Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist, and pedagogue whose refined, subtle harmonic language bridged the late Romanticism of Saint-Saëns and the modernism of Maurice Ravel (his prize student). Serving as organist and choirmaster at the Madeleine in Paris, Fauré was later appointed director of the Paris Conservatoire, where he modernized French music education.

Fauré was a supreme master of the French mélodie (art song) and intimate chamber music. His serene and consoling Requiem in D minor (1888), which rejects apocalyptic terrors to envision death as a peaceful deliverance, remains one of the most sublime and beloved choral works in Western music.