Maurice Duruflé

The output of organist/composer Maurice Duruflé might be small, but it’s an oeuvre fastidiously crafted and betrays an intimate rapprochement with the rhythmic freedom and supple melodies of Gregorian plainchant. That’s not perhaps surprising, as Duruflé (born in Louvier in 1902) was a boy chorister in the choir of Rouen Cathedral. His composition teacher Paul Dukas excepted, many of Duruflé’s mentors included such luminaries of the French organ world as Charles Tournemire, Louis Vierne and Eugène Gigout. He was a formidable virtuoso, premiering Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, String Orchestra and Timpani in 1939, and remaining titular organist at the prestigious Parisian church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont for over half a century until his death in 1986. Completed in 1947, Duruflé’s Requiem Op. 9 is one of his finest achievements—like that of Gabriel Fauré, a work enshrining solace—while the lesser-known Messe “Cum Jubilo” (1966) affords a large-scale postscript to the lushly harmonised Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens pour choeur a cappella Op. 10, four exquisite miniatures suffused with the fragrance of incense and a beatific serenity.