Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Urbain Fauré ( /ɡabʁiˈɛl yʁˈbɛ̃ fɔˈʁeː/; 12 May 1845^[1] – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers. His harmonic and melodic language affected how harmony was later taught.

Born into a cultured but not unusually musical family, Fauré's talent emerged when he was a small boy, and he was sent to a music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a life-long friend. In his early years, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and head of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing, retreating to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition.

By the time of his death, Fauré was recognised in France as the greatest French composer of his day, and he had many admirers in England, but his music, though known in other countries, took many decades more to become widely accepted. Among his best-known works are his Nocturnes for piano, the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de Lune", the Élégie, for cello and orchestra, the Pavane, the Dolly Suite, incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande, Masques et bergamasques and his Requiem.

Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Berlioz was still composing, and by the time of his death the atonal music of the Second Viennese School was being heard. For most of his life, he was seen as the most advanced figure in French music. His last works, written when increasing deafness had struck him, are spare. The composer Aaron Copland wrote of them, "The themes, harmonies, form, have remained essentially the same, but with each new work they have all become more fresh, more personal, more profound."^[2]

Biography

Early years

Plaque on Fauré's birthplace

Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, Midi-Pyrénées, the fifth son and sixth child of Toussaint-Honoré Fauré (1810–85) and Marie-Antoinette-Hélène Lalène-Laprade (1809–87). He was sent to live with a wet nurse until he was four years old. In 1849 Toussaint-Honoré was appointed director of the École Normale at Montgauzy, near Foix, and Fauré returned to live with his family. There was a chapel attached to the school, and the young Fauré spent hours playing the harmonium there. An old blind woman, who came to listen and to give the boy advice, told his father about Fauré's gift for music. In 1853 an official of the National Assembly of France, Dufaur de Saubiac, heard Fauré and advised his father to send him to the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse, which Louis Niedermeyer was setting up in Paris. After reflecting for a year, Fauré's father agreed and took the 9-year-old boy to Paris in October 1854.^[3]

Camille Saint-Saëns, Fauré's teacher and friend

Fauré remained a boarder at the school for 11 years, during which he was helped by a scholarship from the bishop of his home diocese. The régime at the school was austere, the rooms were gloomy, the food was mediocre, and the boys were required to wear an elaborate uniform.^[4] The musical tuition, however, was excellent.^[5] Under Niedermeyer, the curriculum concentrated on church music, with the aim of producing qualified organists and choirmasters. Fauré's tutors were Clément Loret for the organ, Louis Dietsch for harmony, Xavier Wackenthaler for counterpoint and fugue, and Niedermeyer for the piano, plainsong and composition.^[3]

In March 1861 Niedermeyer died, and his place in charge of piano studies was taken by Camille Saint-Saëns.^[6] Saint-Saëns introduced his students to contemporary music, including that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner.^[7] He took great pleasure in the progress of the gifted young Fauré. Aaron Copland remarked on their association: "Although his teacher was only ten years his senior, Fauré nevertheless has had a life-long respect and reverence for Saint-Saëns, which is touching, even though some may find it hard to understand. Superficially, their music has some analogous characteristics, especially as regards the perfection of technique. But actually, there is all the difference between talent and genius – Mendelssohn and Bach."^[2] Fauré won many prizes while at the school, including premiers prix in composition for the Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11, the first of his choral works to enter the regular repertory.^[3] He left the school as a Laureat in organ, piano, harmony and composition, with a Maître de Chapelle diploma, in July 1865.^[6][8]

Fauré as a student

First musical appointments

On leaving the École Niedermeyer, Fauré was offered the post of chief organist at the Church of Saint-Saveur, at Rennes in Brittany. He remained there for four years, supplementing his income by taking private pupils, giving "countless piano lessons".^[9] He was bored at Rennes and had an uneasy relationship with the parish priest, who rightly doubted Fauré's religious conviction.^[10] Fauré was regularly seen stealing out during the sermon for a cigarette, and in early 1870, when he turned up to play at Mass one Sunday still in his evening clothes having been out all night at a ball, he was asked to resign.^[10] Almost immediately he secured the post of assistant organist at the church of Notre-Dame de Clignancourt, in the north of Paris. He remained there for only a few months; on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he volunteered for military service. He took part in the action to raise the Siege of Paris and saw action at Le Bourget, Champigny and Créteil.^[11]

