Requiem Op.9

When Duruflé was working on his Requiem in 1947 he would have been very aware of two great works of the same kind by French composers of earlier generations – Berlioz’s Grande Messe des Morts and Fauré’s Requiem. He wouldn’t have wanted to imitate either of them but, the monumentality of the Berlioz example being entirely alien to his own essentially modest temperament, he must have found the Fauré Requiem a congenial model for its intimacy if nothing else. It suited him to omit the scourging Dies Irae from his setting and to end the work with two items, Libera me and In Paradisum, which actually belong to the Order of Burial rather than the Requiem Mass. Fauré had done the same.

The essential difference between Fauré’s Requiem and Duruflé’s is that the melodic material of the latter derives directly from Gregorian chant – which was second nature to a musician like Duruflé, who had been a choral scholar from the age of 10 at Rouen Cathedral and who had studied in Paris with the greatest church organists of the day. Fauré, who was a church organist too, was no stranger to Gregorian chant: it is an important aspect of the style of the Requiem. Unlike Duruflé, however, he absorbed it into the musical language of the day. Duruflé was actually working the ancient chant melodies of the Requiem into a suite of organ pieces when he was commissioned by his publisher to write a full-scale Requiem. So he abandoned the organ pieces and incorporated the chant melodies into the new work. Inevitably, the harmonies are modal too and this, for listeners not brought up on them, can be disconcerting, not least because of the loss of the distinction between major and minor. At the same time, while Gregorian melody moves in unexpected directions, the rhythms, which derive from the association of chant with words, often do not fit into regular metres. In the Requiem, to accommodate the rhythms of the chant, metres tend to change every few bars.

The reassuring aspect of the Duruflé Mass is the orchestral part, which is much as is expected of a fairly conservative composer in the late 1940s. The undulating semiquavers on violas and cellos in the first part of the Intrioit, where the tenors and basses introduce the antiphon, the change of colour to woodwind in the middle section (“Te decet hymnus”), the return of the string figuration in the closing section, now with a tinge of cor anglais, are all attractive features. The Kyrie, which follows without a break, is also in ternary form. If the prominence of the organ at the start, as it accompanies the presentation of the appropriate chant rising in fugal form from the bass, is only to be expected in this context, the entry of a cantus firms in even rhythms on trumpet and trombone is a stirring moment. The cantus firmus is excluded from the middle section (“Christe eleison”), which is designed as a canonic exchange between altos and sopranos, but returns with the recall of “Kyrie eleison.”

Leaving out the Dies Irae, like Fauré but unlike Berlioz, Duruflé goes straight on to the next movement – which does not mean that he leaves out drama. Domine Jesu Christe, after an orchestral introduction heavy with significant themes, explodes in an exclamation of “libera eas de ore leonis” from the whole chorus with brass and timpani in support. The tempo changes to Animato with scurrying quavers on the strings and emotions are intensified to reach a fff climax. As the tempo winds down the orchestral introduction is recalled    to make a link to the passionately suppliant baritone solo “Hostias et preces.” There is a matching fff climax in the Sanctus but in this case, not far from the end of a movement rippling throughout with orchestral arpeggios, it is a radiant affirmation of “Hosanna in excelsis.”

As in the Fauré Requiem, Pie Jesu is set for solo voice, in this case a mezzo soprano accompanied only by strings with a solo cello. Avoiding comparison with the ethereal quality of Fauré’s setting, it is both tender and, at its height, passionately expressive. In the Agnus Dei Duruflé liberates his melodic inspiration from modal inflections and allows the orchestra, if not the voices, to follow sustained and shapely, even seductive lines. Of course, he can write melodious modal lines, as a solo bassoon demonstrates in the Phrygian harmonies at the beginning of Lux aeterna. The strings do the same by taking the melodic initiative where the chorus is restricted to monotones on “Requiem aeternam” in the middle and at the end of the movement.

The last moment of drama comes in the Libera me where after the animated approached to the short but urgent baritone solo, the setting of the words “Dies illa, dies irae” gives a striking indication of what a Duruflé Dies Irae might have been like. Cymbal clashes dominate a rugged texture of tremolando strings, peremptory brass and incisive interjections from the chorus. More surprising, for their boldness at such a sensitive point, are the dissonances picked out by harp and celestas at the beginning and quietly sustained throughout In Paradisum. It is a quite different vision of paradise from Fauré’s and, in its unearthly harmonies, no less inspired.

Gerald Larner © 2012