Émile Durand was born in 1830, at Saint-Brieuc, Côtes-d'Armor, in the Brittany region of France, and moved south with his family to Montpellier when he was 12 years old.

[1] His pupils includes Gabriel Pierné, Claude Debussy,[2] Camille Erlanger and Arthur Goring Thomas.

Durand favored writing popular songs (chansons) and art songs (mélodies), although he also produced a few lighter works for stage early in his career, including the opéra comique L'Elixir de Cormelius in 1868, and the operetta L'Astronome de Pont-Neuf in 1869.

The influence of his musical colleagues Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, Guy Ropartz, and Louis Tiercelin, members of the Breton Renaissance Movement, is particularly evident in his Chants d'Armorique composed in 1889.

[1] Émile Durand died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine on 6[1] or 7[3] May 1903, and he was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.