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Fauré Requiem
May 15 & 16, 2008
Click on the  to hear the musical examples.
Felix Mendelssohn
1809-1847 |
The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) Overture, Op.26
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
We are all familiar with the romantic notion – and the reality – of the struggling composer fighting for his daily bread and artistic survival. Probably the greatest exception to this picture was Felix Mendelssohn, an economically secure composer from a culturally sophisticated and highly supportive family.
One of the results of his family’s wealth and support was his ability to travel extensively in what was then considered the "civilized" world, Western Europe and Italy. Some of Mendelssohn's most successful orchestral compositions represent musical travelogues of such trips: the Scottish and Italian symphonies, and The Hebrides Overture.
Fingal’s cave is the most spectacular of a series of caves at sea level in the basalt rocks of Staffa Island, one of the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. Mendelssohn visited the cave in August 1829 as part of an extended conducting and vacation tour. The murmuring sound of the waves in the cave immediately gave him a musical idea that became the opening bars of the overture.
Mendelssohn finished the Overture in Rome in December 1830. He was, however, dissatisfied with the development section, which underwent extensive revisions. It was premiered in London in May, 1832. The opening theme as well as the broad second theme are calm and rhapsodic, illustrating the gentle swells of the sea,  but the middle section displays the hint of a storm. The Overture ends with a gentle fading of the opening theme.
Franz Joseph Haydn
1732-1809 |
Symphony No. 44 in e minor “Trauer-Symphonie”
Franz Joseph Haydn
Often compared unfavorably to his contemporary Mozart, Haydn had one of the most innovative and creative musical minds of his time. It is to Haydn that we owe the development of the string quartet into a mature and enduring form. And we can also credit him with expanding the emotional range and harmonic vocabulary of the classical symphony.
During the mid 1760s through the 70s, Haydn’s music underwent a profound transformation. His symphonies ceased to be mere light entertainment, becoming increasingly intense and dramatic. This change coincided with the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) literary movement in Germany but may also have been a result of factors in his personal life that are not known to us.
Haydn often remarked on his indebtedness to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose highly emotional and often somewhat quirky style was considered at the time the quintessence of musical expressiveness. During this period, Haydn composed the first symphony in a minor key (No. 26 in f minor) and went on to explore the darker, more intense and expressive possibilities of the minor mode. While his musical style does not hark back to that of C. P. E. Bach, certainly its emotional intensity recalls the older composer’s belief that music should contain a spiritual message and express it with force.
Composed in 1772, the Symphony No. 44 contains no slow introduction as do so many Haydn symphonies. Rather, it bursts upon us with a stormy two-part theme, the first four notes consisting two wide leaps and a sigh that will be the primary musical idea of the movement. The second part of the theme is a nervous motive over a hammering, driving rhythm. It's difficult to pick out a true second theme from the flood of musical ideas that Haydn now unleashes, but underlying the whole complex of motives are the opening four notes of the symphony. The movement is characterized by frequent abrupt pauses and changes in dynamics and shifts between major and minor – one of Bach’s legacies.
The second movement is a minuet and trio, atypical because it retains the minor key. In addition, it is placed in the second position of the symphony, a sequence uncommon at the time. The first strain of the minuet itself is a canon, a device Haydn occasionally used in other minuet movements of this period. Still focusing on how much emotional tension he could wring out of this short movement with its rigid structure, Haydn abandons the strict canon, significantly elongating the second strain of the minuet with irregular phrasing and plangent pathos. The trio, written in the contrasting relative major, features a stunning horn solo.
Haydn himself is said to have given the title, “Trauer Symphonie” (mourning symphony), to this work because he wanted the third movement Adagio played at his funeral. But it is interesting to note that, while composers of this period tended to associate certain keys with particular emotions – especially minor keys with serious or tragic subjects – this movement is in G major! The mood is certainly more meditative than tragic; and, if the story of Haydn’s wish is true, the serenity of the third movement may reflect something of the composer’s attitude toward death. The formal structure of the movement is a conservative binary form. Listeners familiar with the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti will recognize the formal approach. It opens with a gentle march, which is immediately repeated as a variation. There follows a second theme group in the dominant D major, which concludes the first half. The second half takes up the opening theme but develops it along melancholy lines, before eventually returning to the home key via the melodies of the second theme group.