After France's defeat by Prussia, there was a brief, bloody conflict within Paris, during the Commune. Fauré escaped to Rambouillet where one of his brothers lived, and then travelled to Switzerland, where he took up a teaching post at the École Niedermeyer, which had temporarily relocated there to avoid the violence in Paris. His first pupil at the school was André Messager, who became a lifelong friend and occasional collaborator.^[3][12] When Fauré returned to Paris in October 1871, he was appointed choirmaster at Église Saint-Sulpice under the composer and organist Charles-Marie Widor.^[12] He regularly attended Saint-Saëns's musical salon gatherings and those of Pauline Viardot, to whom Saint-Saëns introduced him.^[3] He was an early member of the Société Nationale de Musique, formed in February 1871 under the joint chairmanship of Romain Bussine and Saint-Saëns, to promote new French music.^[13] Other members included Georges Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, Henri Duparc, Vincent d'Indy, César Franck, Édouard Lalo and Jules Massenet.^[14] Fauré became secretary of the society in 1874.^[15] Many of his works were first presented at the society's concerts.^[15]

Église de la Madeleine, where Fauré was choirmaster and organist

In 1874, Fauré moved from Saint-Sulpice to the Église de la Madeleine, deputising for the principal organist, Saint-Saëns, during the latter's many absences on tour.^[16] Some admirers of Fauré's music have expressed amazement and regret that although he played the organ professionally for four decades, he left no solo compositions for the instrument.^[17] Saint-Saëns said of Fauré that he was "a first class organist when he wanted to be",^[18] and he was renowned for his improvisations,^[19] but he preferred the piano to the organ, which he played only because it gave him a regular income.^[18]

1877 was a significant year for Fauré, both professionally and personally.^[20] In January his violin sonata was performed at a Société Nationale concert with great success, marking a turning-point in his composing career.^[20] In March, Saint-Saëns retired from the Madeleine, succeeded as organist by Théodore Dubois, who had until then occupied the subordinate post of choirmaster, to which Fauré was appointed in his place.^[20] In July Fauré became engaged to Marianne Viardot, daughter of Pauline Viardot, with whom he was deeply in love.^[20] To his great sorrow, she broke off the engagement in November 1877, for reasons that are not clear.^[21] To take Fauré's mind off his grief, Saint-Saëns took him to Weimar and introduced him to Franz Liszt. This visit gave Fauré a liking for foreign travel, which he pursued for the rest of his life.^[21] In 1878, he and Messager travelled to see Wagner's Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at Cologne Opera, and later they went to Munich for the complete Ring cycle, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Tannhäuser at Bavarian State Opera, to Bayreuth for Die Meistersinger and Parsifal, and, in 1882, to London to see the Ring at Her Majesty's Theatre.^[22] They jointly composed, and frequently performed as a party piece, the irreverent Souvenirs de Bayreuth, a short piano piece for four hands using themes from The Ring in what the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes as a "skittish" manner.^[23] Fauré admired Wagner and was "familiar with the smallest details of his music",^[24] but he was one of the few composers of his generation not to come under Wagner's musical influence.^[24]

Marriage

Fauré's wife, Marie

In 1883, Fauré married Marie Fremiet, the daughter of a leading sculptor Emmanuel Fremiet.^[25] The marriage was affectionate, but Marie became resentful of Fauré's frequent absences, his "horreur du domicile", and his love affairs, while she remained at home.^[26] They had two sons, Emmanuel Fauré-Fremiet (1883–1971; Marie insisted on combining her family name with Fauré's), who became a biologist of international reputation,^[27] and Philippe (1889–1954).^[3] To support his family, Fauré spent most of his time in running the daily services at the Madeleine and teaching piano and harmony lessons. His compositions earned him a negligible amount, because his publisher bought them outright for 50 francs each, and Fauré received no royalties. During this period, he wrote several large-scale works, in addition to many piano pieces and songs, but he destroyed many of them after a few performances, only retaining a few movements in order to re-use motifs.^[3]

