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Maurice Duruflé
Maurice Gustave Duruflé (; 11 January 1902 – 16 June 1986) was a French composer, organist, musicologist, and teacher. Life and career Duruflé was born in Louviers, Eure in 1902. He became a chorister at the Rouen Cathedral Choir School from 1912 to 1918, where he studied piano and organ with Jules Haelling, a pupil of Alexandre Guilmant. The choral plainsong tradition at Rouen became a strong and lasting influence. At age 17, upon moving to Paris, he took private organ lessons with Charles Tournemire, whom he assisted at Basilique Ste-Clotilde, Paris until 1927. In 1920 Duruflé entered the Conservatoire de Paris, eventually graduating with first prizes in organ with Eugène Gigout (1922), harmony with Jean Gallon (1924), fugue with Georges Caussade (1924), piano accompaniment with César Abel Estyle (1926) and composition with Paul Dukas (1928). In 1927, Louis Vierne nominated him as his assistant at Notre-Dame. Duruflé and Vierne remained lifelong friends, an ...
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Louviers, Eure
Louviers () is a commune in the Eure department in Normandy in north-western France. Louviers is from Paris and from Rouen. Population History Prehistory In the area around Louviers, cut stones from the Paleolithic era have been found. Some of these are in the town's museum, alongside fragments of a mammoth tusk found not far from the cemetery. Other evidence of human presence in the area at different periods of prehistory includes the menhir of Basse-Cremonville and the Neolithic tomb which was close to it. Various objects from these periods - weapons, vases, stone and bronze tools - have also been found in the area. Ancient Gaul and Roman Gaul A few elements dating from the period of Ancient Gaul have been found at Louviers: a Celtic grave found in 1863 against the wall of the Église Notre-Dame, and several Gallic coins. A hypothesis of a fortified Gallic village has been formulated, but not proven. The Louviers of Roman Gaul is, however, better known. It was not, ho ...
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Louis Vierne
Louis Victor Jules Vierne (8 October 1870 – 2 June 1937) was a French organist and composer. As the organist of Notre-Dame de Paris from 1900 until his death, he focused on organ music, including six organ symphonies and a ''Messe solennelle'' for choir and two organs. He toured Europe and the United States as a concert organist. His students included Nadia Boulanger and Maurice Duruflé. Life Louis Vierne was born in Poitiers on 8 October 1870, the son of Henri-Alfred Vierne (1828–1886), a teacher, who became a journalist. He was editor-in-chief of the ''Journal de la Vienne'' in Poitiers, where he met his future wife, Marie-Joséphine Gervaz. The couple had four children. Louis was born nearly blind due to congenital cataracts. His unusual gift for music was discovered early. When he was only two years of age, he heard the piano for the first time: a pianist played him a Schubert lullaby, and after he had finished young Louis promptly began to pick out the notes of th ...
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Legion D'honneur
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, it has been retained (with occasional slight alterations) by all later French governments and regimes. The order's motto is ' ("Honour and Fatherland"); its seat is the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur next to the Musée d'Orsay, on the left bank of the Seine in Paris. The order is divided into five degrees of increasing distinction: ' (Knight), ' (Officer), ' (Commander), ' (Grand Officer) and ' ( Grand Cross). History Consulate During the French Revolution, all of the French orders of chivalry were abolished and replaced with Weapons of Honour. It was the wish of Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul, to create a reward to commend civilians and soldiers. From this wish was instituted a , a body of men that was not an or ...
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Declaration Of Nullity
In the Catholic Church, a declaration of nullity, commonly called an annulment and less commonly a decree of nullity, and by its detractors, a "Catholic divorce", is an ecclesiastical tribunal determination and judgment that a marriage was invalidly contracted or, less frequently, a judgment that ordination was invalidly conferred. A matrimonial nullity trial, governed by canon law, is a judicial process whereby a canonical tribunal determines whether the marriage was void at its inception (''ab initio''). A "Declaration of Nullity" is not the dissolution of an existing marriage (as is a dispensation from a marriage '' ratum sed non consummatum'' and an "annulment" in civil law), but rather a determination that consent was never validly exchanged due to a failure to meet the requirements to enter validly into matrimony and thus a marriage never existed. The Catholic Church teaches that, in a true marriage, one man and one woman become "one flesh" before the eyes of God. Va ...
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Marie-Madeleine Duruflé
Jeanne Marie-Madeleine Duruflé (''née'' Chevalier; 8 May 1921 – 5 October 1999) was a French organist. Regarded as the last of the French school of organists, she played works by Widor, Vierne, Langlais, Dupré and her husband, Maurice Duruflé. She and her husband were both organists at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris, and toured internationally, especially in the U.S.. Life and career Jeanne Marie-Madeleine Chevalier was born in Marseille on 8 May 1921, the daughter of Auguste-Marie Chevalier and Suzanne Chevalier-Rigoir. When she was age six, the family moved to Cavaillon. She grew up with a sister, Elaine, who would become a solfege teacher and a choral conductor in Paris. Marie-Madeleine was soon recognized as very talented. She began piano lessons with her grandmother, and began to compose piano pieces. When she was 11, she was appointed organist of the . At the age of 12, she began to study at the Conservatoire d'Avignon. She planned to study further in Paris at ...
