 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|||||
|
 |
 |
Biography of Gabriel Urbain FauréName: Gabriel Urbain FauréBirth Date: May 12, 1845 Death Date: November 4, 1924 Place of Birth: Pamiers, France Nationality: French Gender: Male Occupations: composer Gabriel Urbain Fauré The French composer Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845-1924) is best known for his songs and his typically French exquisiteness of taste.Gabriel Fauré was born on May 12, 1845, in the provincial town of Pamiers, where his father was superintendent of schools. When Gabriel was 9, he was sent to Paris to attend the École Niedermeyer, a school for the education of church musicians, where he had won a scholarship. Fauré received a thorough grounding in organ playing and theory and became acquainted with Gregorian chant, whose modal melodies influenced his later compositions. Camille Saint-Saëns, a teacher at the school, exerted a strong influence on the young provincial.When Fauré graduated in 1865, he accepted a position as organist in Rennes, but within a year he returned to Paris. He served as assistant organist at St-Sulpice and later at the Madeleine, Paris's most fashionable church, eventually becoming principal organist. …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…Chanson d'Eve (1910) and Le Jardin clos (1917); an austere opera, Penelope (1913); Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano (1917); Piano Quintet No. 2 (1921); and a Piano Trio (1924). These compositions, the works of a man in his 70s, are remarkable for their original harmonic progressions, serenity, and clarity. Fauré died in Paris on Nov. 4, 1924. Further Reading Norman Suckling, Fauré (1946; rev. ed. 1951), is the best study of the composer's life and works. Martin Cooper, French Music from the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré (1951), discusses distinguishing stylistic characteristics of major French composers of that period. See also Rey M. Longyear, Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music (1969).Fauré, Gabriel, Gabriel Fauré: a life in letters, London: Batsford, 1989.Gabriel Faurâe, 1845-1924, New York: AMS Press, 1976.Orledge, Robert, Gabriel Fauré, London: Eulenburg Books, 1979.Suckling, Norman, Fauré, Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979.Vuillermoz, Émile, Gabriel Fauré, New York: Da Capo Press, 1983. |