#Calm radio gregorian chant full#

They occasionally appear in different pitch ranges throughout a movement, suggesting traditional modulation techniques between sections they are sung in chant-like unisons, or harmonized in the choral voices, or form the subject of a fugue section, as in the Kyrie. However, the chants are not slavishly employed. The chants-and plainchant performing style-are integral to and recognizable in Duruflé’s work he said he sought to “reconcile” the plainchant rhythms with the “exigencies” of modern metrical beats.

But, as he said himself, Duruflé’s work is not dependent on Fauré’s, for unlike Fauré, Duruflé constructed his movements on the liturgical chants that can be found in the Liber Usualis. Both omit the doom-threatening “Dies irae” that is so strongly to the fore in both Mozart’s and Verdi’s Requiems, but both Fauré and Duruflé introduce turmoil in the “Libera me” movement. This evening’s performance uses organ and a reduced orchestra consisting of strings, timpani, three trumpets, and harp.ĭuruflé’s Requiem is structured with the same movements as Fauré’s Requiem of some 50 years earlier, and has the same sense of peace and calm as Fauré’s.

#Calm radio gregorian chant full#

The completed work is for a mixed four-voice choir with soprano and baritone soloists (or choir section) and full orchestra Duruflé also prepared a version with a reduced orchestra and organ accompaniment, as well as a version for organ alone.

Just after his father’s death, he was working on a suite of organ pieces based on the plainchant of the Requiem Mass when the publisher Durand commissioned what became his Requiem. As mentioned earlier, performing plainchant in the Solesmes manner became as fundamental as breathing in Duruflé’s work as a church musician it was a key ingredient in his compositional style. 9, dedicated to his father it was given both a radio and a concert premiere in 1949 and quickly became a worldwide favorite. Maurice Duruflé’s compositions are not numerous, but they are held in great esteem. (An excellent discussion of this style may be found in James Frazier’s “In the Gregorian Mode” and Jeffrey Reynolds’s “On Clouds of Incense” in Maurice Duruflé, 1902-1986: The Last Impressionist, ed. A few pockets remained where the chant was retained, but it was used in greatly simplified ways, sung with chordal major or minor harmony in stodgy rhythms. In France, the Revolution beginning in 1789 secularized that country, effectively destroying not only the power of the clergy but also generally removing the practice of singing the liturgy. Over the centuries various additions and modifications, along with notational systems to enable easy memorization of the vast literature, affected this repertory, even leading to significant alterations of the Gothic melodies but the bones of Gregorian chant remained in place as the church’s musical language. 590-604), who had promoted the development of a body of chants for the church. A body of integrated Gallican and Roman chant became known as Gregorian chant, named for Pope Gregory the Great (r. Plainsong, or plainchant, had been the sung vehicle for the liturgy of the Roman Catholic church since the fifth and sixth centuries. There as a choirboy he also became formally educated in plainchant-a fact that must lead us on a short tangent: