Gabriel Fauré’s mélodies offer an inexhaustible variety of style and expression that have made them the foundation of the French art song repertoire. During the second half of his long career, Fauré composed all but a handful of his songs within six carefully integrated cycles. Fauré moved systematically through his poetic contemporaries, exhausting Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal before immersing himself in the Parnassian poets. He would set nine poems by Armand Silvestre in swift succession (1878-84), seventeen by Paul Verlaine (1887-94), and eighteen by Charles Van Lerberghe (1906-14). As an artist deeply engaged with some of the most important cultural issues of the period, Fauré reimagined his musical idiom with each new poet and school, and his song cycles show the same sensitivity to the poetic material. Far more than Debussy, Ravel, or Poulenc, he crafted his song cycles as integrated works, reordering poems freely and using narratives, key schemes, and even leitmotifs to unify the individual songs. The Fauré Song Cycles explores the peculiar vision behind each synthesis of music and verse, revealing the astonishing imagination and insight of Fauré’s musical readings. This book offers not only close readings of Fauré’s musical works but an interdisciplinary study of how he responded to the changing schools and aesthetic currents of French poetry.

Gabriel Fauré’s mélodies offer an inexhaustible variety of style and expression that have made them the foundation of the French art song repertoire. During the second half of his long career, Fauré composed all but a handful of his songs within six carefully integrated cycles. Fauré moved systematically through his poetic contemporaries, exhausting Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal before immersing himself in the Parnassian poets. He would set nine poems by Armand Silvestre in swift succession (1878-84), seventeen by Paul Verlaine (1887-94), and eighteen by Charles Van Lerberghe (1906-14). As an artist deeply engaged with some of the most important cultural issues of the period, Fauré reimagined his musical idiom with each new poet and school, and his song cycles show the same sensitivity to the poetic material. Far more than Debussy, Ravel, or Poulenc, he crafted his song cycles as integrated works, reordering poems freely and using narratives, key schemes, and even leitmotifs to unify the individual songs. The Fauré Song Cycles explores the peculiar vision behind each synthesis of music and verse, revealing the astonishing imagination and insight of Fauré’s musical readings. This book offers not only close readings of Fauré’s musical works but an interdisciplinary study of how he responded to the changing schools and aesthetic currents of French poetry.

Investigates how other types of music have influenced the scope of the song cycle, from operas and symphonies to popular song --

This book traces Fauré's life and the rich cultural milieu in which he lived and worked.

Regarding Fauré , the result of a 1995 conference on Fauré's important contribution to classical music, was written by Tom Gordon, artistic director the Ensemble Musica Nova and a professor in the Department of music at Bishop's University in Quebec. Also included are contributions from some of the world's most renowned Fauré scholars including Jean-Michel Nectous, Robert Orledge, Edward Phillips, and Steven Huebner. With a lifetime that spanned the developments of Chopin, Debussy, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, the great French composer Gabriel-Urbain Fauré (1845-1924) lived during one of the most interesting periods in music history, yet steered a course uniquely his own. Exploring the composer's role as an educator, critic, composer, and advocate for French music, Regarding Fauré is critical, analytical, and interdisciplinary in its approach to understanding Fauré's prodigious works and life. Also includes musical examples. His numerous compositions include more than 100 songs (known as 'melodie', or French a

Presents new research on Fauré by leading scholars, encompassing hermeneutics, musical analysis, aesthetic theory, critical theory, and social history.