The Piano works of Fauré cover the major part of his creative life, from 1881 to 1921. These forty years witnessed major changes in general history as weIl as in the language of music. When Fauré wrote his first Piano pieces, Wagner and Liszt were still alive and Brahms was at the height of his powers, while in France Saint-Saëns and Lalo dominated the field of instrumental music, the major works of César Franck being still unwritten. At the time of the 13th Nocturne, Fauré's ultimate pianistic masterpiece, the greatest revolution in musical history, embodied by Schoenberg and Stravinsky, had already taken place, and the young group "Les Six" had made their first impact. The post-1918 era was a spirimal and artistic whole worlds apart from the period of Fauré's youth. Moreover the intervening decades witnessed the birth of the complete keyboard output of both Debussy ( who died in 1918) and Ravel. The latter. Fauré's foremost pupil and his junior by thirty years , wrote no more works for solo piano after his Tombeau de Couperin of 1917 though both his Concertos appeared as late as 1931, even year after Fauré's death.
Fauré's Piano works, just like the rest of his output, do indeed show a striking evolution from the brilliancy and elegance of the first Nocturnes and Impromptus to the sublime and rarefied atmosphere of introspection of his ascetic late style. But this evolution seems to be an exclusively personal one, and it would be hard to think of any composer. French or foreign as unaffected by contemporary trend. Fauré's wholly individual harmony, his bold and novel use of modulation, his deceptive ease in reaching the remotest key, were the result of a gradual process which, having its roots in the romantic idiom of a Chopin or Schumann, quickly transcended the nineteenth century, without ever becoming an actually integrated part of the twentieth. Fauré's detractors, who remain numerous both in France and abroad, are quick to stress the anachronism of his music. But in fact, he kept apart from his times, and his late style is definitely an isolated phenomenon in musical history, which never blossomed forth but in the work of minor epigons and which, being inimitable, could only remain a blind alley. The most striking quality of Fauré's musical personality is his timelessness. His friend Saint-Saens hit the right point when he said : "Fauré has no age and never shall have any." Like many another major figure in music or art, his evolution tended towards the universal. Thus, his late masterworks, while being far from retrospective, hardly show any links with their time, whereas his early production was far more integrated into the general picture of the declining nineteenth century.
In sheer quantity, Fauré's piano music stands second to no other French composer's, while approximately equalling Debussy's. In Fauré's own output, its volume matches that of the Songs fairly closely, though the latter are spread over his creative life more regularly, and from its very beginning.
Like Debussy, but unlike Schumann, Fauré seems to have found his own personality in the realm of vocal chamber music, and his first ten Opus numbers are wholly devoted to Melodies; a striking parallel to Schumann 's exclusively pianistic Opus 1 to 23. Various choral pieces, an attempt at a Violin Concerto (unfinished and withdrawn) and the first two masterpieces of chamber music (the A major Violin Sonata and the C minor Piano Quartet) were to follow before the first work for solo piano, the Ballade opus 19, finally appeared in 1881, when the composer was thirty-six. When the strange reluctance was finally overcome, the newly-gained assurance released an unprecedented spell of pianistic creativity. 1883 was to be the annus mirabilis in Fauré's keyboard production, with seven published works.
Not counting the orchestral version of the Ballade and the late Fantaisie for Piano and orchestra opus 111 (1919), but including the four hands Suite Dolly, Fauré's Piano works add up to sixty-five pieces. Most of these are small-scale, and only twice, in the Ballade and the Theme and Variations, did he attempt a larger form. Most of the genres he cultivated are to be found in the work of Chopin : Nocturnes, Barcarolles, Impromptus, Waltzes, Preludes, and even an isolated Mazurka. But, unlike Debussy, he was never sufficiently involved with the problems of instrumental technique to attempt a set of Etudes. As to the absence of any Sonata in the output of a composer who so richly endowed the larger forms of chamber music, it only reftects the general decline of the Piano Sonata in the post-romantic age.
Like most great composers who did not die too young, Fauré underwent three succeeding phases of aesthetic and stylistic development. These are most strikingly reflected in his pianistic output, which clearly breaks down into three groups. The first period includes the pieces written up to 1886: the Nocturnes 1 to 5, the Barcarolles 1 to 4, the Impromptus 1 to 3, the Valses-Caprices 1 and 2. the Ballade, the Mazurka and the three Romances sans Paroles. In this early group are to be found most of his bestknown and most frequently played compositions. Pianists generally favour these early pieces because of their brilliancy and immediate appeal, just as singers mainly perform the early Melodies. Thus, the concert-going public gets but a partial and limited idea of Fauré's personality, restricted to works of slighter importance. The comparative obscurity of which his major achievements remain the victims largely account for most misunderstandings and wrong judgements about his real importance.
The second period of growing maturity, starts in 1892, after a gap of six years as far as the piano works were concerned, and extends until 1904. It includes the Nocturnes 6 to 8, the Barcarolles 5 and 6, the Valses-Caprices 3 and 4, the eight Pieces breves, the Theme and Variations and the four-handed Dolly. Two undisputed masterpieces, the Sixth Nocturne and the Theme and Variations, have achieved some celebrity, and they are the only Piano pieces fully worthy of Fauré's genius that are widely performed.
