Gabriel Fauré, great French composer and pedagogue was
born in Pamiers, Ariege on May 12, 1845 and died in
Paris on Nov. 4, 1924. His father was a provincial
inspector of primary schools; noticing the musical
instinct of his son, he took him to Paris to study with
Louis Niedermeyer; after Niedermeyers death in 1861,
Fauré studied with Saint-Saens, from whom he received
thorough training in composition. In 1866 he went to
Rennes as organist at the church of St.-Sauveur;
returned to Paris on the...(+)
Gabriel Fauré, great French composer and pedagogue was
born in Pamiers, Ariege on May 12, 1845 and died in
Paris on Nov. 4, 1924. His father was a provincial
inspector of primary schools; noticing the musical
instinct of his son, he took him to Paris to study with
Louis Niedermeyer; after Niedermeyers death in 1861,
Fauré studied with Saint-Saens, from whom he received
thorough training in composition. In 1866 he went to
Rennes as organist at the church of St.-Sauveur;
returned to Paris on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War
in 1870, and volunteered in the light infantry. He was
organist at Notre Dame de Clignancourt (1870),
St.-Honoré dElyau (1871), and St.-Sulpice (1871?74).
He then was named deputy organist (to Saint-Sadns,
1874), choirmaster (1877), and chief organist (1896) at
the Madeleine. In 1896 he was appointed prof. of
composition at the Paris Cons. He was an illustrious
teacher; among his students were Ravel, Enesco,
Koechlin, Roger-Ducasse, Florent Schmitt, and Nadia
Boulanger. In 1905 he succeeded Theodore Dubois as
director and served until 1920. Then, quite
unexpectedly, he developed ear trouble, resulting in
gradual loss of hearing. Distressed, he made an effort
to conceal it but was eventually forced to abandon his
teaching position. From 1903 to 1921 he wrote
occasional music reviews in Le Figaro (a selection was
publ. as Opinions musicales, Paris, 1930). He was
elected a member of the Academie des Beaux Arts in
1909, and in 1910 was made a Commander of the Legion
d?honneur. Fauré?s stature as a composer is
undiminished by the passage of time. He developed a
musical idiom all his own; by subtle application of old
modes he evoked the aura of eternally fresh art; by
using unresolved mild discords and special coloristic
effects, he anticipated procedures of Impressionism; in
his piano works he shunned virtuosity in favor of the
Classical lucidity of the French masters of the
clavecin; the precisely articulated melodic line of his
songs is in the finest tradition of French vocal music.
His great Requiem and his Elégie for Cello and Piano
have entered the general repertoire.
Paul Taffanel (1844-1908), often called the father of
the modern French school of the flute, was a busy man,
active at the Opéra de Paris, in the Conservatoire
concerts, as the leader of the L'Orchestre de la
Société des Instruments à Vent (which commissioned,
among many other works, d'Indy's Chansons et danses),
and, from 1893, as a professor at the Conservatoire.
Fauré was appointed professor of composition there in
October 1896, and it was almost inevitable that
Taffanel should ask him, in the spring of 1898, to
write a sight-reading piece and a concours composition
for the July examinations. No doubt owing to Wagnerian
camaraderie, Fauré passed the orchestration of his
incidental music for Maeterlinck's Pelléas et
Mélisande, on which he had been feverishly working, to
his pupil Charles Koechlin, so he could get to grips
with the concours piece. The Fantaisie for flute and
piano occupied him from the beginning of June until at
least mid-July, though its fluent brilliance belies the
effort that went into it. Opening with a brief
sicilienne of great charm, the Fantaisie soon gets down
to its raison d'être with a winsomely chirping tune
riffled by mercurial pyrotechnics. Writing to Koechlin
on his way to London on June 10, 1898, for the June 21
premiere of Pelléas, Fauré complained, "I am drowned
in the Taffanel and plunged up to my neck in scales,
arpeggios, and staccati! I have already perpetrated 104
bars of this irksome torture...." But for the adept
musician who can, as intended, take its virtuoso
demands in stride, the Fantaisie affords an airily
effusive, scintillantly rapturous, and wholly
un-Wagnerian spate of liquid silver. Its first
performance was given by the concours winner, one
Gaston Blanquart, on July 28, 1898. Despite the
grumbling Fauré lavished on the piece, he seems to
have prepared an orchestral version, which is now lost.
In 1957, Louis Aubert made an orchestral arrangement
published by the firm of Hamelle the year after.