This bundle includes:
1. A digital PDF of the Teacher Resource Guide from the Teaching Music textbook
2. An mp3 recording of the work

Beginning as an austere lament (the title means “funeral song”), the eight-minute work is characterized by a poignant, downward-pointing melody in C minor played over a procession of chords in quarter notes. Earlier pieces such as the Élégie for cello and the song “Après un Rêve” are constructed in similar fashion, with a lyric melody played over a steady, rhythmically unchanging accompaniment.

The second theme is gentler in character and is in a major key. The contrast between the dark minor key theme and the warm second theme is resolved in a coda, which presents the first theme’s material transformed in C major. Both the tone of somber meditation and the consoling emotional turn from darkness to light are characteristic of Fauré.