Gabriel Fauré

A French organist and composer of orchestral, piano, chamber, vocal, and dramatic music, such as the opera Penelope (1913). Faur� wedded the chromatic freedom of the Wagnerian palette with his strong French sensibility for melodic line and transparent timbres, retaining his own compositional voice to create pieces of great beauty. His songs (over 100) establish a new relation of music to words -- by never reacting directly to the meaning of the words, Faur� uses the music to change and/or expand them, making the piano more than a mere accompaniment: it is an integral part of the composition. ~ Blue Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide