When Duruflé moved to Paris, around the time he began studying with Louis Vierne, he took an apartment at 50bis, rue de Douai, on the right bank, not far from the Paris Conservatoire. It was a famously musical neighborhood. In fact, Duruflé's flat was a mere two blocks north of the apartment on rue Ballu where Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), one of the greatest musical pedagogues of the century, had lived since 1904. Her beloved sister and composer Lili died in 1918, but Nadia remained there until her death in 1979, hosting her Wednesday musical salons for countless French and American students, including Aaron Copland, Melville Smith, and Virgil Thomson.

Boulanger certainly knew of Duruflé by 1930, and from as early as 1935 he played the organ for the memorial masses that Nadia arranged to be said for her sister at the Boulangers’ parish church, La Trinité, for the annual remembrance of her death on March 15. Apart from a cessation of the services during the war, they continued for nearly sixty years.

Duruflé began playing for these services probably as a consequence of Boulanger's falling out with Olivier Messiaen, who had previously played for them as the organist at Trinité. For the service in 1934, Messiaen played a Bach choral at the beginning, but otherwise improvised from start to finish, for which Boulanger sharply reproached him. He defended himself in a letter to her, adding with insolence: “I remain sorry about your disappointment and understand very well that a program—even super magnificent—will always seem to you unworthy of the memory of your sister!” There was always “a kind of muted but courteous antagonism between them, established on a certain mutual regard.” One year, after Duruflé had married Marie-Madeleine Chevalier, he sent his wife in his place. Boulanger was at first uneasy about the substitution, but was reportedly pleased with Mme Duruflé's playing.

Now settled into his first Paris apartment, Duruflé could more easily pursue his studies with Louis Vierne (1870–1937), arguably one of the greatest organists of his generation. A native of Poitiers, Vierne was born with a congenital cataract condition. “He could see very little. He had to hold the page an inch or so in front of his face, and even then it was difficult.