Hale, Philip; Elson, Louis Charles, editors (1900). "Gabriel Fauré". Famous Composers and Their Works, Volume 5. Boston: J. B. Millet Company. pp. 79… - Gabriel Fauré

Mason, Daniel Gregory (1915). "Fauré and the Beginning of the New". The Art of Music: The Voice and Vocal Music. New York: The National Society of Music. pp. 347-353

It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. The music of Gounod has been criticized for its over-inclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist’s nature? As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.

For me art and music especially consists of raising ourselves as high as possible above that which is.