Monday 30.3.2015

Fauré Requiem

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was choirmaster at La Madeleine in Paris. His Requiem of 1888, which has been described as a ‘lullaby of death’, is in stark contrast to Verdi’s operatic version of the previous decade. Here there is no dwelling on the terrors of the Day of Judgment. Rather, this is music of consolation, praying for ‘Rest eternal’ for the departed, while in the concluding In Paradisum the soul of the departed glides into eternity with choirs of angels singing the soul to its rest in ‘light perpetual’.