In the final presto, Haydn returns to the stormy and nervous mood of the opening movement. But the revved up tempo and absence of a contrasting mood in the second theme group makes the finale even more frantic and intense. This movement is a truncated sonata form with a true – and very stormy development, but just as you think it's going to embark on the recapitulation, it ends abruptly in a flurry of Sturm und Drang.
Gabriel Fauré
1845-1924 |
Requiem, Op.48
Gabriel Fauré
The bulk of Gabriel Fauré’s music – whether piano, chamber, vocal or orchestral – conveys the impression of a personal and private statement, an intimate conversation between the composer and his muse. Throughout his life Fauré’s ideal was, as he put it, to create musique de chambre (chamber music); the grander forms – opera, symphony or concerto – were not for him. He made a number of attempts to write a symphony, but rejected them; the same fate awaited his attempt at a violin concerto. His music is admirably suited for performance in private homes or small halls. But the elegance and ease of much of it belies the painstaking effort that went into the composition. Fauré was not one to wear his heart on his sleeve. While the structure of his works usually fits the classical mold, he often experimented and surprised audiences with unexpected phrasing, harmonies, and elegant twists of musical development. Although a secret agnostic and freethinker, he worked for many years as organist and choirmaster at the La Madeleine, one of the largest churches in Paris.
Fauré charted new ground in his Requiem. It was not written to honor a specific person but, as Fauré put it, “for the pleasure of it.” It is a peaceful, almost understated work that conveys the message of death as eternal rest rather than as a fiery retribution for sins committed in life. Fauré actually omitted the core of the Latin requiem mass, the Dies irae with its terrifying vision of eternal damnation. He saw death as “… a happy deliverance, a reaching for eternal happiness, rather than a mournful passing…” It is not surprising that one of the Madeleine’s clerics remarked after a performance: “Monsieur Fauré, we do not need all these novelties. The Madeleine’s repertoire is quite rich enough…”
Composed in stages between 1877 and 1890, the Requiem did not reach its final orchestration until 1900; the instrumental accompaniment exists in a number of versions, from the original chamber ensemble plus organ to full symphony orchestra. Overall, the music is serious but unthreatening, often even ethereal. Instead of focusing on the Dies irae and the ever-present terror of eternal damnation, Fauré added at the conclusion another liturgical chant, “In Paradisum,” describing the eternal peace of Heaven.
The style of the Requiem is mostly homophonic and syllabic, closely resembling the rhythm, tempo and volume of liturgical plainchant as in the opening introit, first intoned by the chorus, then repeated metrically. At other times, Fauré shifts briefly into sixteenth-century counterpoint, as in the Offertory. in the “Sanctus,” for example, the chorus doesn’t shout out the praise of God but gently sings to the accompaniment of an ostinato figure in the harp. Even the “Hosanna,” which begins forte, drifts almost lazily to a quiet conclusion. The contemporary British composer John Rutter, in his Requiem, is heir to Fauré’s concept of a musical send-off. Rutter's debt to Fauré can be heard in the "Pie Jesu."
Fauré could not, however, completely eliminate terror from his Requiem. The text of the “Libera me, Domine, de morte eterna ” (Save me, O Lord, from eternal death) makes direct reference to the Dies irae and the day of judgment; and this is, indeed, the only part of the work in which the listener experiences a sharp increase in musical tension, starting with the funereal ostinato of the timpani. To illustrate the tradition from which Fauré was working, consider the contrast between his setting of the words "Dies irae" and Verdi's, whose Requiem preceded Fauré's by a mere decade. Although it seems that the text – if not the musical tradition of Mozart and Verdi – forced Fauré's hand, his countryman, Hector Berlioz, saved his fire power for later verses in the long depressing text, with the "Tuba mirum" and "Lacrymosa." Fauré's ethereal "In Paradisum," however, is more than comforting as a response to the anxious prayer of the "Libera me."
Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008
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