French composer, organist, pianist and teacher whose musical style influenced many contemporary composers worldwide. During his career, he succeeded to bring together the best of traditional and progressive music and crafted some of the most beautiful works, some of which are his "Requiem", Cinque Melodies", "Dolly Suite" and "Pavana".
He was the youngest of 6 children, born to a cultivated but not musical family. From the age of 9 he studied piano and organ with a renowned composer Camille Saint-Saëns.
Although composing from a young age, Fauré began to develop originality in his compositions in his 40s, partly due to the fact that he then fell in love with Emma Bardac, a young and talented pianist. Despite Fauré being married, this affair, which lasted several years, had a tremendous impact on his musical style, by inspiring his creativity and originality. His music was then considered too advanced by some, but gained a lot of recognition for its harmonic and melodic innovation and influenced later generations.
Fauré's music is characterised by charm and light texture and is enjoyable and easy on the ear. Many of his pieces are musical expressions of poems by writers such as Hugo and Baudelaire. As Nectoux, a French musicologist, said about Fauré's later music, its objective was "to express the most elevated sentiments by the simplest means, so as to reach, in some form, the naked flesh of emotion".
