FRIDAY MUSIC: Fauré's Requiem

 Well it has been a strange couple of weeks and the funeral and interment were spectacular, if a little 'over the top': I thought Monday's procession/parade was too long and the Queen's coffin got lost from view in that multitude of service personnel. Camera angles may have had a lot to do with that, I don't know.

So to round off this part of history here is Faure's Requiem in full. It is by far the best in my opinion because it has a positive 'feel' to it. I see it as a musical affirmation of transcendence rather than an ending of a life.

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Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924) composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. His reasons for composing the work are unclear, but do not appear to have had anything to do with the death of his parents in the mid-1880s. He composed the work in the late 1880s and revised it in the 1890s, finishing it in 1900.

Fauré wrote of the work, "Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."

The piece premiered in its first version in 1888 in La Madeleine in Paris for a funeral Mass.

Faure Requiem Op.48

Gabriel Fauré (Composer), Robert Shaw (Conductor), Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus (Orchestra), Judith Blegen (Soprano), James Morris (Baritone)

1. Introït et Kyrie (D minor) 0:00

2. Offertoire (B minor) 6:24

3. Sanctus (E-flat major) 14:36

4. Pie Jesu (B-flat major) 18:07

5. Agnus Dei et Lux Aeterna (F major) 21:48

6. Libera Me (D minor) 27:55

7. In Paradisum (D major) 32:16