During his youth, Fauré had been very cheerful; a friend wrote of his "youthful, even somewhat child-like, mirth."^[28] His broken engagement, combined with his lack of success as a composer, precipitated bouts of depression, which he described as "spleen".^[3] In the 1890s, however, his fortunes improved. When Ernest Guiraud, professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, died in 1892, Saint-Saëns encouraged Fauré to apply for the vacant post. The conservative establishment at the Conservatoire regarded Fauré as dangerously modern, and their head, Ambroise Thomas, blocked the appointment, declaring, "Fauré? Never! If he's appointed, I resign."^[29] However, Fauré was appointed to another of Guiraud's posts, inspector of the music conservatories in the French provinces, which meant prolonged travelling around the country, but gave him a steady income and enabled him to give up teaching amateur pupils.^[30]

Ambroise Thomas (top) and Théodore Dubois preceded Fauré as head of the Conservatoire

In 1896, Ambroise Thomas died, and Théodore Dubois took over as head of the Conservatoire. Fauré succeeded Dubois as chief organist of the Madeleine. Dubois' move had further repercussions: Jules Massenet, professor of composition at the Conservatoire, had expected to succeed Thomas, but had overplayed his hand by insisting on being appointed for life.^[31] When he was turned down, Massenet resigned "in fury at seeing Dubois promoted above him",^[32] and Fauré was appointed to succeed him. As professor of composition, he taught many young composers, including Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Charles Koechlin, Louis Aubert, Jean Roger-Ducasse, George Enescu, Paul Ladmirault, Alfredo Casella and Nadia Boulanger.^[3] In Fauré's view, his students needed a firm grounding in the basic skills, which he was happy to delegate to his capable assistant André Gédalge.^[33] His own part came in helping them make use of these skills in the way that suited each student's talents. Roger-Ducasse later wrote: "Taking up whatever the pupils were working on, he would evoke the rules of the form at hand ... and refer to examples, always drawn from the masters."^[34] Ravel always remembered Fauré's open-mindedness as a teacher. Having received Ravel's string quartet with less than his usual enthusiasm, Fauré asked to see the manuscript again a few days later, saying, "I could have been wrong".^[35] Copland notes: "What Fauré developed among his pupils was taste, harmonic sensibility, the love of pure lines, of unexpected and colorful modulations; but he never gave them recipes for composing according to his style and that is why they all sought and found their own paths in many different, and often opposed, directions."^[2]

Fauré's works of the last years of the century include incidental music for the English translation of Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1898), and Prométhée, a lyric tragedy composed for the amphitheatre at Béziers. Being written for outdoor performance, the work is scored for huge instrumental and vocal forces. Its premiere in August 1900 was a great success, and it was revived at Béziers the following year and in Paris in 1907. A version with orchestration for normal opera house-sized forces was given at the Paris Opéra in May 1917 and received more than 40 performances in Paris thereafter.^[36] From 1903 to 1921, Fauré regularly wrote music criticism for Le Figaro, a role in which he was not at ease. In Nectoux's words: "His natural kindness and broad-mindedness predisposed him to see the positive aspects of a work, and he had no inclination to polemics."^[3]

Head of the Conservatoire

Four of Fauré's students: Maurice Ravel (l. top), Nadia Boulanger (r. top), Charles Koechlin (l. below), Georges Enescu (r. below)

