Program Notes MAURICE DURUFLÉ Requiem for Chorus, Orchestra and Organ, Op. 9 DURATION: ca. 40 minutes Overview Maurice Duruflé belongs to that small band of reticent masters, notably his teacher Paul Dukas and the Russian miniaturist Anatoly Liadov, who, despite excellent talent, left only a tiny handful of works to posterity: six pieces for organ, two brief orchestral scores, a pair of solo piano numbers, one chamber composition, and three choral works, including a set of Latin motets, a Mass and an exquisite Requiem. Duruflé’s compositions show the variety of his musical interests and background: the undulating lines and flowing rhythms of Gregorian chant; the supple voice leadings of Renaissance polyphony; the nobility of Franck; the harmonic opulence and shimmering sonorities of Debussy; the refined sensibility of Fauré; the meticulous craftsmanship of Ravel and Dukas. Duruflé’s works are both timeless and fresh, simultaneously preserving and renewing the great traditions of French music, both ancient and modern. Maurice Duruflé was born on January 11, 1902 in Normandy, in the town of Louviers, just south of Rouen, whose cathedral was the subject of Monet’s incomparable series of light studies a decade earlier. At the age of ten, Duruflé joined the Rouen Cathedral choir and entered its school, where he studied general subjects as well as piano, organ, voice and theory for the next six years. In 1919, he moved to Paris to study organ privately with Charles Tournemire, one of Franck’s last pupils, and he served as Tournemire’s assistant for eleven years. In 1920, Duruflé entered the Paris Conservatoire, going on to earn first prizes in organ, harmony, accompaniment, fugue and composition at that institution. He also studied organ with Louis Vierne and deputized for him at Notre Dame between 1929 and 1931; in 1930, Duruflé was appointed chief organist at St. Etiennedu Mont. In 1942, he substituted at the Conservatoire for Marcel Dupré and the following year he was appointed professor of harmony at the school, a position he held until 1969. Throughout his life, he also appeared widely as an organ virtuoso. He died on June 16, 1986 in Louveciennes, near Paris, a year after sustaining severe injuries in a car accident that ended his professional career. 40 THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2016-2017 Duruflé’s Requiem grew from a suite for organ based on the traditional Gregorian chant melodies of the Mass for the Dead. Just as that piece was being formulated immediately after the end of the Second World War, the composer received a commission from his publisher, Durand, for a Requiem Mass for chorus and large orchestra. The sketches for the organ work, including the chant quotations, were transferred to the new piece, which was completed in September 1947. The score is dedicated to the memory of the composer’s father. (Duruflé returned twice to the Requiem in later years, reducing the orchestral requirements to more modest proportions to facilitate the work’s performance in situations with limited resources.) Ever since it was premiered under the direction of Roger Desormière in November 1947, the Requiem has remained Duruflé’s most frequently performed composition. What To Listen For Though more modern in its harmonic palette and richer in the variety of its orchestral colors, in expression and technique Duruflé’s Requiem is deeply indebted to the one by Gabriel Fauré, written sixty years before. Unlike Verdi and Berlioz, who exploited the strong dramatic implications inherent in portions of the Requiem text, especially in that for the Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”), Fauré and Duruflé created works of consolation and optimism. Except for its closing lines (Pie Jesu, dona eis requiem — “Merciful Lord Jesus, grant them rest”), Fauré and Duruflé both omitted the Dies Irae completely, and ended their works with the comforting text of the antiphon, In Paradisum (“May the Angels lead you into Paradise”). Both settings begin and end with the word Requiem (“Grant them peace”). Much of the orchestral accompaniment is gentle and rippling and peaceable. Indeed, Fauré’s words about his Requiem could apply equally to that of Duruflé: “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death; someone has even called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration toward happiness above ...” © 2016 Dr. Richard E. Rodda Please visit www.FloridaOrchestra.org for our full program notes.
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