Maurice Emmanuel, the composer and musicologist who held a post as historian at the Paris Conservatoire from 1909 to 1936, played the crucial role in providing Duruflé an entrée to the Paris organ world. Emmanuel spent his summers at the country house he owned not far from Louviers, and was occasionally visited there by Charles Tournemire. When Duruflé's father was called to do some architectural work on Emmanuel's property, he asked him for some advice about his son's musical future. Emmanuel was also a friend of Jules Haelling, who is said to have mediated the contact between the elder Duruflé and Emmanuel. On the organ in Louviers, Maurice played for Emmanuel the Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, of Bach, which he had studied with Haelling. The Conservatoire professor suggested Duruflé do some preliminary study with Charles Tournemire in Paris before taking the entrance exam for the organ class at the Conservatoire.

Emmanuel and Tournemire were presently colleagues at the Conservatoire, as they had earlier been colleagues at Sainte Clotilde, where Tournemire had been titular organist since 1898, and where Emmanuel was maître de chapelle from 1904 to 1907. So in 1919, through Emmanuel's contact, Duruflé met Tournemire, the Conservatoire's professeur d’ensemble instrumental. Tournemire took him on as one of his rare private students.

A native of Bordeaux, Charles Tournemire (1870–1939) began early studies at the Bordeaux Conservatoire, and at the age of eleven won first prize in a piano competition. For three years he studied organ technique, repertoire, composition, and improvisation with César Franck at the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1891 he won a premier prix in Widor's organ class.

Tournemire accepted as students only those in whom he was genuinely interested. He did not teach technique, because he expected his students already to be technically proficient. Duruflé's fellow student Jean Langlais declared him a poor teacher and said he hated giving lessons, and Duruflé believed that he had little pedagogical ability. Duruflé commuted to Paris twice each week for his lessons with Tournemire, giving piano lessons in Louviers to help cover the cost of his new studies.