40 Fun Facts About Gabriel Fauré

Despite its feline title, the Kitty-valse in Gabriel Fauré's Dolly Suite portrays which family pet?

A dog called Ketty belonged to the Bardac family, and Fauré's manuscript titles the piece Ketty-Valse. His publisher changed the spelling to Kitty.

Emma Bardac, the soprano who inspired Gabriel Fauré's La bonne chanson, later married which other French composer?

Claude Debussy married her in 1908, after a scandal in which both of them left their spouses. He wrote his Children's Corner suite for their daughter, nicknamed Chouchou.

After which figure from French history did angry professors nickname Gabriel Fauré during his Conservatoire reforms?

Robespierre was the old guard's name for him after he brought in outside judges for exams, ending the edge professors gave their own private pupils. Many of them resigned.

Why was the young Gabriel Fauré asked to resign his church post in Rennes one Sunday in 1870?

He played Mass in evening dress, having come straight from an all-night ball. The parish priest already doubted his piety: Fauré was often seen slipping out during the sermon for a cigarette.

Which piano virtuoso said he had run out of fingers when he first tried Gabriel Fauré's music?

Franz Liszt made the remark to Fauré at his first attempt at the music. Its rippling figures share the melody between both hands, which still makes it daunting for pianists.

According to Gabriel Fauré himself, for what reason did he compose his celebrated Requiem?

For pleasure was his own answer, though both his parents died around the time he wrote it. After years of accompanying burial services, he said, he wanted to write something different.

Which woodwind instrument plays the haunting opening melody of Gabriel Fauré's Pavane?

The flute theme, once heard, is not easily forgotten, as one Fauré scholar put it. The composer himself thought the piece elegant but not particularly important.

For which instrument, his bread and butter for four decades, did Gabriel Fauré leave no solo works?

Organ playing gave him a regular income at Paris churches, but he preferred the piano. He was renowned for his improvisations, yet never wrote a solo piece for the instrument.

Actress Mrs Patrick Campbell commissioned Gabriel Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande music for an 1898 staging in which city?

London saw the play's first production in English, with Fauré conducting the theatre orchestra himself. He had barely six weeks to write the score, so he reused some older pieces.

Souvenirs de Bayreuth, a piano-duet romp by Gabriel Fauré and André Messager, pokes fun at which composer's operas?

Richard Wagner's Ring cycle supplies the themes, sped up for four hands. The two friends travelled to Cologne, Munich and Bayreuth to hear his operas, then played their spoof at parties.

Which French composer taught the teenage Gabriel Fauré piano and remained his close friend for sixty years?

Camille Saint-Saëns let lessons overrun to play the boys modern music that their strict school ignored. Fauré spoke of an almost filial attachment to him for the rest of his life.

Which pupil of Gabriel Fauré was knocked out of the 1905 Prix de Rome, sparking a national scandal?

Maurice Ravel, by then thirty, was eliminated in the first round, which even hostile critics called unjustifiable. The furore made the Conservatoire's director retire early, and Fauré replaced him.

What condition forced Gabriel Fauré to retire from the Paris Conservatoire in 1920 at the age of 75?

Deafness had been creeping up on him for years, and it distorted pitch too: high and low notes sounded painfully out of tune. He went on composing all the same.

Gabriel Fauré's sombre Élégie, later played with orchestra by Pablo Casals, was written for piano and which instrument?

Cello and piano was the original scoring: the piece began as the slow movement of a sonata Fauré never finished. It was such a success that a conductor asked for an orchestral version.

Après un rêve, one of Gabriel Fauré's most popular songs, has a title meaning what in English?

After a dream is the meaning: the singer wakes from a blissful flight with a lover and longs for the night to return. The French words adapt an anonymous Italian poem.

Gabriel Fauré's opera Pénélope retells the hero's homecoming from which ancient epic poem?

The Odyssey supplied the story of Ulysses returning to his faithful wife in Ithaca. Fauré could only compose during summer holidays, so he had the libretto cut from five acts to three.

Gabriel Fauré's Shylock suite began as music for a French stage adaptation of which Shakespeare play?

The Merchant of Venice was reworked by the poet Edmond Haraucourt for the Odéon theatre in Paris. Its songs have words Shakespeare never wrote, including a serenade for Venetian revellers.

Gabriel Fauré volunteered as a soldier and fought to raise the siege of Paris during which war?

The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, and he saw action at Le Bourget, Champigny and Créteil. When the violence of the Commune followed, he escaped Paris and taught in Switzerland.

The American-born heiress who rescued Gabriel Fauré from a deep depression in 1891 owed her fortune to which invention?

Sewing machines made the fortune of Winnaretta Singer, daughter of the manufacturer Isaac Singer. She invited Fauré to her palazzo on the Grand Canal, where he began composing again.

The Berceuse from Gabriel Fauré's Dolly Suite closed every edition of which BBC radio programme for small children?

Listen with Mother signed off with the lullaby from 1950 to 1982, which made the tune famous in Britain. One presenter recalled dashing to the studio piano to play it live.

