What distinguishes Fauré’s Requiem from numerous other settings of the requiem text is its rather intimate, restrained, almost chamber-music nature, a “lullaby of death”, as it has also been called, initially more as a criticism of a work that for most of the time avoids depicting the dread of death and the Last Judgement. Fauré’s reply “But this is how I feel about death: as a happy liberation, as a striving for happiness in the hereafter rather than as a painful transition” not only perfectly describes essential characteristics of his Requiem, but also reveals it to be a very personal expression of the composer’s very own artistic nature.