9 Commentary on the Diary and Letters of 1940-1946 and their Aftermath

Papa, Maman, and I visited Marcel Dupré in Meudon . . .
The master had a long conversation with my parents,
impossible to reproduce in detail.
My future, if God so wills it, is laid out, from this moment.
An artistic pact is established between Dupré and me.
—Diary entry of June 25, 1941

As I shall describe below, the narrative of Demessieux’s 1940s diary, by eschewing domestic and bodily concerns, has something in common with a coming-of-age story that a man might write to describe his past, youthful experiences leading to his career success. Focusing as it does on the course of events by which Demessieux was transformed from apprentice musician to concert artist and published composer, the diary overlaps in genre with autobiography. It also gives pride of place to a very special relationship, that between herself and Marcel Dupré. Other themes to be examined include creation of her own identity, Dupré as mentor, Dupré’s personality, and the aftermath of the diary.

An overview

Demessieux’s 1940s diary was composed in a series of eight notebooks. The first establishes, as per its opening epigraph, her motivation for writing—“for my personal recollection”—and the approach to be taken—all to be told “without commentary and without hindsight.” Demessieux does, by and large, refrain from reflection upon events and conversations, which is unlike her practice in 1934–1938.¹ As I shall discuss below, this also makes the 1940s diary different from most women’s journals.

One of its most salient characteristics is that throughout Demessieux logged the names of Parisian musicians and other highly respected persons with whom she came in contact between 1940 and 1946. In fact, she named distinguished persons encountered so frequently that her text has something in common with a memoir, because as well as being autobiographical it becomes a record of the period in which she lived.

Literary theorists who study autobiographical writing as a genre, including diaries, have identified general ways in which women’s writing about themselves tends to differ from men’s. For one, women authors are more apt than men to pour out their feelings, that is, be “confessional” in style (as is Demessieux’s diary of 1934–1938).² For another, only women are likely to log domestic duties and events. As Valerie Raoul puts it,

Subjects usually considered too trivial for inclusion in “a book” are the mainstay of [women’s] diaries, which frequently focus on the domestic scene. What is normally considered marginal in a man’s world becomes central.³

Both these characteristics typical of woman’s self-writing—confession and domesticity—are absent from Demessieux’s 1940s diary.⁴ Instead, she dealt here with the grander themes in her life, to be examined below.

Given how Demessieux opens the diary (the initial entry, for December 8, 1940, records her first time playing the St-Sulpice organ), she apparently conceived it as an account of events relating to her development as a musician. Moreover, following the December 11 entry, Demessieux inserted a description of events that had taken place on November 30, 1940, when she had learned that Dupré was favoured by some as the next director of the Conservatory, and promptly ran to Meudon to convey this to him and his wife. Thus, the diary becomes also an account of her increasing acceptance into the social milieu of the Duprés. In other descriptions of her visits to the Dupré home, the frequency with which she repeats, “We had afternoon tea” or “The master accompanied me back to the station” is consistent with this theme.

Both emphases, career building and social climbing, are maintained throughout the 1940s diary. With respect to her own, immediate family, Demessieux mentions only occasionally a birthday or name day, the death of her grandmother in 1942, or a visit from her sister in 1945. Suggesting that the hours she spent teaching and practising were peripheral to her career development, she omits all reference to these repetitive tasks. Instead, the reader is provided with lists of organ repertoire she performed, and names of people who heard her perform on Sunday mornings—ostensibly because these describe Demessieux’s growth as an organist, or growth of her reputation as an organist.

Even her health, if referred to at all, is brought up only indirectly—as in, “I told him I’d had a fever for several days” (February 5, 1941)—and most likely because it had an impact on Demessieux’s career development. For instance, in the context of the Duprés’ plans for her debut recital, she describes a health condition, doing so parenthetically:

Mammy [Jeannette Dupré] is very worried about my health: (a lump in my breast that, regrettably, caused me to suffer this afternoon, and for which I am being treated . . .) (March 16, 1945).

Also contributing to the impression that detailing Demessieux’s career and social advancement is the main objective of the diary is the paucity of references to the German Occupation of Paris and events of World War II. After all, the first four and a half years (December 1940 to May 1945) overlap with the World-War-II period. In this way, Demessieux’s 1940s diary is unlike other published journals of young French women writing during the war:⁵ Demessieux makes scant mention of the German presence and says little about war-time privations.⁶ Granted, there are scattered, brief references to air raid alerts (in 1943 and 1944) and bombardments when they occurred in the Demessieux family’s neighbourhood, as well as in the Paris suburbs or Paris generally (April 21, June 1, and August 27, 1944), and when the bombardment involved Dupré’s city of birth, Rouen (June 6, 1944). The sustained exception is the series of short, vivid entries dated from August 19 through 29, 1944 that describe horrors of the final days before the liberation of Paris, such as gunfire in the streets. More distant events of the war, however, are captured by Demessieux only in reference to the Allies’ invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, and brief mention, on December 22, 1944, of “a terrible German offensive,” referred to again as “the German advance,” three days later.

