Does anyone know the background information of this music?

Gabriel Fauré

1845 was born in Pamir, southwest France, and 1924 died in Paris in June.

The French composer georges auric (georges auric 1899- 1983) once said: "Faure Gabriel Faure's interpretation of' beauty' includes not only honesty, but also wisdom and passion ... The exquisiteness and preciseness in his works, the simplicity and colorfulness in his musical thoughts will show us the way forward for a long time in our anxious moments. This evaluation of Foer Gabriel is quite unique. He really left us an immortal legacy.

In French music, Faure is the bridge between19th century and 20th century. He was born in The Romantic Period, but he died in the era of jazz. He trained students with great potential at the Paris Conservatory of Music, including Maurice Ravel, georges enescu and Nadia boulanger. Welfare is conservative in appearance, but full of revolutionary spirit in heart. He will never be a composer who follows fashion and pursues music perfection. He completed only one opera, Penelope, and composed several orchestral works. Unlike many composers of his time, he resolutely resisted the strong influence of Wagner's music. He kept his calm creative path, wandering in the stream of exquisite songs and the garden of chamber music. Although his Requiem and many piano works show amazing anti-tradition, they are also widely welcomed. Critic Vladimir Jankelevitch called his beautiful melody "a sweet stream".

Because of Foley's unconventional music education background and great love for salon music, he obviously won't be favored by the Paris Conservatory of Music and the Rome Prize, so everyone was surprised when he became the dean of the Paris Conservatory of Music. When he thoroughly reformed the pedantic tradition of the academy and laid the foundation for French music education in the 20th century, he got various nicknames, such as "robespierre" and "Archangel".

Foley was born in Pamirs 1845. He is the youngest son of a village headmaster. At the age of nine, his father was persuaded to send him to Niedermeyer School, a Paris-based school that trains church musicians. He received an education there and will find a job in church music in the future. There, young Gabriel met his lifelong friend, mentor and supporter: piano teacher Camille Saint-Sang.

Saint Sans was once a famous piano prodigy. At this time, he just started teaching in Niedermeyer school. He comes from a noble family. When he was young, he also liked those unconventional composers, such as Schumann, Liszt and Wagner, which were forbidden areas for students at that time. Foley gradually showed his eternal love for Schumann (he later planned to edit Schumann's piano music), which was the beginning of his artistic career strongly influenced by Shengsang.

In fact, all the important connections between welfare and the outside world are obtained through the friendship of San Santos. The old composer helped Faure find his first job as a church organist in Rennes, a city in northwest France. 1877, he helped Faure become the choir director of Madeleine Church, a church of Paris upper class, where Saint-Sang worked as an organist. 1872 or so, he also introduced Foer to the home of the second soprano Pauline Viadotte. The fashionable young man fell hopelessly in love with the singer's daughter Marianne, so that his heart was broken. In order to help Foley come to his senses, Saint Sang took him to Weimar to watch the foreign premiere of Saint Sang's opera Samson and Dalila. In fact, this is exactly what Liszt arranged. Foley met Liszt and got useful guidance from Liszt's early ballads. Without the recommendation of Saint-Sang, Foley could not have been a choir director in a church in Paris.

Saint-Sang's love for Foley may have two meanings: on the one hand, he tends to be gay, while Foley, a handsome guy with black eyes and elegance like a kitten, is madly in love with the opposite sex, just like a musician wandering in the colorful salons of Paris society in the19th century. On the other hand, San Santos has a long "normal" life. 1878, he watched his children die since he was a child, one died of an accident and the other died of a disease. People often say that he took Foley as his son's body double.

1883, Foley married Mary Freimut, the daughter of the sculptor Emmanuel Freimut. Since then, welfare has used most of its income to support family expenses. At that time, he did several jobs, including giving private lessons, as a choir director and music education inspector. 1896 taught composition in the conservatory of music, and was appointed dean nine years later. During the summer vacation, he always tries to find time to compose music. Only in this way can he get rid of the busy life in Paris and often Switzerland and find a quiet lakeside residence.

