Fauré's "Lullaby of Death"

[David]

Fauré, France's greatest composer in the latter half of the nineteenth century, composed his Requiem in D Minor (Op. 48) between 1887 & 1890.

During this time, both his mother & his father died. A child's grief may have found its way into the work, but Fauré also said he composed the Requiem "for fun, if I may be permitted to say so."

Around 1910, Fauré noticed his hearing growing fainter. Sounds became distorted; pitches on the low & high ends of his hearing were indistinguishable from neighboring pitches. Fauré was forced to abandon his teaching.

Fauré died of pneumonia in 1924, just shy of 80 years old.

“Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”