"Gloria" Diary 2004(2)

Duruflé's requiem is based of the requiem in Gregorian chant and it can be called "arrangement" in a broad sense. The "arrangement" is achieved in many types of techniques. It would be useful to watch the ways of these techniques.

As I've already described on January 9, in "Introitus", Gregorian chant is used in its almost complete figure in Duruflé's requiem. In many other movements, he used the melody of Gregorian chant in its original form. For example, the melody of "Agnus Dei" in Gregorian chant requiem --

-- is used in its original form in Durufé's requiem. (See below.)

It can be observed in "Lux Æterna". In Gregorian chant, it is as the following music.

And it is also used in Duruflé's piece. The difference is only "there are chords or not."

However, we should notice that Duruflé does not only use Gregorian chant in its original form, but he disposes his own materials. They appear mainly instrumental parts and it seems that they contribute to make their particular atmosphere. In "Lux Æterna", the following alternate with the Gregorian melody.

This new material is more impressive than the Gregorian melody and it has significant role to determine the atmosphere of this movement. The following music sheet shows ...

that the beginning of this new material is same as the end of the Gregorian melody. So it can be said that the new material expand the characteristic of the Gregorian chant.

In "Benedictus" impressive counter-subject appears. It is superior to the melody of Gregorian chant.

We can see another way of "arrangement" in "Kyrie". In Requiem of Gregorian chant, it has the melody as following.

Duruflé treats it with imitation technique. In his requiem, it is developed with fugal form in chorus part, and then it is expanded in brass section.

(Organ has the role of supporting chorus and putting the line of the bass.)

It can be often seen in J.S, Bach's arrangements of chorals. For example, choral prelude "Vor deinen Thron tret' ich" has the same structure of arrangement.

The particular points are (i) the accompany section develops the theme in its reduced form with fugal imitation, and (ii) the melody appears after the development of (i). It is called "Vorimitation"(Ger.);.

We can say that "Kyrie" in Duruflé's requiem are characterized with "Vorimitation". But we should notice that "the accompany section" is chorus and "the melody section" is brass insturments. The characteristic of "instruments are superior to the chorus" has already seen in "Introitus", and we encounter the same characteristic in "Kyrie". When I encounter it, I feel that it is needed to consider the relation between the words and music – which is not only for chorus but also for instruments.

Now, I would like to see "Domine Jesu Christe" and "Libera me", but it is already too long. I am going to take a rest.

As you can understand from the reading of "extra", in the requiem we would perform in this year, "Offertorium(Domine Jesu Christe)" and "Libera me" are somewhat longer than the other movements. We can suppose that Duruflé used different way to arrange these two movements from the other ones. Now, we will read one of them i.e. "Domine Jesu Christe".

In "Introitus","Kyrie","Agnus Dei", and "Lux æterna", the melody of Gregorian chant appears in the chorus section in their beginning. However, it is different in "Domine Jesu Christe". Let me show it. In the beginning of this movement, after prelude-like behavior with trombone, clarinet and bass-clarinet, the following melody appears in cello and contrabass.

This melody is subsequently imitated by horn.

After them, the words of "Domine Jesu Christe Rex gloriæ..." appears in chorus section.

In above measures, the accompaniment (especially viola) shows the melody which can be seen in cello, contrabass, and horn.

Now we will consider this beginning. From the measure of the beginning to the measure just before the entrance of chorus, it seems to be "prelude". But is it really simple preulde? Let me show the melody of cello, contrabass and horn and compare with the melody of Gregorian chant.

You can understand that the melodies by the instruments are exactly tracing the original Gregorian chant rather than chorus. The exposition of "Domine Jesu Christe" are separated into their melody and their words.

After these measures, the music proceeds freely from Gregorian chant, but sometimes it shows the materials directory derived from Gregorian chant. For example, in the following section,

or in the following section, which is trasposition of the above section,

canon between brass and chorus can be seen. The melody of this canon is related with Gregorian chant as the following music sheets.

The correspondence cannot be understood readily because the relation between the words and music is not same as Gregorian chant and some interval was modified. In this section, the instruments show the Gregorian chant more exactly.

We can see that the 2nd violin traces Gregorian chat exactly.

�Eh, I've already spent huge network resources! The total size of images in today's addition is 124KB! And the amount of this page is more than 300KB! But the reading of music sheet is not preceded enough. Today's reading is only the 1/3 beginning of "Domine Jesu Christe". I am worried that it is too slow. The "combined training" of the Ensemble and Choir will be started from the next week!(+_+;)

The day before the date of the first "combined training", I was in Aoyama, Tokyo. There was the festival named with "Gujo-odori in Aoyama". I am an earnest fan of "Gujo-odori".You can suppose it from seeing my Gujo-hachiman page. I also joined "Gujo-odori in Aoyama" passionately. You can guess how intense my passion was from the things that I got "Gujo-odori certification" in this festival. (It is not easy to get this certification. There are about 3000 people in this festival at the date I joined. But only 3 people including me can got it.)

The next day, I joined the first "combined traning" with weariness and muscular rheumatism.(^_^;)

The first half of the training was Fauré's requiem. I would not join the performance of it so I was only watching the training. The performance of Fauré's requiem was running well. The reason is perhaps that it is twice time to treat this music for "Gloria Ensemble and Choir" and that the chorus already finished to run to read music to the end. The later half was Duruflé's. Contrastively to Fauré's, the substance was not good. I mistook many times. Certainly this music is difficult to grasp.

The remarkable thing was that most notification from the conductor Mr. Kataoka was for instruments. As I described in June 15, it is important to recognize that instrumental parts often play important role to perform Gregorian chant and it is not easy to consider it, for example, the expression of the beginning of cello contrabass and horn, the canon between brass and chorus, and the accompaniment with the figure directly derived from Gregorian chant. The combined training will be opened in ten times from today. For Duruflé's requiem, our way going to the concert will be not simple. It will not be easy and it will be grand challenge.