The pressure of life, financial distress, creative frustration and marital misfortune all cost the composer severe migraine and paroxysmal depression. For Foley, composing music may be his escape from reality. In his letter to his youngest son, Philip, he wrote: "Imaginary works are to try to clarify the best things you want to express and everything outside reality ... For me, art, first and foremost music, is to sublimate us as much as possible."

Misfortune followed: 1903, Foley found himself beginning to lose his hearing. This disease is very strange, it will distort the fixed pitch. The notes in the bass sound like three degrees lower, while the notes in the treble sound like three degrees higher. "I was really destroyed by this disease, because it hit the part where I needed to be intact most," he wrote to his wife. "This is outrageous, at least unfair. I am like Beethoven ... I can hardly hear some phrases and single timbre in music! " In the last two years of his life, Foley was completely deaf. 1in June, 922, he sat beside President People's Republic of China (PRC) at a large benefit concert held in his honor by Sorbonne University, and was warmly cheered by the audience for a long time. And his music, but he couldn't hear a note.

It is obviously completely inappropriate to compare Faure with Beethoven. From the beginning of the 20th century, Foley was different from other composers of his time, such as Debussy and Schoenberg. He made a deep study on the organic development of musical thinking and texture structure by using the harmony technique derived from his favorite melody music with changing mode.

The 1990s of 19 was the middle period of Fu Lei's creation, and it was also the heyday of his creation. In the Sixth and Seventh Nocturnals and La bonne chanson (a vocal suite written for Wei Erlun's poems), Foley used a distinctive harmonic vocabulary as a channel to his crazy fantasy world full of rich emotions and intoxicating atmosphere. In his later works, his musical theme is naked and unadorned, and his structure is refined. Its absolute clarity is often compared to Matisse's lines, not Monet's "impression". In his later years, he also showed extraordinary creativity. His masterpieces in this period include piano trio, piano quintet No.2, cello sonata No.2 and the last vocal suite Horizon Chimera. His NocturnalNo. 13 was written within a few weeks after the death of San Sang in 192 1, which truly expressed his feelings.

1920, Foley retired from the Paris Conservatory of Music. He was finally free and could devote himself wholeheartedly to creation, and his creativity broke out. As his friend said, his energetic spirit is amazing. When Vincent d'Indy saw Foley's Cello Sonata No.2, he exclaimed, "You are so lucky, you will always be as young as music!" Throughout Foley's busy artistic career, whether in his music creation or in recruiting the best Parisian performers to teach in the Conservatory of Music, such as pianist alfred cortot, he has never lost his keen vision and open mind. And for more than 30 years, he was kind to the pianist Margelite Azerman who accompanied him to death. On his 78th birthday, his friends watched the premiere of his piano trio and said, "If he can live to be a hundred years old, how high will he be?"

However, Foley's later works have always been regarded as "difficult" music. For the second violin sonata, the last few nocturnes and the string quartet, many interpretations overemphasize their stability, introversion and the complexity of counterpoint, and completely ignore the passion in music. Indeed, emotions in music may only be found at a deep level, but they exist naturally. If we play the second violin sonata enthusiastically like the first sonata, or play his string quartet and piano trio energetically, and compare it with the first piano quartet full of love, we will have a more comprehensive understanding of Foley: a composer, although he is in his heyday, has entered a brand-new world, but on the other hand, the worst thing for the players who play Foley's music is to impose excessive freedom on the music. Passion and masculinity in his music are closely related to exquisiteness and elegance, which is why they are difficult to interpret.

On the surface, Welfare is an elegant and keen composer with independent spirit and willingness to change. And deep down, he is destined to be a radical. Legend has it that Ambroise Thomas, president of the Paris Conservatory of Music, threatened to resign if Faure was hired as a professor of composition. Because Foley abandoned traditional habits in sensitive composition techniques, the dean has every reason to show his strong dissatisfaction. Foley took the traditional musical form as a springboard and conducted unique experiments in musical form, harmony, timbre and texture structure. His music contains volcanic passion, and his songs have pure melody lines. The gorgeous expression to the outside world in his early piano works covered up his destructive sexual impact. It was very fashionable at that time to cover up excessive indulgence with pious and "pure" emotions, but no one has been able to handle this problem so properly. Perhaps that's why Marcel Proust described Foley's piano romance of the third Kubinashi parole as "in my imagination, this may be the music that homosexuals sing when they rape choir boys."

