Fauré's Requiem

Two visions of the sacred repertoire in France at the end of the 19^th century

"My requiem was composed for nothing....for pleasure, if I may say so...", it is in these terms that Gabriel Fauré referred to his Requiem, probably one of his best known and most played scores today. The idea of pleasure may seem incongruous in the context of a mass for the dead, but the musician saw it as a deliverance, almost a moment of happiness, at least spiritual. And this is perhaps the secret of his success even today, in this warm and luxuriant sound material that leads to the elevation of the spirit. Throughout his career, Gounod composed nearly twenty sacred pages, mostly in the form of a mass or oratorio. The so-called Messe de Clovis is almost contemporary with Fauré's Requiem, but in a completely different spirit. Here the musician returns to the neo-renaissance writing already present in older pieces. A "historicizing" style certainly but that Gounod practices with mastery.