Duruflé : échappées grégoriennes

EN – Presented with the Maîtrise of Luxembourg Cathedral, this programme brings together the compositions of three students of the organist Louis Vierne: Jehan Alain, Maurice Duruflé and Marcel Dupré. It includes the most popular work by Jehan Alain, Litanies, at first entitled Phantasmagorie. It is complimented by a fugue composed by his friend Duruflé after the death of Alain during the Second World War. The motets by both Duruflé and Dupré were inspired by the Gregorian chant of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes. The programme ends with Duruflé’s Requiem, dedicated to his father and initially conceived as a symphonic poem. This piece by Duruflé also uses numerous Gregorian chant melodies, material on which he was working for a suite for organ at the moment he received the commission for the Requiem.