... God in the Arts - exploring symbols of the Christian faith

Editor:  The Revd Michael Burgess (Parish Pump, UK) continues his series looking at great works of music.

 

‘Glorious the song when God’s the theme’: Fauré’s Requiem

At the end of his life in 1924, Gabriel Fauré, the French composer, said to his sons, “When I am no longer here, you will hear it said of my works, ‘After all, that was nothing much to write home about!’ You must not let that hurt or depress you. It is the way of the world.”

His concern was ill-founded, for Fauré’s compositions, vocal, choral and instrumental, have become standard works in concert programmes, and are much loved by all who value the beauty and joy of music.

Curiously, the one work of Fauré’s that is most frequently performed, his Requiem, had a lukewarm reception at its first performance. That was in 1888 at the funeral of an important Parisian architect in the church of the Madeleine. Afterwards the priests there told Fauré that the church’s own musical repertoire did not require this new addition, and so for over 20 years the Requiem was virtually ignored.

Now it is one of the most loved and sublime settings of the Requiem. Is it because of the graceful, fleeting lines of melodies that Debussy compared to the gesture of a beautiful woman? Or is it because of the resigned, yet optimistic approach to death and eternal life that is at the heart of Fauré’s setting. He wrote, “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death, and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above…”

Written on the death of his parents, the Requiem in many ways marks the end of Fauré’s youth. It was a youth that could be said to have begun with another beautiful choral work, the Cantique de Jean Racine. This was composed in 1865 when Fauré was just 20 years old, and finishing his studies at the École Niedermeyer.

Yet however youthful, it has all the hallmarks of the great composer: a serenity and a delicacy in setting the words, and a clarity of line and beauty of proportion that makes the work sing out its prayer. It addresses Jesus the Word and asks that He will watch over us and send us His grace. If we have been forgetful, then stir our hearts again. Receive this song, it prays, which is your gift to us returned in full measure.

The Cantique points to God as the author of all beauty. The music we compose is His inspiration and gift in our lives, which we offer to the world and to Him. In the novel God’s Apology by Olivia Fane, the ten-year old girl, Joanna, talks of music as God’s gift in this way. “I have come,” she says, “because the lines of communication between our two worlds has been frayed. Music is the language of God. We can not only hear it, we can also sing it. So, sing now: sing in joy and in pain, sing to God.” As we listen to Fauré’s Requiem or Cantique, we can rejoice in that gift of music, and find it opening up God’s world of beauty and harmony for us to hear and enjoy.