Last week, I had an email exchange with Ian Capps, president of Early Music Hawaii, about the William Byrd concert, which now had originally been scheduled for April and now is been rescheduled to May. Thinking that I could get ahead on the project, I set up the ticket program a couple of weeks ago, and even had one person purchase tickets for the concert which now is going to be postponed until May. During the discussion, I mentioned that Tim Carney, director of the Hawai‘i Vocal Arts Ensemble, had asked about my availability to play a concert in April, May or June.

It turns out those HVAE concerts are now going to be March 26th and April 1st, THIS COMING WEEKEND (!) and I only picked up the score last week (in the midst of hosting organist Caroline Robinson!)

Fauré’s Requiem is beloved by many, and I have played it numerous times over the course of my career. Here’s what Wikipedia says about the work:

Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. The choral–orchestral setting of the shortened Catholic Mass for the Dead in Latin is the best-known of his large works. Its focus is on eternal rest and consolation. Fauré’s reasons for composing the work are unclear, but do not appear to have had anything to do with the death of his parents in the mid-1880s. He composed the work in the late 1880s and revised it in the 1890s, finishing it in 1900.

Fauré wrote of the work, “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”

Fauré’s reasons for composing his Requiem are uncertain. One possible impetus may have been the death of his father in 1885, and his mother’s death two years later, on New Year’s Eve 1887. However, by the time of his mother’s death he had already begun the work, about which he later declared, “My Requiem wasn’t written for anything – for pleasure, if I may call it that!” The earliest composed music included in the Requiem is the Libera me, which Fauré wrote in 1877 as an independent work.

There are actually a few ways an organist can play this piece: 1) as a complete organ solo, with no other instruments; it is extremely challenging! 2) with a few instruments, but most critically, with a harp to play the arpeggiated sections. This is the version I’ve played the most times and one of the most manageable; and 3) with a full orchestra. I remember once when we performed it on three days’ notice, when it was requested for the funeral of a church member, Fred Jungman. We also performed it for the funeral of Dale Noble at Calvary by the Sea Lutheran Church, and my husband conducted the service, only to succumb himself just a few months later. That was in 2014.

I have actually performed it at least three times with Tim Carney conducting. Two times were at the Mystic Rose Chapel at Chaminade University, two performances in 2016. At that time, I wrote: Last night could only be described in one word: nightmare. You see, I was accompanying the Hawaii Masterworks Festival chorus in their first performance of the Fauré Requiem and my music would not stay open! That meant that every few seconds, I would need to take whatever hand was free at the moment to swat the page back towards the music rack.

In the last movement, In paradisum, it was especially critical for me to have a page turner (human kind), and when the page started turning backwards the page turner did nothing and I had to lift my hands off the keyboard to try to keep the book open. Of course, this meant that I had to leave some notes out! When this happened two pages in a row, I finally asked aloud to him to please hold the book down! He did this for a couple of pages and then went back to the bass section and I had to fend for myself the last few pages.

I guess it was too much to ask to see that I needed help?!

Of course, I guess I could always read the score on an iPad and scrunch up my mouth like Caroline Robinson did on her concert last Sunday!

You can read the complete story here: Desperate measures needed. I also had a problem with a key sticking down and I had to keep pulling it up!

Another memorable performance under Tim’s conducting was in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland, on tour with the Hawaii Masterworks Chorus. We were competing against Beyoncé, who was having a concert in another part of the city, and 85,000 people were expected at the concert, with 75,000 of them being women! You can read all about our performance here: The view from the organ loft. What I remember most vividly was seeing Margaret Thatcher’s face on a pair of boxer shorts, hanging near the organ console!

And the view from the organ loft was admittedly a little scary, because the bench was right next to the railing, with about a four-story drop!

… we performed the Fauré Requiem in its entirety, with the Dublin Symphony in our final concert at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Out of all our performances, I think I will never forget Naomi Castro’s sweet voice singing the Pie Jesu in that historic building—her pure voice just soared over the muted strings. And Buz Tennent sang a heroic Libera me. The choir sounded like a beautiful rainbow over the orchestra!

Here are Gabriel Fauré’s own opinion of this work:

It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. The music of Gounod has been criticised for its inclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist’s nature? As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.

And I leave for South America in just 2-1/2 weeks!