In 1905, there was a scandal in French musical circles over the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome. Fauré's pupil, Maurice Ravel, was widely believed to have been unfairly denied the prize by reactionary elements within the Conservatoire. Dubois was the subject of much censure and resigned. Fauré was appointed in his place. With the support of the French government, he made sweeping changes to the administration and the curriculum. He introduced independent external judges to take part in decisions on admissions, examinations and competitions. This precipitated resignations by some faculty members: unable to give preferential treatment to their private pupils, they saw themselves deprived of a considerable extra income.^[37] With the curriculum, Fauré was seen as equally revolutionary; he was dubbed "Robespierre" by disaffected members of the old guard. He modernised and broadened the range of music taught at the Conservatoire. His biographer Jean-Michel Nectoux writes, "where Auber, Halévy and especially Meyerbeer had reigned supreme … it was now possible to sing an aria by Rameau or even some Wagner – up to now a forbidden name within the Conservatoire's walls".^[38] The repertoire now ranged from Renaissance polyphony to the works of Debussy.^[38]

Fauré's new position meant that he was financially better off, and he also became much more widely known as a composer. Running the Conservatoire, however, left him with no more time for composition than when he was scraping a living as an organist and piano teacher. As soon as the working year was over, in the last days of July, he would leave Paris and spend the two months until early October in an hotel, usually by one of the Swiss lakes, to concentrate on composition.^[39] His works from this period include his lyric opera, Pénélope, and some of his most characteristic later songs (e.g., the cycle La chanson d’Eve, Op. 95) and piano pieces (Nocturnes Nos. 9–11; Barcarolles Nos. 7–11).

Fauré at the turn of the century

Fauré was elected to the Institut de France in 1909, but at the same time he broke with the Société Nationale de Musique and supported the rogue group which formed out of those ejected from the Société, mainly his own students. In 1911 he oversaw the Conservatoire's move to new premises in the rue de Madrid.^[40] During this time, Fauré developed ear trouble and gradually lost his hearing. Sound not only became fainter, but it was also distorted, so that pitches on the low and high ends of his audible range sounded like other pitches. He made efforts to conceal his difficulty but was eventually forced to abandon his teaching position.^[41]

In the early years of the century, Fauré's music began to gain a foothold in Britain, and to a lesser extent in Germany, Spain and Russia.^[42] He was a frequent visitor to England, and he was invited to play at Buckingham Palace in 1908, which opened many doors for him in London and beyond.^[43] He attended the London premiere of Elgar's First Symphony, in 1908, and dined with Elgar afterwards.^[44] Elgar later wrote to their mutual friend Frank Schuster that Fauré "was such a real gentleman – the highest kind of Frenchman and I admired him greatly." Elgar tried to get Fauré's Requiem put on at the Three Choirs Festival, but it did not finally get its English premiere until 1937.^[45] Composers from other countries also loved and admired Fauré. Tchaikovsky thought him "adorable",^[46] Albéniz and Fauré were friends and correspondents for many years,^[47] and in Fauré's last years, the young American composer Aaron Copland was a devoted admirer.^[2]

The outbreak of World War I almost stranded Fauré in Germany, where he had gone for his annual composing retreat. He managed to get from Germany into Switzerland, and thence to Paris.^[48] He remained in France for the duration of the war. When a group of French musicians led by Saint-Saëns tried to organise a boycott of all German music, Fauré and Messager dissociated themselves from the idea, though the disagreement did not affect their friendship with Saint-Saëns.^[49] Fauré did not recognise nationalism in music, seeing in his art "a language belonging to a country so far above all others that it is dragged down when it has to express feelings or individual traits that belong to any particular nation."^[50] Nevertheless, he was aware that his own music was respected rather than loved in Germany. In January 1905 he had written from Germany: "The criticisms of my music have been that it's a bit cold and too well brought up! There's no question about it, French and German are two different things.^[51]

Last years and legacy

In 1920, at the age of 75, Fauré retired from the Conservatoire because of his increasing deafness and frailty.^[3] In that year, he received the Grand-Croix of the Légion d'honneur, an honour rare for a musician. There was also a public tribute paid to him in a "national homage such as was only given to Pasteur"; "a splendid celebration at the Sorbonne, in which the most illustrious French artists participated, brought him great joy. It was a poignant spectacle, indeed: that of a man present at a concert of his own works and able to hear not a single note. He sat gazing before him pensively, and, in spite of everything, grateful and content."^[2][41]

In his last years, Fauré suffered from poor health, partly brought on by heavy smoking. Despite this, he remained available to young composers, including members of Les six, who were devoted to him.^[41] Nectoux writes: "In old age he attained a kind of serenity, without losing any of his remarkable spiritual vitality, but rather removed from the sensualism and the passion of the works he wrote between 1875 and 1895."^[3]

Fauré died in Paris from pneumonia in 1924. He was given a state funeral at the Église de la Madeleine and is buried in the Passy Cemetery in Paris.

