Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Jean-Michel Nectoux's important biography of Gabriel Fauré is the most comprehensive study yet of this central figure of fin de siecle France. It traces the composer's life and the rich cultural milieu in which he lived and worked: the world also of Saint-Saens, Flaubert, Verlaine, Ravel, Debussy and Proust. A large part of the book considers Fauré's music, with particular emphasis on his adjustment to the musical language of the twentieth century and the formation of his late style. Works in all genres are discussed in detail. The book is the fruit of over twenty years' research by Nectoux, the foremost authority on Gabriel Fauré. In the process of writing this definitive study, he read more than 5000 previously unpublished letters and unearthed more than 120 musical manuscripts. The book includes several rare photographs from Fauré's lifetime and contains an extended chronology of the composer's life, a complete chronological listing of all his own works and a detailed bibliography.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of illustrations
• Prelude
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Gradus ad Parnassum
• 2 Scenes from provincial life
• 3 Friends and lovers
• 4 Fauré as pianist and organist
• 5 Roses for Des Esseintes: from the romance to the mélodie
• 6 Sotto voce: chamber music I
• 7 Choral music
• 8 The theatre I: operatic projects and incidental music
• 9 The Verlaine years: song cycles and further operatic projects
• 10 The theatre II: Prométhée
• 11 Works and days
• 12 Pomp and circumstance
• 13 Towards the twentieth century
• 14 The theatre III: Pénélope, Masques et Bergamasques
• 15 Words and music: the van Lerberghe years
• 16 The late piano works
• 17 Light and shade: chamber music II
• 18 Fauré 'modern style'
• 19 Ultima verba
• 20 Inner voices
• Chronology
• Chronological catalogue of Fauré's works
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

A translation of a new study by the foremost authority on the French composer Gabriel Faur'e, this book will be an indispensable tool for those interested in French music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nectoux, like Faur'e himself, is both comprehensive and eclectic in his method, drawing together a narrative of the composer's musical life with critical insights about individual works and the aesthetic issues they raise. There is much here, too, that connects Faur'e's copious output with the history of French song, opera, keyboard, and chamber music from Berlioz to Ravel and with the literary sensibilities of French writers from Flaubert and Verlaine to Baudelaire and Proust. Nectoux has an impressive command over the primary source materials of Faur'e's life, particularly his correspondence, which the author has edited for separate publication (translated as Gabriel Faur'e, His Life Through His Letters, CH, Mar'85). Readers familiar with Nectoux's article on Faur'e for the New Grove will be grateful for a newly updated list of works and an impressive topical bibliography of writings by and about the composer. Upper-division undergraduate and university libraries and larger public libraries.-R. Freedman, Haverford College