@5744SHAW

I learned from Eaton's dissertation that Duruflé wrote the following in a set of program notes (1980) to the Requiem:

Thus I have endeavored to reconcile as far as possible Gregorian rhythm, as it has been established by the Benedictines of Solesmes, with the requirements of the modern measure. The rigor of the latter, with its strong beats and weak beats recurring at regular intervals, is in fact difficult to reconcile with the variety and flexibility of the Gregorian line, which is nothing more than a series of successive impulses and relaxations.

The strong beats had to lose their dominant character to take the same value of intensity as the weak beats, in such a way that the Gregorian rhythmic accent or the Latin tonic accent can be placed freely on any beat of our modern measure.

Thus, a lot of the rhythmic suppleness that you hear both in the Requiem but also in the Messe cum jubilo and in the chant-based motets is a direct consequence of Mocquereau's theory. That theory was once the dominant way to sing chant in the Anglosphere and is still present in Church circles, but it is no longer considered the cutting edge of medieval performance practice, the practitioners of which generally favor semiology, mensuralism, or some other sui generis approach. Hence Incantu's comment.

As Matthew says, I have maintained that Mocquereau is best considered as a turn-of-the-twentieth-century theorist of rhythm quite apart from the question of chant performance practice, and should be read as part of an ongoing discourse about: what exactly an accent is; the nature of musical meter; what is the nature of upbeats and downbeats; and how this interacts with text accentuation in Latin or in various other languages. Mocquereau in general is what you might call an upbeatnik, believing that all musical motion is a movement from an upbeat (arsis, élan) to a downbeat (thesis, repos). Other nineteenth-century writers who are somewhat along the line of Mocquereau are Momigny, Lussy, and Riemann. There were and are also plenty of downbeatniks (i.e., those who believe that music is best chunked in time units that begin on downbeats, and the upbeat is sort of an aftereffect). Among these we might include A.B. Marx (the good Marx!) and Heinrich Schenker.

Duruflé and Messiaen were both heavily influenced by Mocquereau's theories in their compositions. I also find Mocquereau's ideas about rhythm/meter in general to be very sensible and musical. Plenty of others here and elsewhere disagree about their value! I have long been an incorrigible upbeatnik.

Charles,

You've responded to my inquiry with grace and with compelling expertise. I appreciate it deeply.
It's enormously informative--and brand new to me--what you have to say about Mocquereau and his influence upon Duruflé. I knew none of it previously and now have something worth further pondering. Thanks for that!
I will re-read your message and may return to you with further questions.
Jim Frazier

@Liam

Absolutely, I think language has a lot to do with it. There is an excellent article out there by my grad-school advisor William Rothstein about "National Metric Types." His point in that article is that, on the whole, native German speakers are more downbeatnik and native French speakers are more upbeatnik. This difference becomes more apparent when you are looking at phrase rhythm (or hypermeter). Ask, for instance, which measures of Beethoven's Ode to Joy are strong and which are weak? The most interesting cases are when people cross national style boundaries (like Mozart's Italian operas). Haydn's emperor hymn was originally barred one way and then turned around, and of course his music has heavy Italian influence.

These styles/language patterns also seem to change over time as well, and the language a composer speaks is not completely determinative. For instance, there is no more downbeat-heavy (thinking of the phrase level) composer I know of than Poulenc; he is practically the opposite of F. Couperin in that way.

In his more recent book on Italian opera, Rothstein suggests that we should develop different ears for different language/meter styles: a wonderful idea. He offered a course on rhythm that was one of the most interesting classes I've ever taken. We spent a ton of time on Beethoven.

I believe that Mocquereau's theory as laid out in Le nombre is one of the best and most coherent statements of an upbeat way of thinking.

@Charles_Weaver
Regarding language - also remember that Durufle was writing for French Latin, not Italian Latin, which makes the “uptick” or “lightness” - even that more pronounced. If his Requiem is sung in French Latin, it is an entirely different experience than sung in Italian Latin (we tried it in a conducting lab in grad school - and it was amazing).
@5744SHAW
Although there were mensuralist theories at the time of Durufle’s compositional writing, Mocquereau’s theory was perhaps the best-known and most widely-practiced. Mocquereau was trying to develop a theory that would appeal to musicians with little experience with Gregorian chant, since it had all but disappeared until the Solesmes revival in the mid-19th to early 20th-centuries. It was widely successfully. However, Mocquereau was the best paleographer in his monastery and refuted his theory at the end of his life, knowing it was incompatible with the neumes he was studying.
All that is to say, Durufle was a product of his time.

Mocquereau was the best paleographer in his monastery and refuted his theory at the end of his life, knowing it was incompatible with the neumes he was studying.

Citation needed on this too. I would be most eager to see it if true!

However, I heard Madame Durufle singing some parts of the Requiem while she was explaining it. It was not Italian Latin. It was French Latin..you can hear the difference.

Just saying....