Today I was having a conversation when Duruflé came up–someone sang the melody of his polyphonic Ubi Caritas, trying to recall whose it was. I was reminded in that moment of how the thing that I most saliently associate with him is the fact that he used chant themes in his compositions. And as I considered this over the course of the evening, I realised that that probably isn’t evident to people who haven’t heard the corresponding chants before. (Sort of like one of my favourite contemporary pieces, Leo Nestor’s Rorate Caeli Desuper, which is beautiful if you know the chant and perplexing, I’d imagine, if you don’t.)
But anyway. Here’s Duruflé’s Requiem, preceded by a Gregorian chant requiem.
the lexical form 