"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, rather than as a painful experience. The music of Gounod has been criticized for its over-inclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist’s nature? As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Interviewed by Louis Aguettant on July 12, 1902; excerpt published in Comoedia (March 3, 1954); English translation published in Gabriel Fauré (1979) by Robert Orledge; reproduced in "A Hundred Voices Singing Requiem" by Barbara Snyder, at NJ.com (October 9, 2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gabriel_Faur%C3%A9
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Gabriel Fauré
43 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Gabriel Fauré →
Related Quotes
"It was not just in the Andante of the Second Quartet that I remembered having translated (almost involuntarily) the d…"
"Gabriel Fauré, repeating a thought he had often expressed to me, wrote in a letter on the 2nd August 1910: "In piano …"
"But Lortat, I'm not in the habit of attracting crowds."
"As to the piece I have started, it will only be the fiftieth or more of my piano pieces that, with rare exceptions, p…"
"As for my work, I can say that it reaches its end. [...] I do not want my Quartet to be published and played before i…"
"When I am no more, you will hear said of my work: "After all, it is only so much..." You will detach yourself from it…"
"To know an art really well, one must know everything about it, both its origins and its development."
"How many times have I asked myself what use music is? And what am I translating? What feelings? What ideas? How can I…"
"He denied the presence of inspiration: "Without work, which is art, there is nothing," he said. "Say only that which …"
"Now, there are some periods of music, some pitches of which I can hear nothing... of my music as well as of others. I…"