Description
Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. The choral-orchestral setting of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead is the best known of his large works. Fauré's reasons for composing the work are unclear, but do not appear to have had anything to do with the death of his parents in the mid-1880s. He composed the work in the late 1880s and revised it in the 1890s, finalizing it in 1900. A short requiem lasting 35 minutes, it is written for orchestra, organ, mixed chorus and two soloists, soprano and baritone, and performed in Latin. It consists of seven movements; most famous is the central soprano aria Pie Jesu. The piece premiered in its first version in 1888 in La Madeleine, Paris. In 1924 the Requiem, in its full orchestral version, was performed at Fauré's own funeral. It was not performed in the United States until 1931, at a student concert at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. It was first performed in England in 1936.