page_title: Piano music of Gabriel Fauré
section_title: Nocturnes
hierarchical_section_title: Piano music of Gabriel Fauré / Nocturnes
caption_attribution_description: English: Gabriel Fauré by Emile Tourtin, Paris.
context_page_description: The French composer Gabriel Fauré wrote in many genres, including songs, chamber music, orchestral pieces, and choral works. His compositions for piano, written between the 1860s and the 1920s, include some of his best known works.
  Fauré's major sets of piano works are thirteen nocturnes, thirteen barcarolles, six impromptus, and four valses-caprices. These sets were composed during several decades in his long career, and display the change in his style from uncomplicated youthful charm to a final enigmatic, but sometimes fiery introspection, by way of a turbulent period in his middle years. His other notable piano pieces, including shorter works, or collections composed or published as a set, are Romances sans paroles, Ballade in F♯ major, Mazurka in B♭ major, Thème et variations in C♯ major, and Huit pièces brèves. For piano duet, Fauré composed the Dolly Suite and, together with his friend and former pupil André Messager, an exuberant parody of Wagner in the short suite Souvenirs de Bayreuth.
  Much of Fauré's piano music is difficult to play, but is rarely virtuosic in style.
context_section_description: The nocturnes, along with the barcarolles, are generally regarded as the composer's greatest piano works. Fauré greatly admired the music of Chopin, and was happy to compose in forms and patterns established by the earlier composer. Morrison notes that Fauré's nocturnes follow Chopin's model, contrasting serene outer sections with livelier or more turbulent central episodes. The composer's son Philippe commented that the nocturnes "are not necessarily based on rêveries or on emotions inspired by the night. They are lyrical, generally impassioned pieces, sometimes anguished or wholly elegiac."
  Nocturne No 1 in E♭ minor, Op. 33/1 (c.1875)
  Nectoux rates the first nocturne as one of the best of the composer's early works. It is dedicated, like Fauré's song "Après un rêve", to his friend and early patron Marguerite Baugnies. Morrison calls the piece "cloistered and elegiac." Though published as the composer's Op. 33/1 in 1883, it was written considerably earlier. It opens with a slow, pensive melody, followed by a more agitated second theme and another melody in C major, and ends with the return of the opening theme. The pianist and academic Sally Pinkas writes that the work contains many hallmarks of Fauré's style, including "undulating rhythms, syncopation of the accompaniment against the melody and layered textures are already in evidence."
  Nocturne No 2 in B major, Op. 33/2 (c.1880)
  The second nocturne opens with a bell-like passage, andantino espressivo, recalling – although Fauré said it was unconscious – the sound of distant bells that he heard frequently when a boy. Nectoux singles out "the light footed episode in alternating fifths and sixths" and its extremely delicate passagework, and points to the influence of Fauré's former teacher Saint-Saëns in the allegro ma non troppo toccata section. Saint-Saëns himself declared the piece "absolutely entrancing."
  Nocturne No 3 in A♭ major, Op. 33/3 (c.1882)
  In the third nocturne, Morrison notes that the composer's fondness for syncopation is at its gentlest, "nostalgia lit by passion." Like its predecessors, it is in tripartite form. An expansive melody with syncopated left-hand accompaniment leads into a middle section in which a dolcissimo theme metamorphoses into bursts of passion. The return of the opening section is concluded by a gentle coda that introduces new harmonic subtleties.
  Nocturne No 4 in E♭ major, Op. 36 (c.1884)
  The fourth nocturne, dedicated to the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau, contrasts a lyrical opening section and an episode in E♭ minor with a sombre theme recalling the tolling of a bell. The first theme returns and is followed by a short coda. The pianist Alfred Cortot, generally a great admirer of Fauré, found the piece "rather too satisfied with its languor."
  Nocturne No 5 in B♭ major, Op. 37 (c.1884)
  By contrast with its predecessor, the fifth nocturne is more animated, with unexpected shifts into remote keys. Nectoux writes of its undulating outline, and the "almost improvisatory, questioning character" of the opening.
  Nocturne No 6 in D♭ major, Op. 63 (1894)
  The sixth nocturne, dedicated to Eugène d'Eichthal, is widely held to be one of the finest of the series. Cortot said, "There are few pages in all music comparable to these."  Morrison calls it "among the most rich and eloquent of all Fauré's piano works." The pianist and writer Nancy Bricard calls it "one of the most passionate and moving works in piano literature." Fauré wrote it after a six-year break from composing for the piano. The piece begins with an emotional, outpouring phrase, with echoes of Fauré's song cycle  La bonne chanson. The second theme, at first seemingly tranquil, has what the composer Charles Koechlin calls a persistent inquietude, emphasised by the syncopated accompaniment. The initial theme returns, and is followed by a substantial development of a gentle, contemplative melody. A recapitulation of the principal theme takes the piece to its conclusion. Copland wrote that it was with this work that Fauré first fully emerged from the shadow of Chopin, and he said of the pi
caption: Fauré in 1875
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