Which fiery section, a highlight of Verdi's Requiem, did Gabriel Fauré leave out of his own gentle setting?

Dies irae, the terrifying vision of judgment day, is missing: he kept only its closing prayer. Fauré said he saw death as a happy deliverance, not a painful experience.

Gabriel Fauré's Requiem ends with which serene movement, whose text comes from the burial service, not the funeral Mass?

In Paradisum pictures angels leading the soul to paradise over shimmering broken chords. It helps explain why the whole work has been called a lullaby of death.

At the Madeleine premiere of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem in 1888, who sang the Pie Jesu solo?

A boy treble, Louis Aubert, sang it because the church allowed no female singers. In concert halls Fauré preferred women for the solo, which demands excellent breath control.

Which poet's verses did Gabriel Fauré set in Clair de lune and the song cycle La bonne chanson?

Paul Verlaine was also meant to write Fauré an opera libretto, but the poet's drinking meant it never arrived. The let-down plunged the composer into depression.

The choral Cantique that won nineteen-year-old Gabriel Fauré a school prize sets words by which French playwright?

Jean Racine wrote the text as a French paraphrase of a Latin hymn for matins. Fauré's setting took first prize at his school in 1865 and is now often paired with his Requiem.

Reynaldo Hahn joked that the overture to Fauré's Masques et bergamasques sounded like which composer imitating Fauré?

Mozart imitating Fauré was the quip, and Fauré found the idea amusing. The overture was not new at all: he had rescued it from a symphony he abandoned fifty years earlier.

George Balanchine set which gemstone-named section of his ballet Jewels to music by Gabriel Fauré?

Emeralds opens the ballet to extracts from Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande and Shylock, danced in calf-length romantic tulle. The other two sections turn to Russian composers.

At which royal residence was Gabriel Fauré invited to play in 1908, opening many doors for him in Britain?

Buckingham Palace welcomed him in 1908. Britain was the one country outside France where his music won many admirers in his lifetime; elsewhere it took decades to catch on.

Which English composer dined with Gabriel Fauré in 1908 and praised him as the highest kind of Frenchman?

Edward Elgar dined with him when Fauré was in London for the first London performance of Elgar's First Symphony. He later tried to get Fauré's Requiem sung at the Three Choirs Festival, but England did not hear it until the 1930s.

American composer Aaron Copland, a devoted admirer, called Gabriel Fauré the French counterpart of which German master?

Johannes Brahms was the comparison: Copland called him the Brahms of France. Fauré's subtle, flowing rhythms use discreet syncopations much like those in the German's music.

Which genre did Gabriel Fauré avoid for decades as too difficult, finishing his only example weeks before his death?

String quartet writing terrified him, he told his wife, because Beethoven had made the genre famous. He finished the piece in September 1924, and it was first performed after he died.

Which future teacher of Philip Glass and Quincy Jones studied composition with Gabriel Fauré in Paris?

Nadia Boulanger later gave up composing, telling Fauré she had written useless music, though he thought her mistaken. Her own pupils ranged from Aaron Copland to Astor Piazzolla.

Which French novelist adored Gabriel Fauré's La bonne chanson at its private premiere in 1894?

Marcel Proust was in the audience and wrote that he adored it. The public was cooler a year later, and Fauré's old teacher declared that he had gone mad.

Where in Paris did France's president lead a grand national tribute to the elderly Gabriel Fauré in 1922?

The Sorbonne hosted the concert, led by President Alexandre Millerand with France's most illustrious artists taking part. No French musician had been given a national tribute like it.

Which composer of a famous Toccata tried to catch Gabriel Fauré out with key changes at Saint-Sulpice?

Charles-Marie Widor was his boss at the church, and the pair sprang sudden key changes on each other mid-service. Years later Fauré narrowly beat him in a vote for a seat at the Institut de France.

Gabriel Fauré's Prométhée was premiered in 1900 by almost 800 performers in what kind of venue in Béziers?

An open-air arena, the Arènes de Béziers, held an audience of 10,000 for the premiere. The forces were vast too, including two wind bands and fifteen harps.

Gabriel Fauré's 1877 engagement, broken off within months, was to the daughter of which celebrated opera star?

Pauline Viardot ran a musical salon that Fauré attended, and her daughter Marianne ended the engagement after about four months. He was so crushed that a friend took him abroad to recover.

Gabriel Fauré and André Messager wrote a short Mass together in 1881 in aid of which workers in Villerville?

Fishermen had their own charitable association in Villerville, and the first performance raised money for it. Fauré later cut his friend's movements and published the rest as his Messe basse.

Which Conservatoire head threatened to resign in 1892 rather than see Gabriel Fauré appointed professor of composition?

Ambroise Thomas thought Fauré dangerously modern and blocked him outright. Four years later Thomas died, and Fauré was given a composition class after all.

Which pupil orchestrated Gabriel Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande theatre score when the composer was short of time?

Charles Koechlin travelled with him to the premiere and scored the music for the small theatre band. Fauré, never keen on orchestration, reworked it himself for the concert suite.