Every time I could get away I ran there – and I regaled myself. . But the only thing I remember really clearly is the harmonium in that little chapel. I grew up, a rather quiet well-behaved child, in an area of great beauty. . There was a chapel attached to the school, which Fauré recalled in the last year of his life:

When his father was appointed director of the École Normale d'Instituteurs, a teacher training college, at Montgauzy, near Foix, in 1849, Fauré returned to live with his family. The young Fauré was sent to live with a foster mother until he was four years old. He was the only one of the six children to display musical talent his four brothers pursued careers in journalism, politics, the army and the civil service, and his sister had a traditional life as the wife of a public servant. His mother was the daughter of a minor member of the nobility. The composer's paternal grandfather, Gabriel, was a butcher whose son became a schoolmaster. The family had at one time been substantial landowners, but by the 19th century its means had become reduced. According to the biographer Jean-Michel Nectoux, the Fauré family dates to the 13th century in that part of France. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.įauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, in the south of France, the fifth son and youngest of six children of Toussaint-Honoré Fauré (1810–85) and Marie-Antoinette-Hélène Lalène-Laprade (1809–87). During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France, notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.įauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. By his last years, he was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition.

After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. At the age of nine, he was sent to the École Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. His talent became clear when he was a young boy. Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.įauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs 'Après un rêve' and 'Clair de lune'. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Gabriel Urbain Fauré ( French: – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. For the writer, see Gabriel Faure (writer). For other people with that surname, see Fauré (surname). 'Fauré' and 'Gabriel Faure' redirect here.

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