After Fauré's death, the Conservatoire reverted to its former conservatism, with his own harmonic practice being held up as "the ne plus ultra of modernity beyond which students should not go." The generation of students born between the wars "rejected this superannuated legacy, turning to Bartók, the Second Viennese School and the latest works of Stravinsky."^[52]

In a centenary tribute, The Musical Times wrote: "'More profound than Saint-Saëns, more varied than Lalo, more spontaneous than d'Indy, more classic than Debussy, Gabriel Fauré is the master par excellence of French music, the perfect mirror of our musical genius.' Perhaps, when English musicians get to know his work better, these words of Roger-Ducasse will seem, not over-praise, but no more than his due."

Music

Manuscript page of the Requiem

Aaron Copland wrote of Fauré, "All of Fauré's production may be divided into the usual three periods. But there is no such radical difference between his first and last manners as is evident in many other composers. In fact, it is not very difficult to find premonitions of his last manner in even his earliest creations, and traces of the early Fauré in his most recent publications. It is the quality of his inspiration that has most changed. The themes, harmonies, form, have remained essentially the same, but with each new work they have all become more fresh, more personal, more profound."^[2]

His works ranged from the romantic style of his early years, when he emulated the style of Mendelssohn and others, to late 19th century Romantic, and finally to a 20th century aesthetic. His work was based on a strong understanding of harmonic structures which he received at the École Niedermeyer from his harmony teacher Gustave Lefèvre, who wrote the book Traité d'harmonie (Paris, 1889), in which Lefèvre sets forth a harmonic theory which differs significantly from the classical theory of Jean-Philippe Rameau in that seventh and ninth chords are no longer considered dissonant, and the mediant can be altered without changing the mode. In addition, Fauré's understanding of the church modes can be seen in various modal passages in his works, especially in his songs.^[3]

In contrast with his harmonic and melodic style, which pushed the bounds for his time, Fauré's rhythmic motives tended to be subtle and repetitive, with little to break the flow of the line, although he used subtle large scale syncopations, similar to those found in Brahms's works. Copland referred to him as the 'French Brahms'.^[2] It has also been posited by Jerry Dubins in Fanfare Magazine that Fauré is the "missing link" between Brahms and Debussy.^[53]

Vocal music

Fauré is regarded as the master of the French art song, or mélodie. The early songs were written under the influence of Gounod, and except for isolated songs such as "Apres un rêve" or "Au bord de l'eau" there is little sign of the artist to come.^[2] Copland wrote, "It is with the second volume of the sixty collected songs, that we first meet the real Fauré. Some of these songs, as for example, 'Les Berceaux,' 'Les Roses d'Ispahan' and especially 'Clair de Lune' are so beautiful, so perfect, that they have even penetrated to America. But such melodies as 'Le Secret,' 'Nocturne,' 'Les Présents,' of the same volume, are just as worthy of being known."^[2]

The Requiem, Op. 48, was not composed to the memory of a specific person but, in Fauré's words, "for the pleasure of it." It was first performed in 1888. It has been described as "a lullaby of death" for its predominantly gentle tone. In setting his requiem, Fauré left out the Dies irae, though the reference to the day of judgment appears in the Libera me, which, like Verdi, he added to the normal requiem mass. Several slightly different versions of the Requiem exist, and these have given rise to a number of different recordings. The Requiem is acknowledged as a source of inspiration for the similar setting by Duruflé.^[54]

