Gabriel
Fauré
and Tomoko shared several details in life. Both played the organ for Catholic
mass. Both taught piano after than graduated from college. Tomoko enjoys both Romanticism
and modernism, which Fauré bridged. And Tomoko performs Fauré’s compositions.
Fauré
was born in 1845 in southern France, and was trained in religious music. One of
his teachers, Camille Saint-Saëns, introduced Fauré to
contemporary music; they stayed friends until Saint-Saëns’ death sixty years
later. Saint-Saëns also inspired Fauré to travel abroad, during which time
he met Liszt and Wagner. In his turn, decades later, Fauré taught
future composers Ravel, Roger-Ducasse and Boulanger among others.
Fauré started composing under Saint-Saëns but
was waylaid by the Franco-Prussian War in which he fought. Not surprisingly, his
compositions had a dark hue. Nor did he ever compose for the organ. He mainly
wrote for piano, although one of his first masterpieces was a violin sonata. He
also created art songs, operas, chamber
works, and incidental music for plays. Fauré was considered a modernist with his
harmonies, and his composition style maintained a freshness throughout his
life.
One
of Fauré’s pieces that Tomoko enjoys playing is Sicilienne, which was originally
a work for cello and piano and eventually was arranged for a full orchestra as
a four-movement suite. This piece, one of his most famous, reflects several of Fauré’s
signature stylistic details. He uses modal effects in a mixed major-minor scale,
giving rise to medieval-sounding cadences, and his altered chords lead to
harmonic ambiguities. The result iss slightly haunting.
Tomoko
too maintains a fresh attitude in her teaching and her performance, which keeps
her spirit young.
