Introduction

The French musician Jeanne Demessieux (1921–1968) was a trail blazer—a composer whose first published composition (1946) was the most virtuosic work for organ ever to appear. She was also the first woman to sign a recording contract for solo classical organ music (1947) and a concert artist who in the 1950s was the first female organist to make transcontinental tours of North America. Her diaries combined with letters fall into three sections—1932–1940, 1940–1946, and those from her North American recital tours. They are a rarity among self-writings of historic women musicians, a goldmine of insights into music education and career-building in twentieth-century France, and a frank view of the tribulations of a touring concert organist in the 1950s.

Composer and translator Stacey Brown and I here present the first English translation of Jeanne Demessieux’s complete, extant diaries, and of selections from a smaller body of related correspondence. Together, they detail one historical woman’s path from a music-saturated childhood to touring virtuoso musician. Unlike the archetypal woman’s diary, Jeanne Demessieux’s journals from 1932–1940 and 1940–1946 (both written in Paris) do not detail the minutiae of a young woman’s day-to-day life. Even the German Occupation of Paris and events of World War II are given only occasional mention. Instead, the spotlight is steadily on music.

The chapters accompanying the translations do not form a complete biographical study.¹ Rather, introductory chapters to the three short periods in which Demessieux chronicled her experiences focus on the contexts in which the diaries and letters were written. To initiate readers into the periods spanning 1932–1940 and 1940–1946, I describe the significance of Demessieux’s lineage and social class at birth, the nature of the Paris Conservatory as Demessieux experienced it, and how Demessieux served in the role of organist of the Church of St-Esprit. The diary of 1940–1946 is itself preceded by two chapters: the first examines the diary’s other principal characters, specifically Demessieux’s mentor Marcel Dupré and his wife Jeanne Dupré; the second defines the mid-twentieth-century controversies within the Paris organ world in which Demessieux became embroiled. The 1950s travel diaries and correspondence are introduced by an overview of Demessieux’s three North American recital tours, including information on their organization, repertoire, and reception in print.²

The translations may be read straight through or in tandem with notes on the text (i.e., endnotes). Wherever possible, a note explains an incomplete or obscure reference in a diary or letter. Other notes provide specific background information not included in the introductory chapters. Where an event to which Demessieux refers is corroborated elsewhere in writing, this is cited. The diaries, particularly that of 1940–1946, also contain a plethora of names of other historical persons. To illuminate these, the first instance of the name of a noteworthy person in the translated text is linked to a short biographical note included in the alphabetical “Register of Persons Mentioned in Jeanne Demessieux’s Diaries and Letters.”

For readers who may wish to compare their reactions to the diaries and letters with mine, the chapter that immediately follows each of the three translations comments on and reads between the lines of the texts, demonstrating how the written words provide clues to more than first meets the eye. These commentaries also foreground dilemmas in the life of Jeanne Demessieux. The diary and letters of 1932–1940 present her, for instance, in the predicament of a young female spending all her time in the company of adults. One of the themes of the diary of 1940–1946 relates to mentorship, specifically what can happen when an older male decides to develop the career of a young woman—not the Catch-22 situation highlighted by the modern #metoo movement but, rather, attribution of a “male brain” to the female protégée. Finally, concerning the diaries from the North American recital tours, I draw attention to Demessieux’s frustration, as a prominent European artiste, at being expected to mingle with North American society ladies of the 1950s.

Sources

Following Demessieux’s early death in 1968 at the age of 47, her older sister, Yolande Demessieux of Aigues-Mortes, went to great lengths to preserve the reputation and legacy of her sister. It is due, first, to Yolande that there exist primary source material pertaining to her sister’s life and a collation of that source material in a biographical study in French. Likely in the 1970s, she commissioned this biography from a friend, the Bordeaux organist, composer, and musicologist Christiane Trieu-Colleney (1949–1993). Supplied by Yolande Demessieux with mounds of her sister’s diaries, photos, letters, and memorabilia, and Yolande’s memories of Jeanne as a child, Trieu-Colleney turned these into Jeanne Demessieux: Une vie de luttes et de gloire, which was published in 1977.³

Among the readers of that biography was a former Liège Conservatory organ student of Jeanne Demessieux, the Dutch organist Goosen van Tuijl (1924–2005). Intrigued by his former teacher’s story as recounted by Trieu-Colleney, Van Tuijl wanted to fill in more pieces of the puzzle of her life. Therefore, in the early 1980s he and his companion Ank de Groot travelled from the Netherlands to Aigues-Mortes in search of people who had known Jeanne Demessieux. As they solicited memories, a helpful townsman said to them, “Why don’t you go and ask her sister?” The couple found Yolande Demessieux at her home on avenue Frédéric Mistral. There they heard stories of Jeanne Demessieux’s life first-hand and caught a glimpse of a room that contained a treasure trove of her papers and musical manuscripts.