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Vichy France
Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the Fascism, fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its Metropolitan France, territory occupied under harsh terms of the Armistice of 22 June 1940, armistice, it adopted a policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany, which Occupation of France by Nazi Germany, occupied the northern and western portions before occupying the remainder of Metropolitan France in November 1942. Though Paris was ostensibly its capital, the collaborationist Vichy government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "Free Zone" (), where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its French colonial empire, colonies. The Third French Republic had begun the war in September 1939 on the side of the Allies of World War II, Allies. On 10 May 1940, it was Invasion o ...
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Requiem (Duruflé)
The Requiem, Op.9, is a 1947 (revised 1961) setting of the Latin Requiem by Maurice Duruflé for a solo voice, mixed choir, and organ, or orchestra with organ. The thematic material is mostly taken from the Mass for the Dead in Gregorian chant. The Requiem was first published in 1948 by Durand in an organ version. History Maurice Duruflé was among French composers commissioned in May 1941 by the collaborationist Vichy regime to write extended works for a monetary award, such as 10,000 francs for a symphonic poem, 20,000 for a symphony, and 30,000 for an opera. Duruflé, commissioned to compose a symphonic poem, decided to compose a Requiem and was still working on it in 1944 when the regime collapsed. He completed it in September 1947. He set the Latin text of the Requiem Mass, omitting certain parts in the tradition of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem and structuring it in nine movements. At the time of the commission, he was working on an organ suite using themes from Gregoria ...
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Marie-Claire Alain
Marie-Claire Geneviève Alain-Gommier (10 August 1926 – 26 February 2013) was a French organist, scholar and teacher best known for her prolific recording career, with 260 recordings, making her the most-recorded classical organist in the world. She taught many of the world's prominent organists. She was a specialist in Bach, making three recordings of his complete organ works, as well as French organ music. She was the sister of the famous organist-composers Jehan Alain and Olivier Alain and was the daughter of amateur organbuilder Albert Alain. Alain was commonly deemed one of the most illustrious organists of her generation, and bore an international reputation. Critics were unanimous in praising the clarity of her playing, the purity of her style, the intense and lively musicality of her interpretations and her fluency in the art of organ registration. Background and education Marie-Claire Geneviève Alain, the youngest of the four Alain children, was born in Saint-Ge ...
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Jean Guillou
Jean Victor Arthur Guillou (18 April 1930 – 26 January 2019) was a French composer, organist, pianist, and pedagogue. Titular Organist at Saint Eustache in Paris, from 1963 to 2015, he was widely known as a composer of instrumental and vocal music focused on the organ, as an improviser, and as an adviser to organ builders. For several decades he held regular master classes in Zurich and in Paris. Career Guillou was born in Angers. Following his first studies in piano and organ, he became the organist at the church St. Serge in Angers at the age of 12. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Marcel Dupré, Maurice Duruflé and Olivier Messiaen. In 1952, while still studying, Guillou played the premiere of his organ transcription of The Musical Offering by Johann Sebastian Bach at Erskine and American United Church in Montreal, Canada. In 1955, he accepted a position as professor of organ and composition at the Institute of Sacred Music in Lisbon. During this t ...
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Pierre Cochereau
Pierre Eugène Charles Cochereau (9 July 1924 – 6 March 1984) was a French organist, improviser, composer, and pedagogue. Cochereau was titular organist of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris from 1955 to his death in 1984 and was responsible for a controversial renovation of the cathedral's organ in the 1960s. He was greatly renowned as an improviser and organist in his lifetime and still is today. After his death, the Conservatory of Nice was renamed in his honour. Biography Pierre Cochereau was born on 9 July 1924 in the French commune of Saint-Mandé ( Val-de-Marne), near the capital city of Paris. His father, Georges Ernest Cochereau, was a wealthy factory owner who owned a shoemaking factory. In 1929, after a few months of violin instruction, he began to take piano lessons with Marius-François Gaillard. Marguerite Long became his piano teacher in 1933, and three years later, Paul Pannesay. When Cochereau was 13 years old, after suffering a year of poor health a ...
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Organ Concerto In G Minor (Poulenc)
The ''Concerto pour orgue, cordes et timbales'' (Concerto for organ, timpani and strings) in G minor, FP 93, is an organ concerto composed by Francis Poulenc between 1934 and 1938. It has become one of the most frequently performed pieces of the genre not written in the Baroque period. History of composition The organ concerto was commissioned by Princess Edmond de Polignac in 1934, as a piece with a chamber orchestra accompaniment and an easy organ part that the princess could probably play herself. The commission was originally given to Jean Françaix, who declined, but Poulenc accepted. Poulenc quickly abandoned this idea for something much more grandiose and ambitious; his earlier harpsichord concerto and double-piano concerto were simpler, more light-hearted pieces. As he wrote in a letter to Françaix, "The concerto...is not the amusing Poulenc of the Concerto for two pianos, but more like a Poulenc en route for the cloister." The death of a colleague and friend, the young ...
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Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite '' Trois mouvements perpétuels'' (1919), the ballet '' Les biches'' (1923), the '' Concert champêtre'' (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera '' Dialogues des Carmélites'' (1957), and the ''Gloria'' (1959) for soprano, choir, and orchestra. As the only son of a prosperous manufacturer, Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, and he was not allowed to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc also made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as '' Les Six ...
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