A hard few days

on

          Requiem (Fauré)


Good grief. Trying to stay positive after a week of loss is, well......good grief!

A requiem is a mass for the dead - a "proper" not an "ordinary" mass. I won't get into the tall weeds on the difference other than an observing the "ordinary" is following the normal mass or service flow and a "proper" is part of the mass "not ordinarily" observed Sunday to Sunday, but on specific days only. Yesterday for instance.
The French composer, Gabriel Faure, wrote this beauty in the 1890s.  That period in Paris, those ten
Faure
years, was my dissertation area and one piece by Debussy from that time, took up about 20 years of my life.  If I could see the watermark on the music paper (above) I could tell you which music store he bought it from and what year.  Useless trivia at this point in my life; stuff that clogs my brain up so I miss the important things.  Oh well.
The piece has a duration of about 35 minutes. It consists of seven movements:
  1. Introït et Kyrie (D minor)
  2. Offertoire (B minor)
  3. Sanctus (E-flat major)
  4. Pie Jesu (B-flat major)
  5. Agnus Dei et Lux Aeterna (F major)
  6. Libera Me (D minor)
  7. In Paradisum (D major)

That last movement, "In Paradisum" (in Paradise), is, well, how can I say it other than a few minutes of absolute beauty.  On this Friday, 2018 at sunrise, well..it takes my breath.  I'll post below that section that is performed best in my mind and the full Requiem below it. 

Listen some and go about your day....it might put you, however, in a gentler frame of mind.