Classical Music | Bass

Recorded on 10/01/2011, uploaded on 10/01/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, the most well-known of his large-scale concert works, was pieced together during the last decades of the 19^th century, and did not take its most familiar form until 1899. Indeed, it is probably one of the most patchwork and haphazardly conceived compositions, but nonetheless a delight for any admirer of classical music. Fauré’s intentions for composing the Requiem remain debated with some suggesting that the deaths of his parents in the mid-1880s may have been the reason. However, Fauré himself stated, “My Requiem wasn't written for anything – for pleasure, if I may call it that!” and by the time of his mother’s death in 1887, work on the Requiem was already well underway.

The first version of the work premiered in La Madeleine in Paris on January 16, 1887, under the composer’s own directions, comprising five movements—Introit and Kyrie, Sanctus, Pie Jesu, Agnus Dei and In Paradisium—and scored for an intimate ensemble of mixed chorus, organ, harp, timpani, violas, cellos and double basses, a boy soprano for Pie Jesu and a solo violin for Sanctus. In 1888, Fauré added the Hostias portion of the Offeratory, and the following year, further expanded it by adding a Libera Me, both utilizing a baritone soloist. This addition of a Libera Me, despite being the last made to the Requiem, was actually a separate piece that Fauré had written in 1877, and makes it the earliest composed music in the entire work. This new extended version of the work was then premiered on January 21, 1893. However, even with these extensive changes, Fauré was not yet finished with it. The demand of the large choral societies of the late 19^th century, prompted him to score the intimate work for full orchestra in 1899-1900. Fauré had only limited interest in orchestration and it is debated to what extent he may have delegated this particular revision to one of his pupils. Regardless, the full orchestral version premiered on April 6, 1900, and of the different forms the Requiem has taken, it is today the most frequently performed and recorded.

Spanning seven movements, Fauré’s Requiem bears a striking similarity to Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem. Both employ a baritone soloist in their second and sixth movements, and a soprano soloist (though in the fourth movement in Fauré’s work and the fifth in Brahms’s). Likewise, both works gravitate around ethereal and heavenly fourth movements. In the selection of movements, Fauré followed a French Baroque tradition, omitting nearly the entire Requiem sequence (Dies irae). Only the Pie Jesu, the final couplet of the Dies irae, was set.            Joseph DuBose

Biblioteca Multimediale dell'Istituto Europeo di Musica. Servizio di filodiffusione di Musica classica della domenica.

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"Libera Me" (Fauré)

James Morris- Robert Shaw cond. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus

Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die illa tremenda:
Quando coeli movendi sunt et terra.
Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem.
Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo, dum discussio venerit, atque ventura ira.
Quando coeli movendi sunt et terra.
Dies illa, dies irae, calamitatis et miseriae, dies magna et amara valde.
Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Deliver me, O Lord, from death eternal on that fearful day,
when the heavens and the earth shall be moved,
when thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.
I am made to tremble, and I fear, till the judgment be upon us, and the coming wrath,
when the heavens and the earth shall be moved.
That day, day of wrath, calamity, and misery, day of great and exceeding bitterness,
when thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord: and let light perpetual shine upon them