2017 Concert Series In Flanders Fields | Page 8

Requiem, Op.9
Maurice Duruflé (1902 - 1986)
Duruflé’s Requiem is not just his best-known large work; it is his only
large work. Apart from it, he published about a dozen shorter items
and slender collections in his long, 84-year lifetime. Ultra-hard work is
often given as the reason for this: for much of his life he was organist and
director of music at the highly active Paris church of Saint-Etienne-du-
Mont, whose proud history stretched back to the sixth century.
Another drawback to musical production was Duruflé’s almost
pathological need to continuously correct, revise and re-shape all his
musical output, in pursuit of an agonisingly elusive ideal of perfection.
A third reason would have to be the large compositional problem
that Duruflé set himself in his church music: the search for a seamless
marriage between the Gregorian chants that cradled his earliest years
in Rouen, and the colourful Impressionist style that greeted him when
he arrived in Paris in 1919, at the age of 17. The Requiem, completed a
couple of years after the Second World War, turned out to be his most
successful attempt to bring about this marriage.
Taking the Gregorian plainchant Mass for the Dead as his basic material,
Duruflé laboured, as he said, “to reconcile, as far as possible, Gregorian
rhythm…with…modern rhythm.” Flexibility of movement is the key to
a special stylistic hybrid that results when profoundly ancient melody
is blended with the colourful nuances and rich harmonies of the
Impressionists. Following Fauré, Duruflé omits the dark, ominous text of
the Dies Irae and opts instead for an ethereal Pie Jesu section.
The Requiem eventually appeared in three versions: the original score
with full orchestra, a chamber-music setting, and the version used in
this performance, which is for choir and organ.
© 2017 Heath Lees
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