass-baritone with something of the precentor in him” who can sustain “the calm and gravity the part requires.”