Maurice Duruflé

<p>Maurice Duruflé The Man and His Music is a new biography of the great French organist and composer (1902-86) and the most comprehensive in any language. James E. Frazier traces Duruflé's musical training his studies with Tournemire and Vierne and his career as an organist church musician composer recitalist Conservatoire professor and orchestral musician. Frazier also examines the career and contributions of Duruflé's wife the formidable organist Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier. Duruflé brought the church's unique language of plainsong into a compelling liaison with the secular harmonies of the modern French school (as typified by Debussy Ravel and Dukas) in works for his own instrument and in his widely loved masterpiece the Requiem Op. 9 for soloists chorus organ and orchestra. Drawing on the accounts of those who knew Duruflé personally as well as on Frazier's own detailed research Maurice Duruflé offers a broad sketch of this modest and elusive man widely recognized today for having created some of the greatest works in the organ repertory -- and the masterful Requiem. James E. Frazier holds advanced degrees in philosophy organ theology and sacred music from St. Alphonsus College Mt. St. Alphonsus Seminary Hartt School of Music the Yale University Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He served Episcopal churches in Hartford Connecticut and St. Paul Minnesota as organist and director of music. For ten years he was director of music for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. </p>