As identified by literary theorists, it is, nevertheless, typical of autobiographical writing of a woman, more so than that of a man, to devote a large amount of attention to her relationship with another person.⁷ In Demessieux’s 1940s diary that individual is Marcel Dupré, to whose family she also gives attention. She not only details Dupré’s actions directly related to her career development, but many of his other activities, such as recitals and concert tours, are also communicated. When writing in her diary, Demessieux especially treasured Dupré’s words by recording them at length, whenever possible. As if wanting to retain thoughts to live by, on a back page of volume 1, following the entry for November 29, 1941, she even compiled a list of aphorisms, most of which are words of Dupré. Indicative of the importance Demessieux attached to her close relationship with all three members of the Dupré family, many of her entries express deep concern for them, as when one of them was ill (e.g., June 23, 1944), or a bombardment had come close to their Meudon home (e.g., April 21, 1944). In fact, Demessieux acted out this concern in telephone calls and visits, which she considered important enough to be noted in writing.

“I was climbing to my highest plane”—Demessieux and the narrated “I”

Like the letters and diary entries of 1932–1940, Demessieux’s 1940s diary has the implicit function of sketching the character of the narrated “I”—that is, fashioning her self-identity. Unlike the earlier writings, however, the 1940s document does not display her love of small jests and touches of sarcasm: it is entirely serious in tone. What remains the same is Demessieux’s confidence in her abilities as a performer. Now, that is, between 1940 and 1946, this self-assuredness is always a reaction to her playing in a particular setting, whether a church service, for an audience at Meudon, or in a public recital. Rarely is there mention of something that went wrong. During a Vespers service at St-Sulpice, for the last of the Magnificat versets, “the cornet did not sound: I had forgotten to set the piston.” But she finished the account with a positive spin: “I salvaged the situation; Papa, who never suspected a thing, told me he liked this verset the best…!” (July 27, 1941). On twenty other occasions, beginning with July 15, 1942, Demessieux notes in her diary that she was “in good form,” “in very good form,” or even “in extraordinarily good form”—implying that she was satisfied, or more than satisfied, with her playing.

In fact, over the years of the diary, Demessieux portrays herself as becoming ever more confident as a performer. Summing up of her eleventh trial recital at Meudon, she notes, “Tremendous mastery. . . [I]n artistic terms, no more unknowns lay before me” (December 10, 1943). Or consider this remark about the first recital of her Pleyel series:

Right from the Passacaglia, I was climbing to my highest plane and then maintained it with the greatest authority of which I’m capable (February 26, 1946).

In other words, through the process of writing, Demessieux constructed her magnificent command as an organist to be part of her identity.

Two other important aspects of the narrated “I” in the diary of 1940–1946 are her evolution from insecurity to confidence as a composer, and her fierce loyalty to Marcel Dupré. The first will be examined immediately below.

“She has a personality and, for that reason, she suffers”—Demessieux’s early experiences as a composer

During the first six months of the diary (December 1940 to June 1941), Demessieux suffered a crisis of confidence as far as her abilities in composition were concerned. It was only gradually, over the following five years, that she came to terms with her fear of failure in what she, as a professional musician, considered to be an essential skill.

Her lack of confidence was exacerbated in early 1941 by the negative reaction of examination and competition juries to her most recent submissions for her Conservatory class. This was because Demessieux’s latest compositions had an experimental sound to them. Her violin sonata, for instance, termed “scandalous, hideous!” by a juror (January 30, 1941), was characterized by angular melodies and unresolved dissonance.⁸ As noted in the same entry, Henri Busser, her composition teacher, said to her after the hearing, “all you wrote were wrong notes. But during the first years, it’s always that way.”

Receiving no constructive criticism from Busser, Demessieux sought advice from trusted mentors. Specifically, these were the Gallon brothers, with whom she had studied harmony and counterpoint in the 1930s, and Dupré, who would by 1943 take over as her principal mentor in composition.

Asked by Noël Gallon what composers’ music she most admired, Demessieux replied, “Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner and the romantics generally” (January 31, 1941). At a subsequent meeting, she agreed with him that compositions such as her violin sonata were not a true expression of herself (paraphrased from February 5, 1941). Yet, Demessieux did not record that she resolved to compose something whose melody and harmony were closer to the styles she had used in her harmony and counterpoint courses.

It was Dupré who told Demessieux that in her recent compositions she was searching for herself; his advice was “be yourself” (January 31 and May 16, 1941). Once again, she did not explore in her diary how she might be truer to herself as a composer. Neither was Jean Gallon’s suggestion taken up—that instead of employing a dissonant style, she should try to write for “the man in the street” (February 10, 1941).

At the same time, Jean Gallon complimented her on her distinctive voice as a composer: “Jeanne Demessieux has a personality [that is her own]” (February 5, 1941). Her other mentor, Dupré, concluded, “In composition . . . she has a personality[,] and, for that reason, she suffers” (August 10, 1941).

Demessieux’s state of confusion regarding her compositional style is further emphasized by brief mention of a recital of works by Busser’s students where her violin sonata was favourably received by an audience (March 19, 1941). To this entry she later added a footnote, writing, “Marcel Delannoy, in Les Nouveaux Temps, demolished me, ferociously.” Delannoy belonged to a faction of composer-critics championing new compositions that were easy for audiences to understand, a preference of which Demessieux may or may not have been aware, depending upon how closely she followed Delannoy’s writing. In his review of the recital, entitled “Quelques ‘Jeunes,’” he stated:

As for Mlle Jeanne Demessieux, her Sonata for violin and piano is discouraging. Its incoherence is such that the ear . . . registers no surprises. Intentional nihilism or congenital lack of musicality? With my whole heart I hope that a new work will soon lead me to contradict myself.⁹

According to the diary entry for June 17, 1941, Delannoy subsequently served as a jury member for the composition competition at which Demessieux presented two movements of a symphony (performed by four pianists at two pianos) and a song. She recorded the following about this event:

A deathly silence during the Allegro. The Adagio began auspiciously; but Busser, having taken an adjudicator aside, talked, nonstop, in a loud voice, from the first note until the last, without any response from the other. The same during the song. A sense of failure was in the air.

