Editing Gabriel Fauré (section)

===Piano works===
{{Main|Piano music of Gabriel Fauré}}
Fauré's major sets of piano works are thirteen [[nocturne]]s, thirteen [[barcarolle]]s, six [[impromptu]]s, and four valses-caprices. These sets were composed across the decades of his career, and display the change in his style from uncomplicated youthful charm to a final enigmatic, but sometimes fiery introspection, by way of a turbulent period in his middle years.<ref name=copland/> His other notable piano pieces, including shorter works, or collections composed or published as a set, are ''Romances sans paroles'', [[Ballade (classical music)|Ballade]] in F{{music|sharp}} major, [[Mazurka]] in B{{music|flat}} major, ''Thème et variations'' in C{{music|sharp}} minor, and ''Huit pièces brèves''. For [[piano four hands|piano duet]], Fauré composed the ''[[Dolly (Fauré)|Dolly Suite]]'' and, together with his friend and former pupil [[André Messager]], an exuberant parody of [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]] in the short suite ''Souvenirs de Bayreuth''.<ref>Duchen, pp. 222–224</ref>

The piano works often use [[Arpeggio|arpeggiated]] figures, with the melody interspersed between the two hands, and include finger substitutions natural for organists. These aspects make them daunting for some pianists. Even a virtuoso like Liszt said that he found Fauré's music hard to play.<ref name="Jones, p. 51"/>{{refn|Fauré visited Liszt in Zürich in July 1882. The elder composer played one of his own compositions and then began Fauré's [[Ballade (classical music)|Ballade]] in F{{music|sharp}} major. After a few bars he said, "I've run out of fingers", and asked Fauré to play the rest of the piece to him. Nectoux and Duchen speculate that Liszt may have had difficulty in reading the manuscript or wanted to hear how Fauré himself would play.;<ref>Nectoux (1991), p.51; and Duchen, p. 61</ref> Jones and Morrison simply state that Liszt found the music "too difficult".<ref>Jones, p. 51; and Morrison, p. 11</ref>|group= n}}  The early piano works are clearly influenced by Chopin.<ref>Nectoux (1991), p. 49</ref> An even greater influence was [[Robert Schumann|Schumann]], whose piano music Fauré loved more than any other.<ref>Nectoux (1991), p. 43</ref> In Copland's view, it was with the sixth Nocturne that Fauré fully emerged from any predecessor's shadow.<ref name=copland/> The pianist [[Alfred Cortot]] said, "There are few pages in all music comparable to these."<ref name=copland/> The critic Bryce Morrison has noted that pianists frequently prefer to play the charming earlier piano works, such as the Impromptu No. 2, rather than the later piano works, which express "such private passion and isolation, such alternating anger and resignation" that listeners are left uneasy.<ref>Morrison, p. 7</ref> In his piano music, as in most of his works, Fauré shunned virtuosity in favour of the classical lucidity often associated with the French.<ref name=baker/> He was unimpressed by purely virtuoso pianists, saying, "the greater they are, the worse they play me."<ref>Nectoux (1991), p. 379</ref>