Fauré's Requiem

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

"Mon requiem a été composée pour rien....pour le plaisir, si je puis dire..." (My requiem was composed for nothing....for pleasure, if I may say so...) is how Gabriel Fauré described his Requiem, probably one of his best-known and most frequently performed 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 release, almost a moment of happiness, at least spiritual. And this is perhaps the secret of his success to this day, in the warm, lush sound that lifts the spirit.

Throughout his career, Gounod composed nearly twenty sacred works, most of them in the form of a mass or oratorio. The so-called Mass of Clovis is almost contemporary with Fauré's Requiem, but in a completely different spirit. Here the musician returns to the neo-Renaissance style already present in earlier pieces. An 'historicising' style, to be sure, but one that Gounod mastered.

The recording of the program was released by Alpha Classics on August 23, 2024 under the reference "Fauré Requiem" Alpha 1014.

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