Piano works

Fauré's piano works often use arpeggiated figures with the melody interspersed between the two hands, and include finger substitutions natural for organists. These aspects make them daunting for some pianists, but they are nonetheless central works. The early piano works are clearly influenced by the works of Chopin.^[55] An even greater influence on Fauré's piano works was Schumann, whose piano music Fauré loved above all others.^[56] With the sixth "Nocturne" Fauré fully emerged from any predecessor's shadow. The pianist Alfred Cortot said, "There are few pages in all music comparable to these."^[2] Pianists frequently prefer to play the charming earlier piano works such as the Impromptu No. 2 to the later piano works that express "such private passion and isolation, such alternating anger and resignation" that listeners are left uneasy.^[57] Fauré was unimpressed by purely virtuoso pianists, saying "the greater they are, the worse they play me.^[58]

Fauré wrote the Dolly Suite for piano four-hands between 1894 and 1897 and dedicated it to Hélène, daughter of the singer Emma Bardac, with whom he was having an affair; he also wrote La bonne chanson for Bardac herself.^[3] In the UK, the first piece, Berceuse, from the Dolly Suite became known to several generations of children as the closing music for the BBC Home Service radio programme Listen with Mother, which was broadcast from 1950 to 1982.

Orchestral and chamber works

Fauré was not greatly interested in orchestration, frequently inviting his former students such as Jean Roger-Ducasse and Charles Koechlin to orchestrate his concert and theatre works. Fauré's generally sober orchestral style reflects a definite aesthetic attitude.^[59] He was not attracted by striking combinations of tone-colours, which he thought were too often a form of self-indulgence and a disguise for the absence of ideas.^[3] In Nectoux's words, "The idea of timbre was not a determining one in Fauré's musical thinking"^[59] His best-known orchestral works are the orchestral suite Masques et bergamasques (based on music for a dramatic entertainment, or divertissement comique), and music for Pelléas et Mélisande. In the chamber repertoire, his two piano quartets are particularly well known. Other chamber music includes two piano quintets, two cello sonatas, two violin sonatas, a string quartet, and a piano trio.

Summary

A 2001 article on Fauré in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians concludes thus:

Fauré's stature as a composer is undiminished by the passage of time. He developed a musical idiom all his own; by subtle application of old modes, he evoked the aura of eternally fresh art; by using unresolved mild discords and special coloristic effects, he anticipated procedures of Impressionism; in his piano works, he shunned virtuosity in favor of the Classical lucidity of the French masters of the clavecin; the precisely articulated melodic line of his songs is in the finest tradition of French vocal music. His great Requiem and his Élégie for Cello and Piano have entered the general repertoire.^[60]

Notes

References

• Anderson, Robert (1993). Elgar. London: J M Dent. ISBN 0-460-86054-2
• Jones, J Barrie (1989). Gabriel Fauré – A Life in Letters. London: B. T. Batsford Ltd. ISBN 0 7134 5468 7
• Moore, Jerrold Northrop. (1987) Elgar – A Creative Life. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks. ISBN 0192840142
• Nectoux, Jean-Michel, trans. J.A. Underwood (1984). Gabriel Fauré – His Life Through Letters. London: Boyars. ISBN 0714527688
• Nectoux, Jean-Michel, trans. Roger Nichols (1991). Gabriel Fauré – A Musical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 23524 3
• Nichols, Roger (1987). Ravel Remembered. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-14986-3
• Wagstaff, John (1991). André Messager: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-25736-1
• Vallas, Léon, trans. Hubert Foss (1951). César Franck, London: Harrap, 1951. OCLC 910827

External links

• Free scores by Gabriel Fauré in the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Gabriel Fauré in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Gabriel Fauré in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Fauré's Songs in Schubertline (online) edition
• Kunst der Fuge: Gabriel Fauré - MIDI files
• Biography Gabriel Fauré - h2g2 site
• Septuor pour trompette, deux violons, alto, violoncelle, contre-basse et piano, op. 65 par C. Saint-Saëns, à 4 mains par G. Fauré. From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
• Oeuvres complètes pour orgue / J.S. Bach : révision par Gabriel Fauré. From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
• "The Master of Charms" - a series of short articles about Fauré's music on AdventuresInMusic.biz

Recordings

• Piano Rolls (The Reproducing Piano Roll Foundation)