Finally
in the edition
he deserves
A Message from the Editor, Roy Howat
For me editing Fauré’s music has been endlessly satisfying as well as a musical revelation. I’d long been aware that older editions were teeming with misprints or illogical markings that left many pieces feeling oddly out of focus, or at worst made some works just fall flat.
It’s been thrilling to find solutions to these problems in manuscripts or other rare sources, including witness accounts of Fauré’s playing and musical coaching. Neglected pieces like the Ninth and Tenth Nocturnes emerge with dramatic cogency, more familiar pieces like the Pavane and the Dolly ‘Berceuse’ take a fresher spring in their step, and pianists, flautists, violinists and cellists at last have access to some beautiful pieces hitherto unavailable. It has been the opportunity of a lifetime to bring all this marvellous and vital material into print.
Fauré himself was a character of unpretentious but constant wit and playfulness; these qualities brim over in his scores, which he marked up boldly for performance, often with indications printed or clarified for the first time in the new Peters editions. All this accords with the memoirs of musicians who worked with Fauré, as well as his own son Philippe who emphasised the importance of ‘playing out the drama’ in this entrancing, passionate music.
