Requiem in D Minor, Op. 48

Requiem in D Minor, Op. 48, composition by Gabriel Fauré. Begun in 1877 and largely composed in the late 1880s, the work was not completed until 1900. Unusually gentle for a requiem mass, the work is often reminiscent of the composer’s best-known work, the restful and graceful Pavane of 1887. Fauré himself described his Requiem as “a lullaby of death,” in part inspired by the death of his parents in the 1880s.

Resident in Paris from the age of nine, and occasional organist at some of the city’s most prestigious churches, including St. Sulpice and the Madeleine, Fauré composed a large number of sacred works for chorus and orchestra. Grandest of these is his Requiem. Postdating his countryman Berlioz’s by more than sixty years, it is, nonetheless, a more conservative work with none of the high drama that Berlioz had provided. Even Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor from 1791 has a larger quantity of fire and brimstone than Fauré’s, as the latter’s is almost entirely gentle in spirit. To achieve that mood, the Frenchman altered the text as he saw fit, omitting most of the usual Dies irae and including In Paradisum as a closing movement. The first performance of the piece, with five movements completed, was held at a funeral at the Madeleine in 1888. Its seven-movement version debuted in 1893, and Fauré revised the orchestration and prepared it for publication between 1898 and 1900. The various manuscripts are housed at the Bibliothèque National in Paris.

Scored for pairs of woodwinds and brass, timpani, organ, strings, and harp, Fauré’s Requiem also has soprano and baritone soloists with a full chorus. Its opening Introit et Kyrie is at first mysterious of mood, though with occasional startling changes of dynamics. No startling moments are to be found in the subsequent Offertoire, a movement of rapturous beauty. Opening pages of the movement have the chorus in thoroughly peaceful mood, and even when the baritone solo joins for the Hostia portion, gentle reverence continues to be the focus.

The third movement Sanctus continues in this calm demeanor until the chorus reaches the phrase Hosanna in excelsis, for which, suitably, Fauré has chosen to use rich brass textures. The fourth movement Pie Jesu, dealing with a prayer to Christ for rest, is a suitably restful as one might wish, with solo soprano in mid-range accompanied mostly by organ. Strings and woodwinds have their place in transitions between verses, but stay quite out of the way of the singer.

Next comes the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God), treating the chorus in sweet fashion with occasional richer passages, but none in assertive vein. In the following Libera me, it is the baritone soloist who pleads for deliverance and the chorus quaking in fear; here one finds the boldest music in the entire work, in the Libera me, with strong brass statements and anxious vocal phrases. The movement closes with a restatement of the opening plea.

For the finale of his Requiem, Fauré opted for a most peaceable vision of paradise, with sopranos of the chorus—and, in place, the soprano soloist alone—set at first against a high, repeating, three-note pattern from the organ. Only later, on the word “Jerusalem,” do the male singers join in, and the closing lines of the movement bring Fauré’s Requiem to the most serene of conclusions. The composer himself once observed in a letter to a friend that he viewed death “as a happy deliverance, an aspiration to happiness above rather than as a painful experience.” The music he created is the very embodiment of that philosophy.