Who has not claimed to have said that architecture is music frozen in time? Perhaps music is architecture floating into our ear. Anyway, I was just now introduced to the French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). A blogger on music whose blog doesn’t seem to reveal his real name, beyond the moniker of “Kaz,” or whether he is a musician, has started following my blog. I went to see his blog. It was beautiful.

First off, Kaz introduces me to Fauré, with whose name I’m familiar among the pantheon of composers. I was not intimate with his music, though now that I’ve listened to it freshly I’m sure I have heard it. Well, Kaz’s intro suggested that Fauré might parallel in some way the classical architects whose work deviated from the canon enough to raise the eyebrows of those who protected it in those days. I am fascinated by that debate among today’s classical architects, so I decided to read on, and to listen.

“Fauré’s music,” writes Kaz, “is often thought of as bridging the gap between the Romantic and Modern eras of music, much like Beethoven’s was seen as heralding the end of the Classical period.” He adds:

Classic FM writes that “[Fauré’s] distinctive harmonies can be savoured like an exotic liqueur,” and indeed Fauré’s music is always of exquisite taste; perfectly balanced yet beguilingly sensual in its quintessentially French sound, it “flows effortlessly, magically combining Monet’s liquid cool with the warmth of a Pissarro landscape.”

The first piece Kaz links to is Élégie, Op. 24, played by the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra. It had melody so it was clearly not modernist atonal music. It was passionate, and eventually some notes of a slight discordance are introduced, but not in any offensive manner, just enough to make you wonder. The tune is sad, befitting an elegy I suppose.

Fauré was a romantic in that he liked to seduce women. One was the future wife of Debussey. Another, according to Kaz, broke his heart. His pain may be felt in his duet Après un reve for violin and piano, played by Janine Jensen and Itamar Golan, to a video of which Kaz links. It is lovely and sad, and tells a story that pulls at your heartstrings as if they were strung on a musical instrument and stroked by the teaze of circumstance.

I don’t know whether my comparison of Fauré to the heterodox classicists holds water. I do know that the architecture of, say, Louis Sullivan is not a bridge between classical and modern architecture. Modern architecture is a completely different beast, much as is atonal music. In both cases, the “bridge” was not used to span a natural progression in the evolution of an art form. No. The future was dynamited and is now, after years of loss in a dire wilderness, being reconstructed.

I trust that the excellent blog of Kaz and its beautiful music will add to efforts at reconstruction in his own realm. I will link to his blog.

[Update: Kaz is Karim Hakimzadeh, a London-born, New York-based “entrepreneur running a hedge fund specializing in disruptive technologies (I’ve invested in fields like gene-sequencing, life sciences, renewable energy and the like).” He says he is near launching an app for learning music.]