Maurice Duruflé was born in Louviers in 1902. At a young age he was sent to the choir school at Rouen, which specialised in the singing of Gregorian chant. Whilst this was to equip him with an excellent musical education, later in life Duruflé complained that his childhood had been “… one of imprisonment for up to eighteen hours a day, with endless choir rehearsals, piano lessons and church services.”  Whatever his opinion of his schooling, he was a gifted musician and this early training later enabled him to enter the Paris Conservatoire to study composition. Shortly afterwards, having fallen out with his tutor, the celebrated Charles Tournemire, he took organ lessons from Vierne, the organist of Notre Dame, and composition lessons from Dukas. He entered the Conservatoire again as a teacher of composition and organ in 1943 – a position he was to hold until 1969.

Duruflé stands apart from many of his contemporaries – composers such as Bernstein, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Britten. A reserved and modest man, Duruflé was ill at ease socially, refused invitations to travel to give lectures and recitals, was reluctant to allow his work to be published, and was described as “out of touch” by students, colleagues, and biographers. He lived as a reclusive and private person and seemed unusually unsure and timid given his highly respected ability as a teacher and an organist. He lived in Paris between the two world wars, during one of its most chaotic and creative periods, and yet he showed no interest in sharing in the salons of the literary and musical elite. Eschewing change, he was a conservative in a radical world. However, his unexpected marriage at the age of fifty-one, to a highly gifted organ student some nineteen years his junior, provided happiness and a new-found joie de vivre. His wife brought him social ease, self-esteem and confidence, and together they toured Europe and the United States, giving organ duet recitals and performances to great acclaim. In 1974 they were both involved in a serious car accident, an event which cut short both their professional and social lives. Duruflé lost both of his legs and remained virtually housebound until his death in 1986.  His wife was also seriously injured. 

The requiem was originally commissioned by the French music publishers Durand for the composer’s father.  It was also performed at his own burial. At the time of the commission for the requiem, Duruflé was working on a suite of organ music with different movements based on Gregorian chants. Regarded as something of an expert in this field, as a result of his intensive schooling in Rouen, Duruflé allowed Gregorian chant to pervade much of his composition. The Requiem is absolutely no exception. Duruflé himself stated that “all of its melodies are based on that ancient funeral mass.”  Certainly it is easy to see on numerous occasions in the score where he simply copies the melody from the plainsong, provides it with a notated rhythm with metre, and thereby gives it a sense of pulse. 

Here, for example, is the very opening phrase of the first movement notated in its original plainsong form:

And here, in modern notation, as Duruflé sets it:

 

Having done this, he then supports and surrounds the melody with a rich and glorious harmonic language, a musical language in which we can hear a beautiful fusion of Debussy, Fauré, Saint-Saëns and Messiaen. The contrast between the modal melodic line of the chant, and the tonal harmonic structure which supports it, where unresolved added notes are used to colour existing primary triads, is tantalising. The intention was to reconcile the beauty of the ancient plainsong melodies with a French Impressionistic context and the exigencies of the modern metre. The result is a frequently shifting soundworld, with an irregular metre, which allows the music to be notated strictly whilst making provision for a delicious sense of spontaneity for the listener and a beautiful setting for the words. It is as if the centuries-old and timeless plainsong melodies are swimming around in a rich sea of luxuriant harmony and carefully controlled dissonance.