Faure Requiem

Last Sunday’s performance of the Fauré Requiem was glorious. I felt emotionally wrung-out afterward. I’d always been partial to the Duruflé Requiem for listenability — I always found the Fauré a bit flat and featureless. But whenever I perform a piece, I always magically like it more. (Do people ever really enjoy a piece of music without performing it?) So now I see the Fauré differently. I think Fauré was trying to do more with less: a limited orchestra (with only one violin), a stripped-down text, and only two soloists. It’s not a difficult sing. But such emotion he gets out of the simple tunes.

While singing the Requiem, I had the same feeling I got doing Carmina Burana: the feeling of mortality. One theme for Carmina is the Wheel of Fortune (and it even appears on the cover of the sheet music). Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. But during the performance of the famous ‘O Fortuna’, I imagined the image of the Wheel as a torture rack. An infant is born, pitched helplessly into a world of noise and pain and fear and glorious sensation. You can’t stop it. You’re carried along, and sometimes riding the Wheel is horrifying and confusing, and being alive always leads to death.

That feeling came to me during the Fauré ‘Agnus Dei’. It’s about two minutes in. The choir sings ‘lux aeterna’ in fervent and melancholy descending chords. Now we’re at the end of our ride on the Wheel, and the music mirrors our descent to bed and to the grave. To extinguishment. It’s fearful and helpless. The organ and orchestra convey the plangent, almost overbearing sensation of standing at the end of life. Who will save us?

But Fauré ends with the ‘In Paradisum’, with its sumptuous vision of the rest and peace of an afterlife. There’s one part that I always listen for — it’s where the men join the sopranos on the word ‘Jerusalem’. Simple chords, but so lovely. There I was, between two first tenors, and me a second, and the sound was just right. It became difficult to sing because I was getting verklempt.

So — a good show. I’m glad I sing. It keeps me in touch with my life and my humanity.