Of the extant official comments, some appear to have been penned by the Conservatory director, Henri Rabaud, and are difficult to decipher.¹⁰ The first and last lines are readable, however: “failli – mal orchestré” (“failed – poorly orchestrated”) and “OMoi! OMoMoi!!”

The June 1941 composition competition turned out to be the last such event in which Demessieux participated. Unable to solve the problem of how to succeed as a composer by changing teachers (which was not permitted by the Conservatory), Demessieux decided to take a year’s leave of absence from the class. A year later (1942), and after discussion with Dupré—whose own purpose was served by having her concentrate on her career as a performer—Demessieux decided not to return to the class after all. By doing so, she abandoned her dream of winning the Rome competition.

Demessieux’s next documented attempt at composition came more than a year after that decision. In December 1943 she drafted an organ piece, Nativité, and played it for Dupré. He described it as “personal” and “written for your own technique” (December 31, 1943).¹¹ This appears to have spawned an idea: that Demessieux as a composer of organ music could contribute to their collaborative effort to create a new breed of virtuoso organist. To that end, two months later Dupré requested that Demessieux produce a set of six études for organ: “I tell you, you must write them for art and for France” (February 25, 1944). She did, modelling them in part on the études Dupré had recently composed for the development of her virtuosity, and with the aim of giving to the feet the sorts of difficulties that Liszt and Chopin gave to the hands.¹² As Demessieux gradually completed each piece (“one in thirds, one in sixths”), Dupré, sensing that the harmonic style was beyond what an average audience could understand, encouraged her thus, according to the diary entry of July 14, 1944:

“Do not blame yourself that your excellent ears can hear what to others is inaccessible. I repeat, you are very gifted! Too gifted in aural perception, technique, and reading; too gifted for composition…”

Demessieux completed the six études in August 1944. Meanwhile, Dupré had used his influence to get Bornemann’s promise that he would publish the revolutionary set, which he did, though not until 1946.¹³ This success finally established her confidence as a composer for the organ.

Did Demessieux eventually find a way of accepting what had happened to her in the Conservatory organ class in 1941? Almost five years later, November 11, 1945, she echoed a pronouncement of her mentors by declaring in conversation:

“I am very individualistic; I cannot put up with others trying to influence me, and because my music is individualistic too, I almost got myself thrown out of the Conservatory.”

This statement arguably illustrates that at the age of 24 Demessieux not only acknowledged the individualism that described her as a composer, but also applied it to her entire personality. In other words, she had added to her self-identity unwillingness to conform to what most others did and thought.

A further aspect of Demessieux’s self-identity created in the 1940s diary will be discussed later in this chapter under the heading “Reciprocal confidence”—Demessieux’s intense loyalty to Marcel Dupré.

“His own equal”—Dupré, the mentor

As was elaborated on in Chapter 5, in 1938 Demessieux had hoped that Magda Tagliaferro would agree to guide her towards a professional debut and help ensure her career as a concert pianist. However, this never came about, perhaps because Tagliaferro was fully occupied with her own career. In June 1941, Demessieux—having spent the previous three years earning her First Prize in organ, not having advanced in a career as a pianist, and feeling, moreover, discouraged as a composer—was having trouble imagining her future as a musician, particularly during World War II and the German Occupation.

Meanwhile, Marcel Dupré in 1941 was in a very different position from Tagliaferro’s: he had achieved every goal of his career except one, according to the diary entry of June 22, 1941. Specifically, Dupré had told Demessieux of

his longstanding desire to mold his own equal, a peer capable of having a brilliant career. He believed he had found this in Marcel Lanquetuit, and procured an engagement in America for him; but despite a good start, Lanquetuit gave up on his career. He [then] found rich skill and promise [riche nature] in [Olivier] Messiaen and procured an engagement in Brussels for him; Messiaen refused, wishing to make his career as a composer and only wanting to be an organist to play his own works, in the way he wanted.

The example of Messiaen, in particular, arguably illustrates that fulfilment of Dupré’s remaining goal required not only an unusually gifted candidate; it also depended upon that person’s willingness to turn away from other goals towards emulating Dupré’s career. In other words, Dupré wished to create an organist-composer in his own image.

Unlike Messiaen, who had already achieved success as a composer when he won his First Prize in organ, Demessieux had no obvious career to pursue next. Granted, she could accept more students and thereby, at least, contribute more to the family income. This would, however, put on hold her aspiration for a career as a concert artist. She could also bide her time at St-Esprit in the hope of opportunity for a more prestigious (and better paying) church post, but realization of this would be dependent upon luck. Accepting a concert engagement from the Association des Amis de l’Orgue and hoping that this might lead to other invitations to perform recitals in Paris and France made sense as well. As a concert organist she would undoubtedly have had to be prepared for a lot of competition, including from her female peers.

It was at that point, that is, when Demessieux was feeling at loose ends in 1941, that Dupré proposed to fashion her into his equal. He appears to have had faith in her ability to realize this goal because as a student in his organ class she had accomplished every requirement with seeming ease. According to the diary entry of June 25, 1941, Dupré explained his intentions, and what would be required of Demessieux, in a long conversation with her parents (in Demessieux’s presence, though she did not quote from it). Evidently, he did not simply propose setting up a debut recital or professional concert engagement for Demessieux as he had tried for Lanquetuit and Messiaen. Instead, Dupré appears to have intuited that, as a woman in a male-dominated society, Demessieux needed to be better than any of her peers, particularly her peers among men.

To that end, Dupré would likely have explained his master plan: that prior to Demessieux’s debut concert, he would first make her a concert organist equivalent to himself. The work would be of the nature of a collaboration, with his teaching fees waved, and involve Demessieux in an enormous amount of effort, such that any other new employment for her would be ruled out over a period of years. Perhaps Dupré had specified, already, something Demessieux noted in the diary on July 23, 1941—that he saw her as potentially superior to every contemporary concert organist he could think of, female and male, French and foreign, thereby giving her an edge.

The diary stops short of detailing precisely what Dupré shared with Demessieux about organ technique that would make her stand out among others. Instead, the entry of July 8, 1941 contains this intriguing paragraph:

He [Dupré] revealed to me the secret of his technique, which I do not dare put into words. MD: “I would like to teach it, were it not impossible. It’s a matter of initiation [imitation], of instinct. What’s needed is to collaborate; I could only do it with you. I was a child when my father discovered, seeing me play, this curious innovation, which he hastened to cultivate. . . I have never spoken of it to anyone but him. I would not have spoken of it to anyone had not Providence led you to me to consider as my dear daughter to whom I will confide everything I know.”

In the last sentence Dupré appears to be saying that Demessieux was chosen as the inheritor of his craft of organ playing. The extent to which he believed that he was passing on a legacy shines through in another of his statements Demessieux shared in the same diary entry: “He retraced the lineage of our tradition of the organ, naming, ‘Lemmens, Guilmant, Widor, myself, and you.’” In other words, Dupré wished to form one French concert organist, Jeanne Demessieux, to be his unique successor in an exclusive line of French organists descended from the influential Belgian Lemmens.

It is difficult to imagine that any other holder of a Conservatory First Prize in organ who had a healthy self-confidence in their present abilities, and parents who were worldly wise, would have submitted so whole-heartedly to Dupré’s plan. Yet, the Demessieux family did so by accepting his offer and agreeing to the regimen of work Dupré had laid out for their daughter; Demessieux would later compare it to being “raised in a hothouse” (May 1, 1942). Clearly, Étienne and Madeleine Demessieux also shared their daughter’s ambition and, like her, were completely trusting of someone from Dupré’s social class.

According to the diary, the aim seems to have been to enhance Demessieux’s organ technique and command of the repertoire to the point that they were equivalent to Dupré’s. On August 11, 1942 she wrote:

For the first time Dupré has encouraged me to hasten the pace of my work. He wants me to have finished the repertoire by December, at the same time as he will have finished his études. In a flash, he made me realize why it is important that I do in a year and half “what he did in thirty years,” given the height of the springboard from which I am being launched.

However, nowhere in the diary does Demessieux shed light on contextual questions to which modern readers, especially, would have appreciated answers. It seems to me highly unlikely that she was asked what additional training she felt she needed at that time, or whether she would like to compete for one of the Paris organists’ posts that was available during the early 1940s. Demessieux does not comment on the fact that she was not free to decide when she felt ready to give her first public recital either. Anyone less tenacious, loyal, and obedient than Demessieux would probably not have followed every single one of Dupré’s directives as closely as she did.

At the end of almost five years of hard work, Demessieux’s diary entry of February 26, 1946 records that she made a point of going to see Dupré at the Conservatory the day after one of her public recitals to thank him for all he had done for her. She clearly attributed her extraordinary success to his generosity. Dupré replied to her thanks by saying what her triumph meant to him: “it is I who thank you, because you have avenged me! And you understand the full meaning of that word.” In other words, by creating a sensational new virtuoso organist—one who was not simply a young duplicate of himself but displayed a distinctive personality as a composer for the organ—Dupré arguably felt he had answered his critics who accused him of being stuck in the past. I wonder if vengeance was a goal Dupré had been working towards ever since June of 1941.

Though his motive may have been self-serving, by 1946 Dupré had certainly fulfiled his side of the agreement made with the Demessieux family. He had not only coached Demessieux to her superlative technical capability, her Paris debut, and her first publication; he had also given her a ready-made international career by speaking of her to his patrons in the U.S. (Frederick Marriott, mentioned September 22, 1944) and Switzerland (Paul Hoehn, November 11, 1945 and July 28, 1946), as well as to his concert agent in the U.K., Wilfrid Van Wyck (August 22, 1946). Meanwhile, representation of Demessieux was taken on by Dupré’s Paris concert agent, Charles Kiesgen, who explored the possibility of a recording contract with a U.K. company (May 12 and 17, 1946). As a result, while Dupré was touring North America in the summer and autumn of 1946—and introducing Demessieux to audiences by playing one of her Études—she became known in Switzerland by means of informal recitals arranged by Paul Hoehn (entries of September 18–30 and letter of September 23, 1946). Also that autumn, Van Wyck met with Demessieux personally in Paris to discuss her debut in England; Van Wyck would remain Demessieux’s U.K. agent until her death in 1968, making him the enduring result of Dupré’s work in promoting Demessieux’s career.¹⁴

“The brain of a man”—Dupré and Demessieux as collaborators

The notion that Dupré and Demessieux were collaborators rather than teacher and student beginning in the summer of 1941 is first hinted at in the diary entry of July 8, 1941 (quoted above) and confirmed regularly thereafter, beginning with July 20, 1941, and extending to December 1944.