As Van Tuijl was soon to discover, in the early 1980s Yolande Demessieux was particularly concerned that her sister’s unpublished musical compositions—autograph manuscripts of student works inherited by Yolande—not be given unauthorized performances or publication. In a bid to collect everything, she contacted Pierre Labric (b. 1921), a former student of Jeanne who had been her substitute organist at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris. She instructed him to give to Van Tuijl the manuscripts that Yolande Demessieux suspected he had in his position. (She also made a point of asking for her sister’s organ shoes, which Pierre Labric had obtained from Jeanne.⁴)

With the assistance of Van Tuijl and another Dutch organist who had studied with Jeanne Demessieux in Liège, Jean Wolfs of Maastricht (d. 2003), Yolande Demessieux arranged with the Municipal Archives of Maastricht to transfer the manuscripts of Jeanne’s unpublished compositions for preservation there. A document consigning these manuscripts to the Maastricht Archives, signed by Jean Wolfs and Goosen Van Tuijl in February 1984 and by Yolande Demessieux in March 1984, suggests the transfer took place that year.⁵

In the late 1980s, Yolande Demessieux moved from Aigues-Mortes to a retirement home in nearby Grau-de-Roi. Her residence was afterwards sold (the exact dates are forgotten); one section of the house was demolished, which is to say that only part of the structure that Demessieux family members inhabited remains. It seems likely that the papers of Jeanne Demessieux that Van Tuijl and De Groot had glimpsed (other than musical manuscripts) remained in this house and were lost when it was sold.⁶ Yolande Demessieux died in Grau-de-Roi in 2000.

In 1994, an American organ student of Jean Wolfs, Peggy Jane Johnson, completed a thesis focusing on musical structure and performance issues in the published organ compositions of Jeanne Demessieux.⁷ The biographical section of the thesis relied heavily on Trieu-Colleney’s biography. Fast-forward to 2000, when I had read Trieu-Colleney’s book and discovered Johnson’s thesis, which gave me no indication of the location of the diaries and letters on which Trieu-Colleney based her biography. It did make me aware that the manuscripts of Demessieux’s unpublished compositions were kept at the Maastricht Archives and could only be accessed by persons authorized by Jean Wolfs.⁸

In early 2003, with the assistance of Peggy Jane Johnson, I wrote to Wolfs and was graciously accepted to examine these manuscripts in Maastricht. Meanwhile, I planned a twelve-week journey around western Europe, beginning in the Netherlands and following Demessieux’s path as a concert organist. Unfortunately for my hopes of speaking with Jean Wolfs concerning his memories of his organ teacher, he passed away only weeks prior to my arrival in Maastricht in May 2003. That disappointment led me, shortly after, to Goosen van Tuijl, who was living in ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. He happily spent several hours with me in his home talking about Jeanne Demessieux, playing tape recordings he had made of her performances, and showing me personal possessions of Demessieux that she had entrusted to him. Van Tuijl and I remained in touch when I returned to Canada later that summer. After his death in 2005, I would inherit from him his tape recordings of organ improvisations Demessieux had performed at the Liège Conservatory in 1957, and a collection of papers, other recordings, textbooks, and photographs that had belonged to her.

In early 2003, as I was preparing for my research trip, the location of the diaries and letters from which Trieu-Colleney quoted in the 1977 biography was still a mystery. Bruno Chaumet, president of the Association des Amis de l’Art de Marcel Dupré, then led me in the right direction: he recommended that, as French organist Marie-Madeleine Duruflé had been studying with Jeanne Demessieux during one of the periods covered in the biography, I should enquire with the Association Maurice et Marie-Madeleine Duruflé as to whether they had any clues. Correspondence with then Duruflé Association president Frédéric Blanc suggested to me that the diaries could still be with the husband of the late Trieu-Colleney, Daniel Picotin, whose address Frédéric Blanc was able to supply.

In a letter that arrived just as I was about to leave for Europe at the end of April 2003, Daniel Picotin informed me that the diaries were indeed in his possession and agreed to let me examine them when I came to France. When I arrived at his law office in Bordeaux in June 2003, I was presented with cartons and cartons of materials: diaries, letters, scraps of letters, photographs, and miscellaneous papers that had remained in the possession of Christiane Trieu-Colleney. I spent three days in his office combing through these. Examination of the Demessieux letters in the collection revealed that many of those from which Trieu-Colleney quoted in Une vie de luttes et de gloire were not in the collection of papers that remained with Picotin. This suggested—perhaps—that some materials had been returned to Yolande Demessieux and lost. Daniel Picotin kindly gave me permission to photocopy letters in his office and, later, when I was back in Canada, supplied me with complete photocopies of the three diaries. At the time of my viewing of the collection in Picotin’s possession, I recommended to him that he donate all the materials to a public archive; his choice was the municipal archives of Jeanne Demessieux’s birthplace, Montpellier, where they were deposited in 2004.⁹

In 2005, I published an article based on my reading of the diary of 1940–1946 and began my long work of translating all the diaries.¹⁰ As I continued to decipher the diary manuscripts, I was surprised when the French text of the diaries of 1934–1938 and 1940–1946, and a selection of letters and photographs, were published in 2009 in L’Orgue, Bulletin des Amis de l’Orgue.¹¹ They were preceded by commentary in essay form by the French musicologist François Sabatier that focused on the period 1940–1946.¹²

In late 2013 I approached Stacey Brown, asking her to join my project to correct and polish my translations, to which she enthusiastically agreed. The existence of the typeset text from 2009 had the happy result of facilitating her own work. With this in mind, I should note that our present translation diverges from the text published in L’Orgue in the very few places where the latter differs slightly from the manuscripts. The texts of the North American travel diaries of 1955 and 1958 were not published in L’Orgue, likely because they had been printed in Trieu-Colleney’s Une vie de luttes et de gloire, though with editorial omissions and a few errors in transcription. Our translation of the travel diaries follows the manuscript.

NOTES: