* James E. Frazier's comprehensive biography of Maurice Duruflé cites the organist and composer's birth records.
Maurice Duruflé (11 January 1902 – 16 June 1986) was a French composer, organist, and pedagogue.
Duruflé was born in Louviers, Eure. In 1912, he became chorister at the Rouen Cathedral Choir School, where he studied piano and organ with Jules Haelling. 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, harmony, piano accompaniment, and composition. His harmony professor was Jean Gallon.
In 1927, Louis Vierne nominated him as his assistant at Notre-Dame. Duruflé became titular organist of St-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris in 1929, a position he held for the rest of his life. In 1936, he won the Prix Blumenthal. In 1939, he premiered Francis Poulenc's Organ Concerto (the Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani in G minor); he had advised Poulenc on the registrations of the organ part. In 1943 he became Professor of Harmony at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he worked until 1970.
In 1947 he completed probably the most famous of his few pieces: the Requiem op. 9, for soloists, choir, organ, and orchestra. He had begun composing the work in 1941, following a commission from the Vichy regime. Also in 1947, Marie-Madeleine Chevalier became his assistant at St-Étienne-du-Mont. They married on 15 September 1953. (Duruflé's first marriage to Lucette Bousquet, contracted in 1932, ended in civil divorce in 1947 and was declared null by the Vatican on 23 June 1953.) The couple became a famous and popular organ duo, going on tour together several times throughout the sixties and early seventies.
Read more from his Wikipedia biography.
HOROSCOPE NOTES
The 'professor of harmony' had Eris quincunx his Libra MC.
NATAL DATA and ASTROLOGY CHART
BIRTH DATA: Maurice-Gustave Durufle, 11 January 1902, 06:15 (6:15 a.m.) (-0:09:20), Louviers, France (49n13, 01,e10). ASC: 23 Sagittarius. RR=AA (quoted birth record). SOURCE: Sy Scholfield (c) quotes James E. Frazier, Maurice Duruflé: The Man & His Music (University of Rochester Press, 2007), p. 9: "On January 11, 1902, the mayor of Louviers penned the first formal account of the birth of Maurice-Gustave Durufle in a florid narrative for the town's civil records, reporting that he was born at 6:15 in the morning to Julien-Charles-Amedee Durufle and Marie-Mathilde Prevost."
