The life and music of Maurice Duruflé
The music of Maurice Duruflé has inspired and challenged me for over 50 years but I knew little about the composer until I came across a copy of a biography of him in an issue of L’Orgue Cahiers et Mémoires I acquired during a business trip to Paris in the mid-1990s. I took part in the BBC Mastermind competition in 2002 with Duruflé as my specialist subject. Then in 2008 I was able to spend a memorable couple of hours playing his music on the organ in St. Etienne du Mont.
(The author at the organ of St. Etienne du Mont, Paris, 2008)
With the exception of J.S.Bach no other organist/composer has been the subject of seven books, a testament to Duruflé as a composer, teacher and organist. The books are listed below in chronological order of publication with some brief notes about their scope and importance.
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986) L’Orgue Cahiers et Mémoires 1991-1 No. 45 66pp (in French)
This short but detailed biography was based on a thesis of Philippe Robert published in 1977, with a chapter by Francois Sabatier on the organs that Duruflé was associated with. There are also some extracts from a Duruflé’s memoirs that up to that time had not been published. It gives a good overall perspective of his life and music but not in any depth.
Ronald Ebrecht (Editor). Maurice Duruflé 1902-1986 The Last Impressionist. Scarecrow Press 2002. 215pp
Jörg Abbing. Maurice Duruflé Aspekte zu Leben und Werk. 2nd Edition. Verlag Peter Ewers 2002. 550pp (in German)
Both these books were published to mark the centenary of the birth of Duruflé in Louviers. There is a great deal of detail in the book edited by Ebrecht but inevitably some overlap between the individual chapter contributions. Abbing is a distinguished German organist and teacher and provides a good level of analysis of Duruflé’s compositions. An important feature of his book is a section with brief profiles of Duruflé’s pupils. It is important to appreciate the Duruflé was Professor of Harmony at the Conservatoire; Dupré was Professor of Organ.
Marius Schwemmer. Das Orgelwerk Maurice Duruflés im Orgelunterricht. Tectum Verlag 2003 153pp (in German)
Schwemmer limits his book to a consideration, from a performer’s perspective, of the organ music of Duruflé. The book is no longer in print.
Frédéric Blanc. Maurice Duruflé – Souvenirs et Autres Écrits Séguier 2005 207pp (in French)
Frédéric Blanc was one of the last pupils of Duruflé. He inherited their flat in the Parthenon together with their archives. This book contains the text of an autobiography that Duruflé wrote on 1976 together with a collection of reviews and other writings by Duruflé over the period from 1936 to his death in 1986.
James E Frazier. Maurice Duruflé The Man and His Music University of Rochester Press, 2007. 375pp
This is the definitive biography of Duruflé based on very extensive research, though Blanc did not provide access to the personal archives of the Duruflés. Several important topics are discussed for the first time, including the fact that Marie-Madeleine Duruflé was the second wife of Maurice and the games that Duruflé had to play when the Vichy regime commissioned him to write a symphony. The result was his remarkable Requiem published 1947!
Ronald Ebrecht. Duruflé’s Music Considered. Lexington Books, 2021. 495pp
Ebrecht follows up his 2002 book with an extraordinarily detailed analysis of all Duruflé’s compositions, with a particular focus on the process of composition and the many changes that Duruflé made to all of his compositions during his life.