Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 – 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.

Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a young boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to the École Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, he was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.

Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France, notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.

The poem "Le Secret" comes from Silvestre’s collection entitled Le pays des roses (1882) where its title is Mystère. Once again the dating of the song suggests that the composer set the poem from a handwritten copy, or from an early publication in a magazine. Here is the Fauré–Silvestre collaboration at its best. If the gently flowing Nell personifies one kind of Fauré song, Le secret is among the best of another genre. This is music that encompasses religious awe or devotion (the composer of the Requiem can be identified, and the accompaniment often suggests the organ), that is almost always in tempi so slow that it approaches a kind of immobility. This achieves a transcendental effect with minimalist means – in short, a mystery worthy of the poem’s original title. The vocal line, a memorable melody, wistful and heartfelt, is preceded by four crotchet chords; the second of these, on the third degree of the scale, introduces a Gregorian flavour to the music that Jankélévitch compares to the Franciscan fervour to be found in some of Liszt’s piano and vocal music. The same writer finds that the delicacy of the two-bar interludes between Silvestre’s strophes is like ‘the breath of the beloved’. Like Schubert, Fauré has the ability to use the major key to write music that is tinged with melancholy; this silent worship expects, and receives, no reciprocation. Fauré always doubted his own worth and the worth of his work but the following incident, recounted by the composer to Henri Malherbe is revealing: ‘I’d recently finished a song called Le secret. I played it to Henri Duparc who began to tremble with emotion. The composer of La vie antérieure began to punch me with his fists shouting “Savage! Brute!” I realized then that Le secret was something good.’

Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Faur%C3%A9)

Although originally composed for Voice (Soprano) and Piano, I created this Interpretation of the "Le Secret" from "3 Songs" (Op. 23 No. 3) for Winds (Flute, Oboe, French Horn & Bassoon) and Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).