Inspired by night, the Nocturne first came into our musical language in the 18th century, but the idea of a night-time work comes from the ancient church, where ‘nocturn’ was the last of the seven prayers of the day. Held

A good number of instrumental works, specifically pieces written for piano solo in the 19th and 20th-century, carry the title “Nocturne.” The word comes from the French, meaning “nocturnal” or “night”, and it suggests the magical atmosphere of peace and

On 4 November 2024, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Gabriel Fauré. He might well have been the greatest master of French songs, with his settings achieving a beautiful balance of prosody, melody, harmony, and polyphony. In

In April 1919, Gabriel Fauré’s Masques et Bergamasques, a comédie musicale, with a libretto by René Fauchois, had its debut at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. From its very title, the influence of Italian commedia dell’arte, French music, and pastoral art

During his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990) met France’s most important composers, including Saint-Saëns and Fauré. Once he had returned to America, Copland became an outspoken champion and advocate of Fauré’s music. He writes,

For the vast majority of his life, Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was “a man easily satisfied, happy with his friends and colleagues, lacking the taint of ruthless ambition and egotistical self-promotion characteristic of so many, and without the pretension and hollow

We know the ‘barcarolle’ most famously from Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, but relatively few other composers picked up on it. In Offenbach’s opera, the barcarolle, ‘Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour’ (Beautiful night, oh night of love) opens Act III where

Her affair with Debussy resulted in a scandal that split the Parisian music world apart – and almost led to the death of Debussy’s first wife. Today we’re looking at the life of Emma Bardac-Debussy: singer, legendary conversationalist, wife, mother,