"The sounds of the divine Requiem ring out in my memory. They accompanied Gabriel Fauré on the day of the final farewells at the Madeleine in November 1924. I cannot hear them without our past surging up. It has been said of the Requiem that it is not "Christian" because it lessens the horror of the Dies Irae and lights up with eternal hope in its In Paradisum. Fauré's genius was in full flight when he composed his Requiem in 1887. He was much distressed by the recent death of his father, and, overwhelmed by his first confrontation between life and death, Fauré still did not any sense of revolt. The melodies of his Requiem are without violence. He did not record terror but a gentle certainty of divine mercy. "If I were God, I would have pity on the heart of man." It is the same credo that Debussy would later put in the mouth of Arkel in Pelléas et Melisande.✱"