Movement 1: Allegro, ma non troppo Movement 2: Andantino
Movement 3: Allegro vivo Then, in 1905, he was actually made
Director of the Conservatoire and his subversive nature came out
into the open. Suddenly, gone were the comfortable perks and
practices hallowed by tradition and in came a rational programme
of reform which instituted, among other things, the rendering of
operatic items in the form in which composers had written them,
and not ‘as always sung at the Opéra’. Fauré, now nicknamed
‘Robespierre’, made powerful and articulate enemies. How else
can we explain the fact that when he died in 1924, the right to
a state funeral of this ex-Director of the Conservatoire, Member
of the Institut, President of the Société Nationale de Musique,
Grand-Croix de la Légion d’honneur, should have been questioned
by the Arts Minister with the words: ‘Fauré? Qui ça?’. To adapt
a modern phrase from another context, Fauré was in the
Establishment but never of it. His immunity to fashion can be
seen in the titles of his