The organs that Duruflé heard and played during his formative and early adult years were all products of the romantic aesthetic of Cavaillé-Coll, John Abbey, Merklin-Schütze, and others of their ilk from the nineteenth century. His first compositions, such as the first edition of the Scherzo, betray this influence. He had little, if any, early exposure to the French classic organ of the eighteenth century, or to the eighteenth-century organs of Germany. In the course of his career, however, he came to see the artistic value of both the classic and romantic models. Over the years he wrote many articles on organ design and served as consultant for a number of both new organs and organ restorations. In 1941 he was appointed to the advisory committee of the Commission des orgues, which had been established in 1933 by the French government's Service des monuments historiques.

Duruflé had great respect for the work of Cavaillé-Coll, and he wrote with admiring detail, as we have seen, of the Cavaillé-Coll organs at Sainte Clotilde and Notre-Dame. For one of his recordings he used the little-known, rebuilt Cavaillé-Coll at Notre-Dame d’Auteuil in Paris (1966). In 1949, Duruflé said that “Notre-Dame, Saint Sulpice, and Saint Eustache are for me the most beautiful and the most complete of the organs in the capital.” The organ at Saint Sulpice issued from Cavaillé-Coll, while the instrument at Saint Eustache was built by Victor Gonzalez (1932), whose work will be described shortly.

Despite his respect for Cavaillé-Coll, Duruflé favored the addition of mixtures to brighten the Cavaillé-Coll at Notre-Dame, a work carried out under Pierre Cochereau's titularship. While he considered it one of the most beautiful organs ever built, he thought it heavy in the bass. “One had to be careful, nevertheless, not to use a thick registration, for the Pleins Jeux did not have the brilliancy that one might desire.” Cochereau added mixtures and other stops, drastically altering the instrument Vierne knew. Duruflé liked many of the changes: “The organ previously lacked a bit of clarity. It was a little bit heavy. The added mixtures help to brighten the sound.”