Gabriel Faure: A Guide to Research (review)

Gabriel Fauré: A Guide to Research. By Edward R. Phillips. (Composer Resource Manuals, 49.) New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. [xv, 429 p. ISBN 0-8240-7023-9. $95.]

Some myths, including a few surrounding Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), die hard.

For instance, one still occasionally finds Fauré characterized as a "salon composer," a "miniaturist," or an artist of the "second rank." Yet anyone familiar with his chamber music, La bonne chanson, or Pénélope recognizes the absurdity of such labels and knows that Fauré takes no back seat to any contemporary. And while one rarely reads anymore that Fauré's music is "too French to travel," suggestions persist that it is only for a select few, or that it is reactionary, or even that it is fundamentally ambiguous. Close examination of his oeuvre, however, reveals that Fauré's distinctive style departs from the romantic and Germanic traditions, featuring a language based on the principle of allusion and the play of expectation. Finally, claims of Fauré's "neglect" still come from well-meaning admirers, although this rhetorical ploy now does more to undermine Fauré's image than to improve it. Before Jean-Michel Nectoux's Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), there may have been truth to this notion, but today it seems more appropriate to speak of willful ignorance than neglect. Recent essay collections, like Regarding Fauré, edited by Tom Gordon (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1999), certainly offer proof of a flourishing interest in the composer, as do increasing numbers of performances and recordings. Evidence for all of these assertions now may be more readily accessed, thanks to a new resource manual by Edward Phillips.

Gabriel Fauré: A Guide to Research surveys the available documents pertaining to the composer. Musicians casually acquainted with Fauré will be struck by the range of material it encompasses, Fauré scholars will be surprised by the number of items they never knew existed, and all will be astonished by the amount of research this book represents. Its content is organized into five chapters, plus five appendixes and an author index.

Chapter 1 recites basic facts of Fauré's life and reviews some of the myths that have hindered his reputation. Chapter 2, entitled "Works," begins with a tabular list of his compositions, grouped by genre and ordered by opus number; also included here are compositions without opus number and transcriptions by Fauré, as well as didactic, miscellaneous, and doubtful pieces. Each title entry includes dates of composition and publication, as well as information on the original publisher and on primary sources. Following this list are the first of 1,148 bibliographic entries, including references to Fauré's editions of music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Robert Schumann, his music criticism, written responses to enquêtes, interviews, prefaces contributed to works by others, and personal correspondence. Particularly helpful are the extensive and insightful endnotes concluding this and subsequent chapters.

Chapter 3 offers a systematic description of the extant primary sources of Fauré's music--manuscripts, sketches, partial autographs, and annotated proofs--now held in libraries around the world. These sources are listed by location (ordered by country, city, library, and collection) and identified by call number and title. Phillips's descriptions of the manuscripts are extremely detailed, including information on paper, staves, foliation, binding, pagination, ink, orthography, signature, dating, corrections, significant markings, and unusual features. Interspersed are bibliographic entries for general commentaries and formal studies dealing with these primary sources.

Chapter 4, "Bibliography," provides individual references to monographs, articles, dissertations, newspaper accounts, and other writings that address the life and works of Fauré. These are organized into thirty-one separate categories (e.g., "Monographs," "Fauré and the Conservatoire," "Technical Discussions," "Orchestral Works," etc.). In addition, there are sections devoted to exhibition catalogs, discographies, miscellaneous articles, and "oddities." Readers will appreciate Phillips's pithy annotations, which often communicate the spirit as well as the substance of each item and occasionally reveal errors of fact.

Finally, chapter 5, "Afterword...