French composer Gabriel Faure (1845-1924) wrote a number of significant works for cello. His Elegie Op.24 was composed in 1889, as the slow movement of a proposed cello sonata, which was never completed, and it was first performed and published in 1883 as a stand-alone piece and with its present title.

Elegie is dedicated to the cellist Jules Loeb, who gave the first performances accompanied by the composer in December 1883. It was later orchestrated and performed at the Societe Nationale in April 1901, with Pablo Casals as the soloist and the composer as conductor.

This new edition for double bass and piano by David Heyes transposed the work a 5th higher than the original version and includes piano accompaniments for both solo and orchestral tunings. It transcribes well for the double bass and provides a work of great elegance and poise which successfully explores the sonorous, lyrical and passionate possibilities of the solo double bass.

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 – 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher and was one of the foremost French composers of his generation. His musical style influenced many 20th-century composers and among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Nocturnes, Après un rêve and Clair de lune, alongside a wealth of instrumental and vocal music. Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a harmonically and melodically much more complex style.

Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend, and after graduating in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. He subsequently was appointed to the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire.

Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France and noted that his harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations.