Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 – 1924) was a French
composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of
the foremost French composers of his generation, and
his musical style influenced many 20th-century
composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane,
Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs
"Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his
best-known and most accessible compositions are
generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his
most highly regarded works in...(+)
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 – 1924) was a French
composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of
the foremost French composers of his generation, and
his musical style influenced many 20th-century
composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane,
Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs
"Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his
best-known and most accessible compositions are
generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his
most highly regarded works in his later years, in a
more harmonically and melodically complex style. He was
born into a cultured but not especially musical family.
His talent became clear when he was a young boy. At the
age of nine, he was sent to the École Niedermeyer
music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a
church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was
Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend.
After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré
earned a modest living as an organist and teacher,
leaving him little time for composition. When he became
successful in his middle age, holding the important
posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and
director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked
time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in
the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By
his last years, he was recognised in France as the
leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented
national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in
1922, headed by the president of the French Republic.
Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become
widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many
admirers during his lifetime.
Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of
Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of
the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still
composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and
the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were
being heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced
composer of his generation in France, notes that his
harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the
teaching of harmony for later generations. During the
last twenty years of his life, he suffered from
increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his
earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes
elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times
turbulent and impassioned.
Following the publication by Julien Hamelle of the
Élégie, Fauré was immediately commissioned to write
a second piece for cello, perhaps as a lighter
counterpart. But again there was a delay in
publication, this time of fourteen years until 1898. On
this occasion some responsibility might lie with the
increasingly sour relations between composer and
publisher, whose incompetence extended to actually
losing manuscripts and who insisted on calling the
piece first Libellules (Dragonflies), then Papillon
(Butterfly); to which Fauré, no lover of fancy titles,
retorted: ‘Butterfly or Dung Fly, call it whatever
you like.’ The five sections of Papillon contain
contrasting material: the odd-numbered ones might
equally be a French ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’,
pre-empting Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1899 version; in the
two enclosed sections the cello sings a lyrical,
symmetrical song that finally takes wing over one of
Fauré’s favourite descending bass lines.
Source: Hyperion
(https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W9547_GBA
JY0118424)
Although originally composed for Cello & Piano, I
created this Transcription of "Papillon" (Butterfly Op.
77) for Viola & Piano.
