Among the greatest organists of the twentieth century, Maurice Duruflé was also the eminent composer of some of the most sublime repertoire ever composed for organ, orchestra, and choir. He was a teacher, a recitalist, a virtuosic improviser of impeccable pedigree, and a man of the church. The fact that his opus list, though small, has held an important place in the choral and organ repertoire for three-quarters of a century is testimony to the need for a biography such as this.

Early in the course of my research, it became clear to me that Duruflé was more complex than the hitherto published accounts let on, and that I would have to allow his complexities to coexist, presenting an account that had not been censored the way previous accounts had been censored. The hidden features of his life are no less a part of him than the features we have long esteemed.

Even in his memoirs, which were not published in a more complete form until 2005, Duruflé's own guarded account of his life is too sketchy for us to quicken a living impression of him. And to understand his life strictly through his career is to ignore a vast part of that life, for a fuller grasp of which we must also consider four areas of what may at first appear to be far-flung territory, specifically, the Roman Catholic liturgy and its evolution; the world of French choral music; the architectural heritage of France; and the country's bewilderingly complex political, social, and cultural history, within which Duruflé spun out his life and career. These four areas affecting his life have been ignored in the existing brief accounts. But they are germane to his multifaceted biography, as I shall here explain, giving brief attention to each.

The Roman Catholic liturgy plays so prominent a role in Duruflé's life that to ignore its triumphs and its tragedies in this narrative would be substantially to misrepresent Duruflé himself. The link between the liturgy and the music composed for it was a compelling consideration for him, and thus for the character of his music. And though that link is generally appreciated at a superficial level, it has not adequately been explored in studies of French organists from the early twentieth century, a period in the church's history when that link was beginning to dissolve.