Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 06/19/2007, uploaded on 01/20/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Second only to Robert Schumann in Fauré’s admiration was Frédéric Chopin, and the influence of the Polish expatriate can be seen in the selection of titles Fauré employed in his piano music: Nocturne, Barcarolle, and Impromptu. Though numbered among the first Romantics, Chopin considered himself a Classicist; though a prime example of late French Romanticism, Fauré often tempered his works with a Classical restraint. Like his predecessor, this influence of Classicism by no means meant his works for piano were easy to perform. On one occasion, the great Franz Liszt, while attempting to perform a piece by Fauré, remarked that he had “run out of fingers.” For much of his career, Fauré was an organist, and though the piano was his medium of choice for keyboard music, he nonetheless wrote with a proclivity towards the fingerings and idioms more comfortable for an organist than a pianist. Lending even more difficulty was the fact that Fauré was also ambidextrous and equally inclined to place a melody in the left hand as in the right, or in notes alternating between the two. Fauré’s output for the piano spanned many decades of his career, from the 1860s to almost his death in 1924.

Of the dozen and one nocturnes Fauré composed, the first is one of the most well-known and considered to be among his best early works for the piano. Despite its publication as the first of the three nocturnes published as the composer’s opus 33, its composition date actually predates that of its companions by roughly five years. In the dreary key of E-flat minor and marked to be played Lento, the nocturne begins with a tragic melody accompanied, not by the usual arpeggios of the Chopin nocturne, but by pulsating chords that highlight its pathos. The brief opening section is contrasted with an extended central episode, which actually contains two distinct themes of its own. A cantando melody, little changed from its predecessor in terms of demeanor except for the addition of a rumbling, agitated bass figure, begins the episode. This melody, however, gives way to dreamy melody in C major which seems by some unknown hand to lift itself above the doleful air that surrounds it. A repetition of each melody and a lengthy transition return the listener to an embellished restatement of the opening theme. Finally, as a coda, Fauré provides echoes of the episode’s rumbling bass motif before the piece’s final cadence.      Joseph DuBose

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Nocturne in e-flat minor, Op. 33, No. 1        Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher.  After studying composition with Saint-Saens in the 1860s, Fauré held various posts as an organist.  He became professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire in 1896 and its director from 1905 to 1920, until he resigned due to a hearing loss. Through his pupil Ravel and Nadia Boulanger, a famous teacher who was also his student, Fauré influenced countless later composers.

Fauré's refined, highly civilized music embodies the aristocratic qualities of the French tradition.  He composed primarily lyric pieces, solo piano and chamber music.  Simple lyrical melody, which avoids any display of virtuosity, remained the basis of his style.  Fauré's music is essentially spiritual; it leans toward the inexpressible, the transcendent. 

These two Nocturnes (Night Pieces) show his balance, clarity and serenity.      Sehee Kim

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.