Piano Quartet No. 1 in c, Op. 15

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) should properly be regarded as a pivotal figure in French music. As mentioned earlier, he was a pupil and lifelong friend of Saint-Saëns. In turn Fauré became an influential teacher, holding the prominent posts that were denied to his teacher, including directorship of the Paris Conservatory. Fauré’s own pupils included Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger, who taught everyone from Copland and Bernstein to Astor Piazzola and Burt Bacharach! Through Boulanger, Fauré’s precepts have been disseminated to well over 1000 contemporary musicians.
Like Messiaen, Fauré was schooled in the tradition of church music, which meant specifically an education at the organ console. But with the exception of his popular Requiem, Fauré is best remembered today for secular compositions: an immense body of piano music (in the Chopinesque genres of Nocturne, Impromptu, and Prelude), over sixty superlative songs, and many chamber works. He scored an early success with the Piano Quartet in C Minor, op. 15. Composed between 1876 and 1879, the piano quartet expresses a renewed dedication to classicism—a style deemed largely at odds with the prevailing tastes for Germanic (read, Wagnerian) excess. Fauré’s quartet was first performed at a meeting of the Société Nationale de Musique, a collective that Fauré helped form in 1871 to promote a specifically “French” style of music.
From the start of the piece, the appeal is transparent: a unison theme in the strings above a gentle piano accompaniment. Even as the action builds, one senses a control and clarity more redolent of Brahms than Wagner. The second movement, a Scherzo, is fleet and capricious. Beneath the buoyant mood lurk subtle rhythmic complexities and a deft sense for counterpoint. The doleful Adagio, which begins in the home key of C minor, quickly turns rapturous with a move to A-flat major. The full piano texture clearly benefits from Fauré’s great skill and experience at the keyboard. I hear a youthful exuberance in many of the transitions, which do not have the concision or clarity of purpose found in the thematic sections. But once we are into the finale, the composer finds his stride again. This movement is large and thematically rich; prevailing dotted rhythms help unify parts of the movement, as well as recalling the quartet’s previous movements. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that the finale is a later addition. Fauré replaced the original finale with material written more than a decade after the premiere (1883 to be exact).

(c) Jason Stell