In this spirit, Dupré entrusted to Demessieux, between October 1942 and December 1944, the correction of proofs for his new compositions and his editions. He also shared with her the gradual progress made on the installation of the registration system for his organ in his Meudon recital hall. Moreover, Dupré began to speak of their shared project of composing music that took organ technique forward in virtuosity and was meant for what he called “the organ of the future” (August 11, 1942). Eventually, they played each other’s newly composed virtuosic pieces: Dupré learned some of Demessieux’s Études and Demessieux learned Dupré’s Opuses 39–41.¹⁵

Modern readers should keep in mind that both lived at a time when professional collaboration between a woman and a man was almost unheard of.¹⁶ Perhaps, it was the unparalleled nature of what Dupré and Demessieux were doing together in the field of organ playing which caused him to say repeatedly that Demessieux’s thinking process reminded him of a male, not a female. Beset by gender stereotypes, sometimes Dupré contrasted her girlish appearance with her excellent mind, as in “How strange it is to see beneath a sweet little powdered face the brain of a man” (March 19, 1942). The four-movement organ symphonies she improvised two years later led Dupré to declare that Demessieux’s

improvisations have exuded “ever more intense emotion, as profound and vibrant as if life has matured you, real life, one of purity; yet extremely masculine. You have the brain of a man” (December 15, 1944).

One wonders why Dupré felt compelled to make statements of this kind in the first place. The answer is clear: in his day and age, the scientific community still assumed that women’s intellects were inferior to men’s, if only because their brains weighed less on average. Thus, Dupré could have meant to pay her a compliment when he said of her Bach playing,

“You have incomparable rhythmic authority and fullness. Hearing you, one would never believe that it is a woman who is playing. That’s a man’s brain, a colossal brain” (February 19, 1943).¹⁷

Here, Dupré vaguely defined the attributes of her playing that he identified as masculine. Nevertheless, it is arguably difficult to imagine that it occurred to any other listener who heard Demessieux play a church service or recital that there was something inherently masculine about her performances. Interestingly, in the diary Demessieux never reacted to Dupré’s statements about her brain; perhaps she took them as the accolades they were probably intended to be.

“Reciprocal confidence”—Demessieux’s loyalty to Marcel Dupré

Jeanne Demessieux’s intense loyalty towards Dupré is another aspect of her identity, as created in the diary. She began to describe this allegiance by writing of her hope during the fall and winter of 1940–1941 that Dupré would receive the honour of being chosen as the next director of the Paris Conservatory. She further expressed it by her readiness to follow every aspect of Dupré’s course of study for a virtuoso concert organist—in total, far beyond what he had ever required of any student except himself. According to the diary, in three years—July 1941 to June 1944—Demessieux accomplished the following, as prescribed by Dupré:

• July 1941 to June 1942:
  Remade her pedal technique by learning to play Alkan’s twelve études for pedal alone (diary entries from July 23, 1941 to June 19, 1942).

• March 1942 to September 1943:
  Perfected twelve études that Dupré composed especially for her (diary entries from March 18, 1942 to September 17, 1943).

• November 1941 to June 1944:
  Before an audience of Demessieux and Dupré family members, played from memory 12 recitals, covering the major works of Liszt, Bach, Franck, Dupré (11 opuses composed to 1941), Handel, and Mendelssohn (diary entries of Nov. 22, 1941; Mar. 19, Jul. 15—2 programs—and Oct. 3, 1942; Jan. 2, Mar. 12, May 4, Jul. 13, Aug. 18, and Dec. 10, 1943; Jun. 17, 1944).

Most markedly, Demessieux was passionate in her defense of Dupré in the face of his ideological opponents. For example, when Les Amis de l’Orgue member Charles Provost said to her in 1945 that Dupré’s music was rubbish, that he had done nothing for French organ building, and was under American influence, she apparently retorted:

“Dupré is incapable of being ‘influenced’! Now I’ll tell what you don’t like about Dupré: he’s an innovator. Everything, including your terms, falls on the shoulders, if not the head, of the one who leads the way” (November 11, 1945).

Six months earlier, after Dupré and Demessieux had encountered Marchal and Dufourcq at a recital given by Dupré, Demessieux had not been ashamed to write in her diary, “We turned our backs on them,” simply because she understood them to be Dupré’s “enemies” (May 16, 1945).

Overall, the diary of 1940–1946 arguably gives the impression that Demessieux’s aesthetic preferences at this time correlated precisely to Dupré’s. In one of the rare places where she indulged in a confessional style, she maintained that,

what separates Nietzsche from Wagner, Wagner from Liszt, Brahms from Schumann, will draw together ever more tightly the reciprocal confidence Marcel Dupré and I have in each other (May 12, 1944).

