A scholarly-critical edition of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem is an editorial adventure, since the composer expanded the work several times after the premiere of the “small” version of 1888. The edition in the new Fauré complete edition offers a convincing solution.
The Requiem op. 48 is undoubtedly the most popular and most frequently performed work by Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924). In its concentrated scoring, in its duration of 35–40 minutes, and in its relative accessibility even for semi-professional choirs, it has been a key work in the sacred music repertoire for several decades – in both its “large” version of 1900/1901, which was the only one known until the early 1990s, and the “small” version of 1893. One might assume that such a famous work had long been available in an authoritative edition, but far from it: the edition which is now being published as part of the Complete Works of Gabriel Fauré is actually the first which has evaluated all the known and available sources. It has revealed some new, surprising variant readings.
In order to understand the problems which confronted the editors, it is necessary to briefly outline the history of the composition and performance of the work. Fauré had composed the original version of his Requiem during his time at the Église de la Sainte Madeleine in Paris, where it was premiered on 16 January 1888 – without the “Offertoire” and “Libera me” and without wind instruments. Over the following years the work was frequently performed, sometimes in church (and in the liturgical context of a requiem mass), but also sometimes in the concert hall. For almost all of these performances, Fauré augmented and expanded the extent and scoring of the work by adding new parts into the original manuscript (which now only partially survives) in pencil or ink (“Introît et Kyrie”, “Sanctus”, “Agnus Dei” and “In paradisum”); these are included as a complete facsimile in the edition of the Complete Works of Gabriel Fauré. Finally, in 1893, there was a “small” version (without woodwind and, except for a solo in the “Sanctus” – without violins), which was reconstructed and edited by Jean-Michel Nectoux and Roger Delage in 1994. At the time, the Requiem already enjoyed such popularity that Fauré’s publisher Julien Hamelle constantly urged the composer to produce a “large” version scored for normal forces. Fauré evidently had no particular desire to spend time on this task, but eventually gave in to Hamelle’s request: in February 1900, the vocal score (prepared by Fauré’s pupil Roger Ducasse) was published, followed by the full score and printed parts in September 1901.
However, neither an engraver’s copy nor proofs of this “large” version exist, apart from a few corrections in Fauré’s hand in a copy of the printed vocal score. And this does not correspond entirely with those parts which Fauré added later in his original manuscript; for example, in places, the wind parts differ so greatly from those which Fauré had added in the manuscript of the “small” version, that these are reproduced separately in the appendix of the new edition. One might even wonder whether the final orchestration is really by the composer himself, or whether it wasn’t created in large parts by Roger Ducasse or another of his students according to his instructions. At any rate, neither the manuscript score nor parts survive, even though they must have existed; they were probably used by the publisher as performance or hire material until they were so worn out that they were simply thrown away …
And so, the editors began with the printed orchestral score as a primary source, until a detailed comparison with the parts which were printed at the same time (but which had evidently never previously been issued in a new edition) raised major questions about this approach: in fact, this comparison resulted in so many divergences between score and parts – including missing notes in the score! – that finally both first editions, score and parts, had to be evaluated as primary sources of equal value.
At the end of this “editorial whodunit” we now have an edition of the Requiem, which, although it cannot claim to be the “last edition”, nevertheless offers a new and convincing version of the work in many details.
Christina M. Stahl / Michael Stegemann
(Translation: Elizabeth Robinson)