Durufle's Requiem

This is a very important piece of music to me and I share it with everybody that I know who loves their music with a deepness. It's the Durufle Requiem. I first heard it about ten years ago on a classical radio station in Phoenix, where I was visiting my grandmother. I remember the sensation of driving through the desert in her luxury car as the "Introit" came on, sealed inside the air-conditioned cabin, gliding in that big soft car boat, and looking at a cloud-smothered sky that moved from side to side like white, fat, fast-moving cushions. Hearing this music had a hypnotic effect on me then and stamped a vivid memory. But when I tried to buy it that day at a record store I had a mental fuckup and kept asking the clerk for the Flaubert requiem. Flaubert is a french writer, not a composer, and so after scouring stores and the internet for weeks looking for the non-existent Flaubert Requiem, I gave up and forgot about it. Two years later, I happened to be thumbing through the classical section of a used bin and there it was: DURUFLE's Requiem.

What I ended up buying that day was a unique performance of it, for organ and choir. I didn't know until years later that it was originally not meant to feature pipe organ but a small orchestral ensemble. I ended up buying a second, more traditional performance of it with Neville Mariner conducting the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (the same conductor and orchestra that performed the amazing interpretations on the Amadeus soundtrack. Mariner's conducting is, as they say, a revelation). There are things to love about both versions. For example, I think the pipe organ does something really special to the low arpeggiations that the "Introit" rests on.

The "Lux Aeterna" is also part of a favorite memory. I was nearing the end of a two-week tour drumming for a group called Elanors and we were already a little ragged and ear-fried. After soundcheck in Arlington we had gone out back to the van to eat some snacks from our cooler and clear our heads of loud sounds. It was Virginia in late summer, thick air and getting dark. We couldn't bring ourselves to watch the opening band's set because it was just too loud and aggressive and, like I said, we were fried. Outside the club, we could faintly hear their rock racket. Noah, the singer in Elanors, asked if there was anything on my ipod that would settle us. I played the "Lux Aeterna" and we sat there without talking, quickly seeping into the music. It reminded me of the story in the Bible that says King Saul used to summon the little boy David to play his harp for him and that it would chase the demons out of the room. It had that kind of effect - we essentially went to church and back in a matter of minutes, emerging completely cleansed in the soul from the piece, and as it finished one of our band members came to the van and said, "It's time."

I am here telling you, as a man to whom nothing is sacred, that these are sacred works. Affix your headphones, settle yourself to listen, and get clean.

These are quiet recordings and you'll need to turn them up to listen or don't bother listening at all. One thing to remember if you do: Maurice Durufle published very little music in his lifetime because of extreme perfectionist tendencies. An obvious shame and a lesson to us all.

Maurice Durufle - "Introit" [From The Complete Music for Choir, St. Jacob's Chamber Choir directed by Gary Graden]

Maurice Durufle - "Lux Aeterna" [Neville Mariner conducting the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields]