OTD in Music History: Important composer, organist, pianist, and pedagogue Gabriel Urbain Faure (1845 – 1924) dies in Paris. Faure was hailed in his lifetime as one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many important 20th-century composers -- a number of whom actually studied with him at the Paris Conservatory. Among his best-known works are his "Pavane" (1887), "Requiem" (1890), and "Sicilienne" (1893), as well as the long and masterful series of "melodies" (or French art songs) that he composed throughout his career. A modern assessment of Faure in "Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians" (2001) notes that "Faure's stature as a composer has been 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; . . . [and] the precisely articulated melodic line of his songs is in the finest tradition of French vocal music . . ." Music critic Robert Orledge offers another assessment: "Faure's genius was fundamentally one of synthesis: he reconciled such opposing elements as modality and tonality, anguish and serenity, seduction and force, within a single cohesive and non-eclectic style . . . The quality of constant renewal even within an apparently limited range is a remarkable facet of his genius, and the spare, elliptical style of his [very late] String Quartet (1924) suggests that his intensely self-disciplined style was still developing [even] at the time of his death [at the age of nearly 80]." PICTURED: A first edition of the tenor version of Faure's "20 Melodies for Singer and Piano," published in Paris in 1879. Faure has signed and inscribed this copy to an admirer.
