University of California Press Chapter Title: The Timeliness of Duruflé’s Requiem Book Title: Musical Legacy of Wartime France Book Author(s): LESLIE A. SPROUT Published by: University of California Press. (2013) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt3fh2q4.8 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Musical Legacy of Wartime France This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 03 Sep 2018 02:20:01 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 4 The Timeliness of Duruflé’s Requiem Plain-chant and polyphony, dominant ninths and the orchestra of Debussy—without the evidence of an actual performance, Duruflé’s Requiem might appear to be a hotch-potch. But it is the absolute unification in a very personal manner of these seemingly disparate elements that constitutes Duruflé’s chief claim to be taken seriously as a composer. felix aprahamian, “Maurice Duruflé and His Requiem” vichy’s symphonic commissions and the music of the catholic church In May 1941 Maurice Duruflé received a commission from Vichy’s Administration of Fine Arts to write a symphonic poem, for which he was offered ten thousand francs, payable upon completion of the work.1 Reversing the program’s steady decline each year since its inception in 1938, the administration provided ample funds—270,000 francs—to grant a total of seventeen commissions between May and August 1941, the first year of commissions granted under the new regime.