Maurice Duruflé’s 40th Anniversary

Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of the French composer, organist and teacher Maurice Gustave Duruflé (1902-86). He was born in a small town in Normandy, and attended the cathedral school at Rouen from age 10 to 16; In 1919, right after the end of World War I, he moved to Paris, and took lessons with the famous organist Charles Tournemire. The following year, he began studying at one of the most prestigious music schools in Europe, the Conservatoire de Paris; later on, in 1943, he was hired by this school, and taught there until 1970. In 1927, the organist of Notre-Dame, Louis Vierne, took him on as his assistant; the two became good friends, and ten years later, Duruflé was at Vierne’s side when the latter died suddenly in the middle of a recital. From 1929 until his death, he was the organist at the Parisian church of St-Étienne-du-Mont, although in the last eleven years of his life, after being seriously injured in a car crash, he was almost entirely unable to perform.

A photo of Duruflé taken in 1939.

His best known work is a Requiem (Opus 9) for choir, two soloists, orchestra, and organ, first published in 1947. Duruflé was a perfectionist who frequently revised his own composition, and this piece is therefore known in three versions, one for symphony orchestra, one for chamber orchestra, and one with organ. (One of his Masses was similarly revised and published in three different versions.) The Dies Irae is reduced to just the last two lines (Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem), but the Libera me and In paradisum are both included.