One of Gabriel Fauré's best-known works, the Requiem was gradually assembled between 1887 and 1893. The first version was performed at the Église de la Madeleine in Paris in 1888, but was regarded as too lightweight by the clergy. Perhaps it was this judgement that led to Fauré's later addition of the darker Offertorium and Libera Me movements.

Many of the melodies are reminiscent of Gregorian chant, but the work is unmistakably modern in style. Fauré was keen to create his own form for the Requiem: interviewed in 1902 he said:

It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. [...] [P]erhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.