The third period, the least-known of the three, covers a period of some sixteen years, from 1905 to 1921. No definite break, no actual gap separtes if from the foregoing one, but it can arguably he said to begin with the Seventh Barcarolle written at the same time as the First Quintet (Op. 89), which is definitely a milestone in Fauré's evolution. This last period includes an uninterrupted succession of lofty masterpieces: Nocturnes 9 to 13, Barcarolles 7 to 13, Impromptus 4 to 6 and the set of nine Preludes. They stand as the worth neighbours of the late cycles of Melodies, of the major chamber works, and of the noble Penelope, Fauré's single and still sadly underrated opera.
Fauré has sometimes been called "the French Schumann", for he concentrated similarlly upon the intimate form of piano, vocal and chamber music, However no comparison could be more mistaken. But for some very fleeting echos in the earty chamber music works, no stylistic influence of Schumann is to be found in Fauré's output. Fauré's gentle and well-balanced nature, his fastidious sense of equipoise and refinement. his almost Bach-like faculty of sustained musical thought and of tonal and rhythmical continuity are worlds apart from Schumann's impulsive and feverish temper from his passionate and shart-lived outbursts. from his brutal contrasts and permanent restlessness. Fauré stands much closer to his near contemporary Brahms, whose position in German music is somewhat similar. Both were introverted artists who eschew any form of brahmesness, who fear the obvious, but who also refuse to shock their audience, and thus conceal their numerous stylistic innovations. an attitude which has led to the misplaced opinion that they are retrospective conservative minds. Schoenberg has long. ince provided a resounding essay on "Brahms the Progressive", but the correponding study on Fauré still remains unwritten.
Turning to the particular field of Fauré's Piano music, the name of Chopin springs to the mind more readily than any other. The title of his works are not the only reason. though in one genre at least, the Nocturne, which provides Fauré's major series of Piano pieces, he stands as the most important and direct of Chopin's successors. Fauré's instrumental writing proceeds from Chopin's above all in his early works, though not more strikingly so than Debussy's. But his mature masterworks for the keyboard retain little of Chopin's pianistic fluency and luxuriance, and in most of the Preludes or the late Nocturnes the part-writing becomes as strict and austere as Bach's.
Fauré also recalls Chopin in his choice of keys, and for obvious instrumental reasons, he similarly favours the "black" keys, especially with many flats. D-flat major appears no less than eight times, A-flat major seven times, E-flat six. on the other hand, the most frequent minor keys are those with sharps: E minor (five times), C sharp minor and A minor (four each). The loftiest masterpieces from Fauré's last years are mostly written in these minor keys, whereas the popular pieces of more direct appeal from his early period favour the keys with many flats.
Before examining the various works in some detail, here is a brief chronological survey:
First Period
1880: Ballade op. 19 ; 3 Romances sans Paroles op. 17.
1881 : Impromptu n° 1 op. -75 ., Barcarolle n° 1. op. 26.
1883 : Impromptu n° 2 op. 31 ; n° 3, op.34 ; Valse-Caprice n° 1. op. 30 ;
Nocturnes nOS 1-3, op. 33 ;Mazurka op.32.
1884 : Valse-Caprice n° 2, op. 38.
1885 : Nocturnes n° 4, op. 36: n° 5, op. 37.
1886 : Barcarolles n° 2, op. 41 ; n° 3, op.42.
1887 : Barcarolles n° 4 op. 44.
Second Period
1893 : Valse-Caprice n° 3 op. 59.
1894/1906 : Dolly op. 56.
1894 : Valse-Caprice no 4 op. 62 ; Nocturne no 6 op. 63 ; Barcarolle n° 5 op. 66.
1896 : Barcarolle n° 6 op. 70.
1897 : Thème et Variations op. 73.
1899 : Nocturne N° 7 op. 74.
1903 : 8 Pièces brèves op. 84 (la huitième est le Nocturne N° 8 ; certaines pièces sont de composition antérieure).
Third Period
1905 : Barcarolle n° 7 op. 90.
1906: Impromptu n° 4 op. 9l.
1908 : Barcarolle n° 8 op. 96 ; Nocturne no 9 op. 97.
1909 : Nocturne n° 10 op. 99 ; Barcarolle n° 9 op. 101 ; Impromptu n° 5 op. 102.
1909-11 : 9 Préludes op. 103.
1913 : Impromptu n° 6 op. 86 bis (version originale pour Harpe op. 86 composéeen 1904) ;
Nocturne n° Il op. 104 n° 1 ; Barcarolle n° 10 op. 104 n° 2.
1914-16: Barcarolles nOS 11 et 12 op. 105 ;Nocturne n° 12 op. 107.
1921-22 : Barcarolle n° 13 op. 116 ; Nocturne n° 13 op. 119.
Harry HALBREICH
Marinkyo's School > Gabriel Fauré > Harry Halbreich > Gabriel Fauré / The Piano Works
