Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. The choral-orchestral setting of the shortened Catholic Mass for the Dead in Latin is the best-known of his large works. Its focus is on eternal rest and consolation. Fauré's reasons for composing the work are unclear, but do not appear to have had anything to do with the death of his parents in the mid-1880s. He composed the work in the late 1880s and revised it in the 1890s, finishing it in 1900. In seven movements, the work is scored for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed choir, orchestra and organ. Different from typical Requiem settings, the full sequence is omitted, replaced by its section . The final movement is based on a text that is not part of the liturgy of the funeral Mass but of the burial. Fauré wrote of the work, "Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest." The piece premiered in its first version in 1888 in La Madeleine in Paris for a funeral Mass. A performance takes about 35 minutes. History Fauré's reasons for composing his Requiem are uncertain. One possible impetus may have been the death of his father in 1885, and his mother's death two years later, on New Year's Eve 1887. However, by the time of his mother's death he had already begun the work, about which he later declared, "My Requiem wasn't written for anything – for pleasure, if I may call it that!" The earliest composed music included in the Requiem is the Libera me, which Fauré wrote in 1877 as an independent work. In 1887–88, Fauré composed the first version of the work, which he called "" with five movements ( and , , , and ), but did not include his . This version was first performed on 16 January 1888 for the funeral of Joseph Lesoufaché, an architect, at La Madeleine, Paris. The composer conducted his work; the treble soloist was Louis Aubert. In 1889, Fauré added the portion of the Offertory and in 1890 he expanded the Offertory and added the 1877 . This second version was premiered on 21 January 1893, again at the Madeleine with Fauré conducting. The church authorities allowed no female singers and