Préludes
No. 1 in B flat major - No. 2 in C sharp minor - No. 3 in G minor - No. 4 in F major - No. 5 in D minor - No. 6 in E flat minor – No. 7 in A major - No. 8 in C minor - No. 9 in E minor
Fauré’s Préludes were composed in 1909 and 1910, just a few months before Debussy’s Book I. While the latter evokes explicit extra-musical inspirations, Fauré’s pieces, without subtitles and characterised only by their different keys, seem rather to depict changing moods: intimacy and meditation; unquietness and mystery; severity; guileless pastorality; and so on. The Préludes were composed during the period in which Fauré wrote Pénélope. Like a personal diary for a writer working on a novel of universal scope, these introspective pieces appear to have given him the support he needed in order to be able to tackle opera. Here and there (especially in no. 5) we notice similarities between these piano pieces and Pénélope a, which was premièred at the Monte-Carlo Opera House in 1913. We must also remember – as Jacques Bonnaure has pointed out – that the genesis of Opus 103 was closely bound up with the founding (end of 1909) of the Société Musicale Indépendante, and that the work was premièred there by Marguerite Long. Founded by a group of young composers, Ravel, Koechlin and Schmitt, with Fauré as its president, that society opposed the conservative Société Nationale de Musique (directed by Vincent d'Indy) and promoted a more progressive and inclusive approach to music.