Acknowledgements
My thanks go first to those who assisted me in 2003 in locating the manuscripts of Jeanne Demessieux’s diaries and letters: Bruno Chaumet, president of the Association Les Amis de l’Art de Marcel Dupré, who led me to Frédéric Blanc, and Monsieur Blanc, then president of the Association Maurice et Marie-Madeleine Duruflé, who led me to Daniel Picotin. Special thanks are due to Daniel Picotin, husband of the late Christiane Colleney, who generously made for me copies of the manuscripts of the diaries and letters.
My 2003 research trip in Europe was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In preparation for that trip, American organist Peggy Jane Johnson kindly put me in touch with the Dutch organist Jean Wolfs, and my colleague at the University of Regina, Laurie Carlson-Berg, turned my letter to Jean Wolfs into elegant French. Though Jean Wolfs passed away before I arrived in Maastricht to speak to him in person, his family led me to the Maastricht organist Hans Leenders who, in turn, gave me contact information for Demessieux student Goosen van Tuijl. Van Tuijl and his companion Ank de Groot welcomed me into their home in s’-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands for two long interviews. Following van Tuijl’s death in early 2004, De Groot received me in her home on a couple more occasions, in 2006 and 2011, and facilitated the transfer of Demessieux memorabilia that Van Tuijl had graciously bequeathed to me.
Many individuals in France agreed to be interviewed, most of these in 2003. Pierre Labric, Jeanne Demessieux’s pupil, friend, and supply organist, spoke to me of his memories of Demessieux and gave me copies of her 1946–1947 Salle Pleyel recital programs. Demessieux friend Madeleine Chacun, then president of the Association Les Amis de Jeanne Demessieux, shared with me her memories, and copies of recital programs from Demessieux’s international career. Chacun also put me in contact with Demessieux’s closest living relative, the late Dr. Jacques Peyle (grandson of one of Jeanne Demessieux’s paternal aunts). At their home in Bourg de Péage, Dr. and Mrs. Peyle spoke to me about the Demessieux family. The late Rolande Falcinelli received me in her home in Pau to talk about what it was like to be a young female organist in Paris in the 1940s. My thanks go especially to Demessieux’s friend and secretary Claudine Verchère, of the Association Les Amis de Jeanne Demessieux, with whom I had several conversations over the period 2004 to 2012, when she visited Canada, or I visited France.
Staff of libraries and archives facilitated my research over the years. The first was the Municipal Archives of the city of Maastricht, where in 2003 I examined manuscripts of Demessieux’s student compositions. That same year, France’s Archives nationales provided me with documents concerning study at the Paris Conservatory during the 1930s and 1940s. Staff of the Bibliothèque nationale de France gave further assistance; in particular, in 2006 and subsequent years, the BnF music department enabled my research on the teaching and concert career of Marcel Dupré. Also in 2006, staff of the Archives municipales de Montpellier allowed me to re-examine the Demessieux memorabilia that had been transferred there and provided me with digital copies of Demessieux photographs.
Other institutions in France supplied information by email. In 2015 the physics department of Paris’s Palais de la découverte clarified for me the nature of the “mannequin Cavaillé-Coll” referred to in Demessieux’s diary entry of April 2, 1941: for this, thanks go to Kamil Fadel and Alain de Botton. In 2021 the archives of the Société nationale des chemins de fer français in Beziers, France provided me with scans of documents related to Étienne Demessieux’s employment with the company.
Several individuals kindly responded to my inquiries. A 2011 email exchange with French musicologist Yannick Simon pointed me to documentation concerning Marcel Dupré’s candidacy to head the Paris Conservatory in 1941. In Regina, French-born resident Nicole Sauvage answered my questions about family customs in France. Telephone conversations and email correspondence with University of North Texas organist Jesse Eschbach in 2020 expanded my thinking concerning Marcel Dupré’s 1946 break with Jeanne Demessieux. In early 2022, the incumbent organist of St-Esprit in Paris, Hampus Lindwall, responded by email to my questions concerning Demessieux as organist of that church. Also in 2022, U.K. record producer Adam Freeman shared with me via email his research concerning female organists who had made early commercial recordings. Meanwhile, email exchanges with organist D’Arcy Trinkwon in the U.K. gave me insights into the hurdles Demessieux faced during her career.
I am immensely grateful to Stacey Brown for having agreed back in 2013 to correct and polish my translations of Demessieux’s diaries and letters, and for staying figuratively by my side during these past nine years. Finally, I owe a huge debt of thanks to Barbara Reul for her careful readings of this book—in particular, my chapters of introduction and commentary and my notes to the translations—and for her wise editorial advice.
The texts translated to English in this book are used with the following permissions:
Diaries and letters of Demessieux as a whole are used with permission of the heirs to the estate of Jeanne Demessieux: Dominique Badin Peyle, Laurence Peyle, and Pascale Peyle.
Diaries and letters of Demessieux published in L’Orgue: Bulletin des Amis de l’Orgue, Nos. 287–288 (2009/III–IV) are used with the permission of the editor, François Sabatier.
Excerpts from letters by Demessieux derived from Christiane Trieu-Colleney, Jeanne Demessieux: Une vie de luttes et de gloire (Avignon: Les Presses Universelles, 1977) are used with permission of the heir to the estate of Christiane Colleney, Daniel Picotin.
Letters, and excerpts from letters, written by Marcel and Jeanne Dupré to Jean Guerner, published in the Bulletin of the Association des Amis de l’Art de Marcel Dupré, No. 20 (May 2002), are used courtesy of the president of the Association, Bruno Chaumet.
Photos appearing in Chapters 1, 4, 8, 9, and 10, and on the cover, are used with permission of the Archives municipales de Montpellier, 4S20, Fonds Jeanne Demessieux, unless otherwise indicated.