In life, welfare often takes a wait-and-see attitude. During the Dreyfus case, he kept in touch with composer, right-winger Vincent Dandy and Jewish activist Emma Baldaque. He wrote the greatest requiem in the history of music, but because he neglected the part of Dies irae and advocated the view of sympathy, he was called "the lullaby of death", which caused quite a controversy. Generally speaking, the dream and lack of profound thoughts in Foley's music are deceptive to many people, and it is difficult for people to recognize the composer's exquisite creative skills and sensitive wisdom behind the music.

By the time Foley died at the age of 79, he had become a master of French music. John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Foley hangs on the wall of the office of the president of the Paris Conservatory of Music. Although the reform he carried out there caused a strong shock, he was inevitably gradually regarded as a conservative and outdated figure. However, the students he carefully trained can prove his value, because Foley can always develop each student's unique personality strength. Ravel, george enescu and Charles Catchling all commented on their touching and unique music work Cher Mette with love and gratitude. Jean Roche-Dickas, Foley's favorite student, said: "Foley always holds the pencil in his hand very carefully ... He only needs to change the shape of a note or a phrase, or change a melody, so that a boring skill practice can be turned into a work of art ... As a teacher, he is also a clever composer, which is very rare, but he never opposes the opposite view." This positive encouragement of individuality was later reflected in Olivier Messiaen's teaching.

Through his own strength and broad-minded teaching, Foley quietly realized the revolution of musical thinking and laid a solid foundation for the future development of music. Although Faure's music itself is vivid and beautiful enough to win him an immortal reputation, without his efforts, a century of French music might not be in its present state.

Life memorabilia of Faure Gabriel

1845: Faure was born in Pamir, southwest France, on 12 May. He is the youngest of six children. He lived with a nanny until he was four years old, and he didn't return to family life until his father, a teacher, was appointed as the principal of Foix.

1853: Louis Niedermeier took over a failed church music school in Paris. He soon made this school the most important music education institution in Paris. His songs have influenced many composers who are good at song creation, and Foley is one of them.

1854: Foley showed great talent in playing the reed organ. He entered the "School of Religion and Classical Music" sponsored by Niedermeier in Paris, where he and his piano teacher Camille Saint-Sans became lifelong friends.

1864: louis pasteur initiated the heating sterilization method, that is, bacteria were killed by moderate heating process. Foley's wife, Mary, was later nervously troubled by health problems, and it took several years to take her children home from school for education. Their youngest son, Philip, later became a biology professor.

1866: Foley moved to Brittany and worked as an organist in St. Sophie's Church in Rennes. He supplements his meager income by teaching. Since 1874, he has been the organist of the Madeleine Church in Paris as the agent of Saint Sans.

1870: France goes to war with Prussia. Foley was recruited into the Royal Light Infantry Regiment and later won the Cross.

1877: Foley's song "After Dreams" and his first violin sonata were very popular, and he was appointed as the conductor of Madeleine Church Choir. His fiancee, Marianne, the daughter of the famous singer Pauline Viadot, broke off their engagement and welfare was very depressed.

1879: Henry deepak composed the song rosamond Castle. The strong emotional expression in deepak's songs deeply influenced the creation of Fulei's mature songs.

1883: Foley married Mary fremet, the daughter of a famous sculptor. She gave birth to two sons, but later she said she was a "nobody in the family". 1888, Foley's long-brewing requiem was staged for the first time.

1886: Saint Sang composed his third symphony (organ). In 1868, he used a theme from an unfinished work Tantum ergo, which was given to him by his student and lifelong friend Welfare in his second piano concerto.