Dupré’s side of this reciprocity is attested to in the diary entry of February 20, 1946. The scene was the Salle Pleyel, in preparation for Demessieux’s recital series. In the presence of Demessieux and onlookers, Dupré questioned Guy Lambert (member of Les Amis de l’Orgue de Salle Pleyel) as to whether the organ’s pedalboard had been regulated as he requested. When Lambert replied that it was difficult to reconcile Demessieux’s wishes on this matter with Dupré’s, Demessieux voiced her insistence that her standard for the pedalboard was the same as Dupré’s. For his part, Dupré became indignant. As quoted by Demessieux, he said:

“In the first place, please, for your information, take the following into account: between Jeanne Demessieux and I, there is not, nor will there ever be, any divergence of opinion! It’s strange how people put words in my mouth.”

Demessieux’s description of this incident concludes with, “The effect on everyone was enormous.” This implies to me it was apparent to Demessieux that Dupré made his declaration for the benefit of not just Lambert but everyone within earshot.

The above two statements also establish that Demessieux believed she and Dupré were not merely collaborators in a great endeavor: they were two musicians with a deep and natural affinity—artistic soul mates, even. In entries describing Demessieux’s 1946 Pleyel recital series, their “reciprocal confidence,” and the happiness each gave the other, is enormous:

• Before recital number 1:
  [J]ust steps away from the console . . . [a] chair had been placed . . . for him [Dupré] because he had finally managed to get me to tell him what I really desired: to see him, as close to me as possible, during the recital (written February 26, 1946, the day after the recital).

• After recital number 2:
  Dupré, always at my side, chatted with his friends, sometimes drawing me into their group, aware of my every move. Since my first recital, he has been extraordinarily rejuvenated. Happiness and serenity shone on his face (April 1, 1946).

• After recital number 4:
  When he [Dupré] joined us, I sensed his great emotion. But a moment later, I understood, and it was my turn to be deeply moved . . . Dupré turned towards the abbé Delestre: “Your Grace, look at her! I say this before witnesses: she is brilliant, as a performer, as an improviser! . . .” (written April 30, 1946, the day after the recital).

• After recital number 5 (program of works by Dupré):
  Marguerite said to me, “My father was deeply moved during the entire concert. You play his works with such grandeur and emotion; you understand him so very well! I assure you, he is very happy.” The master was, indeed, very moved, barely managing to contain himself (written May 21, 1946, the day after the recital).

• Before recital number 6:
  The master left me at the last minute, as usual; his trustworthy presence, or his conversation are the only thing I enjoy before playing (written June 5, 1946, the day after the recital).

Furthermore, Demessieux’s account of the Duprés’ departure for North America (written June 5, 1946) suggests that neither wished their parting to take place:

Then the master found himself face-to-face with me and, in seconds, I could fathom the depths. Words are completely powerless. I could see him suffering so much that only one sentence came to me: “My great friend!” He embraced me at length, and said that, in a moment, he would embrace me again. MD: “I want you to be the last one I embrace.” I had been feeling a kind of anguish for some time, and he understood me fully when I said to him: “Master, you will return!” “Yes, my angel.”

And after the last hug:

“My adored friend,” I whispered. We did not exchange any more words, but Dupré forced me to look at him, showing me the depths of his soul with a tenderness so absolute that I became the stronger for it. And [I was] understood, as always, by this unwavering friend.

These passages convey how fervently invested Demessieux and Dupré were in their—clearly platonic—relationship.

“Dupré seems unlikely to forgive”—Creating the personality of Marcel Dupré

Implicit in the 1940–1946 diary is Demessieux’s creation of a complex personality for her teacher and mentor Dupré, with both positive and negative attributes. Some revealed by Demessieux corroborate other sources (Dupré’s Recollections, Murray’s Dupré biography, and Labounsky’s Langlais biography), while others are unique to the diary.

In Chapter 6, I pointed out that Dupré was inclined to call each of his students “mon petit” (“my little one”) in a paternal fashion.¹⁸ This friendly disposition on his part is borne out by the frequency with which Dupré is quoted by Demessieux as addressing her with “mon petite” as well.¹⁹ Consistent with Dupré’s Recollections, Demessieux also names many of his numerous faithful friends—other musicians, highly placed music-lovers, artists, clergy, and former students—and dozens of distinguished acquaintances in the diary.²⁰ This gives the impression that Dupré was an extremely outgoing and sociable individual.

Certain diary entries expose the dark side of Dupré’s personality. As is evident from other sources (discussed in Chapter 6), he took offence easily, and was fiercely unwilling to forgive.²¹ In the entry for June 1, 1944, Demessieux illustrated this by first quoting Dupré’s angry remarks about Maurice Le Boucher having sold Montpellier’s Salle de Concerts organ on which Dupré and Demessieux had planned to give a recital. Then Demessieux immediately compared these remarks to how Le Boucher had previously irritated Dupré by failing to understand the importance of Dupré’s plans for his protégée:

Dupré seems unlikely to forgive Le Boucher for this incident, just as he does not forgive Le Boucher’s lack of understanding about me when Dupré was testing the terrain while considering confiding in him.

