Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Fauré was nine when he entered the École Niedermeyer in Paris, a school for church musicians. Camille Saint-Saëns taught him there, introduced him to the music of his own century, and remained a friend for sixty years. He earned his living as organist, teacher and administrator, and reformed the Paris Conservatoire from 1905 as its director. His own ground was the mélodie, the piano and chamber music: his works include the cycles La Bonne Chanson, La Chanson d'Ève and L'Horizon chimérique, piano quartets, violin sonatas, nocturnes and barcarolles. The Requiem omits most of the Dies irae sequence, retaining its closing Pie Jesu; the words “Dies illa, dies irae” also occur in the Libera me. Ravel, Enescu and Nadia Boulanger were among his pupils. He died in Paris in 1924. His church posts ran from assistant organist at Saint-Sulpice, which he left in 1874, to choirmaster at the Madeleine, which he took over from Théodore Dubois in 1877, when Dubois succeeded Saint-Saëns as organist, and he was among the founders of the National Musical Society. A teaching post at the Conservatoire came only in 1896, and for close to twenty years he also wrote music criticism for the Paris press; deafness overtook him late in life without ending his interest in the young, least of all in Les Six.