Requiem

Fauré began the Requiem in 1887 and conducted a first version at the Madeleine in Paris on 16 January 1888, at a parishioner's funeral; the score then had five movements and almost no violins. He added the Offertoire and the Libera me over the following years, and a full orchestral version appeared in 1900. Asked about the work's mildness, Fauré said he saw death as a happy deliverance rather than a painful passing. The setting omits the Dies irae entirely, keeping only the closing lines of the sequence, in the Pie Jesu for solo soprano.