Also documented in the diary and other sources are Dupré’s frequent, mean remarks about someone he felt had betrayed him or with whom he simply disagreed.²² For example, according to Demessieux, Dupré referred to his former student Henriette Roget as “that hypocritical face, that blonde . . . she is such a phony” (May 16, 1945). Nor was Dupré above making cruel comments to the very person with whom he clashed. A striking example is part of the diary entry of April 16, 1946, concerning the evening of Demessieux’s third Pleyel recital. When it was over, Le Boucher, in conversation with Demessieux and Dupré, expressed “reservations” concerning Demessieux’s performance. Dupré promptly exploded with insulting words spoken, “with a contemptuous smirk and such a vehement tone,” she writes, “that I stood rooted to the spot, speechless.”

Other diary entries indicate clearly how Demessieux learned that Dupré did not suffer fools, for example, when detailing a 1945 visit to Meudon by Pierre Lafond (Dupré’s cousin) and wife. Demessieux was present to perform for the visitors, and reported the following in her diary about how Dupré reacted to Madame Lafond’s comments on her playing:

[H]is cousin’s wife inundated him so, with the qualities of all kinds that she believed to have discovered in me, and with such attention towards me, that the master quipped at her with a smile that, “Men would not permit themselves what a woman sometimes allows herself” (December 19, 1945).

Demessieux also disclosed facets of Dupré’s character not revealed in other sources. To that end, I have already alluded, in Chapter 7, to his tendency towards self-pity as regards others’ enmity towards him, as when he said, “I have accomplished so much; and yet all I get are insults, insults” (April 16, 1943).

A year later, in early April 1944, Dupré combined this tendency with self-deprecation in Demessieux’s report of listening with him to a radio broadcast of one of his performances:

[H]e distractedly removed his glasses, placed his hands on his eyes and I clearly heard him stifle some tears he was attempting to hide. . .  A moment later, with an effort to make a joke, the master said to me, “Did you hear? The second wrong note.” Immediately after the broadcast, MD: “Well, if that’s how I play the organ—drat—I know why my enemies criticize me behind my back. That was a mess” (April 7, 1944).

Furthermore, diary entries by Demessieux let slip that Dupré, in his second decade as instructor of the Conservatory organ class, had begun to feel jaded with teaching. Weary that students’ failings seem to stand out more than their successes, he made the type of comment that any teacher might privately share with a confidant:

Leaving his class, Dupré had spoken to me about his students, how weak they were and how they had not worked since the competition . . . MD: “They cry before and after the competition! And they don’t work. They dishonour me” (October 19, 1943).

In another moment of bitterness, Dupré had also downplayed his accomplishment as an organ teacher with understatement: “I’ve taught a few capable of managing at Paris’s grand churches, nothing more” (April 16, 1943).

More than other sources, Demessieux’s diary reveals the Marcel Dupré who in his words and actions was cunning—as the person who masterminded Demessieux’s presentation as a spectacular new concert organist.²³ As readers of the diary will have noticed, he aimed that her Paris debut would take place when she had reached the pinnacle of her virtuosity, timing this to occur after the war had ended. Furthermore, his plan was that Demessieux would burst upon the Paris organ world with the maximum possible effect by leaving no preparatory element to chance.

To this end, the diary highlights Dupré’s tactics that were calculated to create growing suspense surrounding Demessieux in the minds of Paris organ aficionados—and secrecy was part of the plan. While all her colleagues who recently earned their First Prize in organ had played debut recitals, Dupré prohibited Demessieux from accepting any invitation to perform a public concert. In the ears of influential persons, he subtly (or not so subtly) planted verbal suggestions of her exceptional virtuosity. To the conductor Eugène Bigot, Dupré said the following:

“She is preparing for a career that will be first-rank. For the moment, and with her permission, I am intentionally keeping her in the shadows” (October 20, 1943).

Dupré also inserted Demessieux as supply organist at St-Sulpice, performing innovative repertoire, to make the maximum impression upon people who attended and would report to others. To stoke anticipation, Dupré used his friends as well as acquaintances. For example, by inviting Jean Gallon and the critic Bernard Gavoty to attend one of Demessieux’s practice recitals at Meudon, Dupré gave his trusted friends a foretaste of the strength of her musicianship without tasting its full extent. Meanwhile, Dupré groomed his favourite student to think of herself as “a great artist, a star” (April 9, 1943). Dupré’s final agenda item was to carefully manipulate the director of the Salle Pleyel and the friends of the Pleyel organ to have the organ refurbished, and its pedalboard regulated so that it could handle even Demessieux’s Six Études.²⁴

To drive home the notion that Demessieux’s brilliance surpassed any other debuting organist that Paris had ever seen, Dupré arranged that following her initial, triumphal recital at the Salle Pleyel (which eventually took place February 11, 1946), Demessieux would perform six more solo concerts. They would be mingled with recitals by established organists over the remaining three and a half months of the current concert season.²⁵

In summary, the entire undertaking, which Demessieux called in her diary entry of March 8, 1945 a sort of game (“The game was afoot”), arguably attests to Dupré’s calculating mind.