1894: In order to resist the melancholy and increasingly unhappy marriage, Foley fell in love with Emma Baldaque (Debussy's future second wife), and he dedicated the title of Beautiful Songs (written in 1894) to her.

John Sanger Sargent painted a portrait of Mrs George swinton. Welfare asked his wife for paintings at the expense of teaching piano. As Sargent's good friend, he has served as a painter's model several times.

1905: From 1896, Foley became the chief organist of Madeleine Church. 1905, he succeeded du bois as the dean of the Conservatory of Music, where he achieved some far-reaching reforms.

1908: Nadia boulanger, who studied composition under Foley, won the second prize in Rome. She became the most influential teacher of her generation.

Marcel proust finished the first part of his novel "Recalling the Past". The violin sonata created by the fictional composer Ventier in the book may be described by imitating Foley's first violin sonata.

1924: Despite his deafness and auditory hallucination, Foley has completed several of his most famous piano, chamber music and vocal music works. He retired from the Conservatory of Music at the age of 75 and died at home in Paris in 1924.

Style characteristics of Foley's music

affect

The early influence of welfare comes from the talent and delicacy of his mentor, Saint Sans, and the richness and diversity of the melodies of Cournot and Bicai. The extremely broad emotional expression and fanatical passion in Schumann's music are also very important to Foley, as well as the enthusiasm of Mendelssohn's music. In church music, the magical melody line of a hymn plays a vital role in his requiem. Foley learned little from Wagner, but he used the dominant motive form in the opera Penelope.

Harmony vocabulary

In Foley's harmonic vocabulary, the change of mode occupies an important part. At first, they were only used to express rich timbre and changing emotions. Later, Foley's mode and harmony gradually formed a certain style. When he created his last masterpieces, he was able to integrate them into the main melody music.

Rich texture structure

Although Foley prefers to create small ensemble works, his use of the piano is exquisite, and the texture structure of music is eye-catching. Among his chamber music works, only one string quartet does not include the piano, which is his last creation. It is said that Foley's hands are equally dexterous, which can often be reflected in the writing of piano music. For example, his melody line is placed in the central area of the keyboard, while the accompaniment part is performed in the high and low areas respectively.

A gift for composing music

There are often overlapping piano patterns in Foley's imaginative music, and this texture structure contributes to the perfect embodiment of smooth and sweet music melody. In the beautiful music melody, French rhythm has found the most natural expression. Many of his "songs", especially those composed for Welland's poems, represent the peak of his creation.

CD records of welfare music.

Boat songs, serenades, etc.

Kathryn Stott (Piano)

Hyperion CDA 67064

First and second cello sonatas, etc.

Steven Isaris (Cello)

Pascal Dwayne (piano)

RCA Red Seal 09026 68049 2

The first and second violin sonatas, etc.

Alban Becker (violin)

Roy Howatt (piano)

Art nouveau 7432 1 92763 2

The first and second piano quartets;

The first and second piano quintets;

String quartet

Jean-Philippe Collard (Piano)

Augustin Dumay (violin)

Bruno pasquale (Viola)

Frederic Lodean (Cello)

Parenin Quartet

EMI 7 62548 2 (two records)

Songs (complete works)

Elly Ameling (soprano)

Gerald Souzai (baritone)

Dalton Baldwin (piano)

EMI 7 64079 2 (four records)

requiem

Victoria de Los Angeles (soprano)

Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau (baritone)

The Elizabeth Brasseux Chorus,

Paris Conservatory of Music Orchestra/

Andre Klitan

EMI 5 66894 2

A book on welfare

The Music Life of Gabriel Foley

Jean Michel Nectoux

Translated by Roger Nichols

Cambridge University Press published in 199 1.

Sixty years of friendship-

Correspondence between Camille San Santos and Gabriel Foley

Editor: Jean-Michel Nectoux

Barry Jones translation

Ashgate Press was published in 2004.

Gabriel Foley

Jessica Duchin

Felton Press published in 2000.