“This wound has never healed”—The termination of a special relationship

Demessieux’s diary breaks off abruptly on December 25, 1946 because something career-, and in her case, life-changing occurred shortly thereafter. As eventually became well known in the Paris organ world, upon the Dupré family’s return from their North American tour, near the end of 1946 or start of 1947, Dupré refused to have anything ever again to do with Jeanne Demessieux and her family members, without a word of explanation to any of them. Even his written justifications to others were vague. In a letter to Bernard Gavoty from October 14, 1948, Dupré stated:

As regards Jeanne Demessieux, it is with great regret that I must inform you in the strictest confidence that we have fallen out irreconcilably. The word “snub” is not too strong to describe what I have put up with for nine months.²⁶

A note in Dupré’s handwriting quoted by British-Canadian organist Graham Steed includes the following:

M^lle Demessieux—Although during the years after her prize I worked with her for nothing, she was unworthy of me and Madame Dupré. This wound has never healed. I don’t need to say more. You can guess…”²⁷

What could have happened to offend Dupré so deeply and so irrevocably? Two hypotheses that have been aired since the “rupture,” as Trieu-Colleney referred to it, are unsupported by Demessieux’s diary.²⁸ One is that Dupré and Demessieux disagreed on plans for her American debut: Trieu-Colleney suggested that perhaps Dupré wanted to promote Demessieux in the United States in the manner of a Hollywood star—and that Demessieux, being unpretentious and strong in her opinions, would have roundly rejected such a plan.²⁹

Karen Ford, in a 1992 biographical article on Demessieux, put forward a similar notion: that Dupré and Demessieux

had differences of opinion regarding the organization of Jeanne’s concerts and upcoming tours in North America, where she refused, in spite of Dupré’s insistence, to venture alone without having prior assurance of specified conditions.³⁰

I would argue that strong disagreement between Dupré and Demessieux on any such issue could only have taken place over the summer or autumn of 1946 by correspondence.³¹ If there had been an exchange between Dupré and Demessieux concerning plans for her North American debut, it is logical that Demessieux would have written about it in her diary, just as she noted other arrangements in progress for her career.³² Given the lack of discussion, it is safe to assume that this did not take place in 1946.

The second hypothesis centres around the closeness of the bond between Dupré and Demessieux. Without naming her sources, Ford wrote:

Still others talk of a close and endearing relationship between master and pupil which ultimately threatened to disrupt Dupré’s family life, suggesting that the rupture was more the result of insistence on the part of Mme Dupré.³³

However, in my May 2003 conversation with Pierre Labric—who knew the Duprés and Demessieux personally—he was adamant that Madame Dupré had nothing to do with the rupture in the relationship.³⁴ Moreover, according to the diary, Jeannette Dupré was as fond of Demessieux as was her husband: Demessieux was permitted to refer to Jeannette Dupré as “Mammy,” and both Duprés treated Demessieux like an adopted daughter.³⁵

A third hypothesis is hinted at by other diary entries from the 1940s. As Trieu-Colleney first pointed out, Demessieux was warned by friends, and sensed for herself, that she had “enemies,” just as Dupré did (entries of May 1, 1942; June 7, 1942; April 21, 1944; March 11, 1945; January 9, 1946; February 26, 1946).³⁶ On this basis, I have argued elsewhere that following Demessieux’s 1946 debut and recital series, those among Dupré or Demessieux’s opponents who were resentful of the public success of the Dupré-Demessieux collaboration may have used the period in which Dupré was out of the country to undermine their oneness.³⁷

This raises the question of what weakness in their unity could have been exploited. Based on diary entries, there is no doubt that the egocentrism which had motivated Dupré to create his equal caused him to tie the unanimity of his and Demessieux’s opinions and preferences to his personal pride. Above, I cited Dupré’s angry outburst during a dispute about regulating the pedalboard of the Salle Pleyel organ: “between Jeanne Demessieux and I, there is not, nor will there ever be, any divergence of opinion!” (February 20, 1946). It seems to me that, having tied his self-worth to Demessieux’s solidarity with him, Dupré was vulnerable to assault on his self-respect. In 2005, I argued that sensing this, an unknown person—an “enemy”—conveyed to Dupré words, or an action of Demessieux, that appeared disrespectful of him; this could have been “an out-of-context (or fictitious) remark attributed to Jeanne Demessieux, or perhaps one of her actions, slanderously reinterpreted.”³⁸

But I realize now that the bearer of the poisonous information need not have been someone from among Dupré’s ideological opponents. One of his own followers, aiming to serve personal ends, would be especially capable of manipulating Dupré. The American organist and teacher Jesse Eschbach, in an article describing a 2018 interview with Pierre Labric, posited that it was a jealous member of Dupré’s own “entourage” who did the deed of conveying a remark, purportedly by Demessieux, that was disrespectful of Dupré.³⁹ Eschbach based this on circumstantial evidence shared with him by Marie-Madeleine Chevalier-Duruflé in conversation many years ago, that was seemingly confirmed in his conversation with Labric.⁴⁰ Admittedly, Eschbach refrains from naming in his article the person Chevalier-Duruflé believed was responsible because “direct descendants of the principal parties are still with us.”⁴¹

When Eschbach shared with me the name of this person in 2020, it was in confidence. Therefore, I will only add that an attentive reader of Demessieux’s diary may notice a particular pair of persons, one or the other of whom interacted with Demessieux awkwardly between spring 1945 and autumn 1946, in ways that suggest their jealousy and resentment of her. This much of a clue, I believe, is fair.

If one of Dupré’s own followers had indeed caused the irreconcilable falling out between the former close friends, Bernard Gavoty’s remark reported in the diary about the rift between Vierne and Dupré may be viewed as a parallel:

[Gavoty] spoke a lot about the “deep affection” that at one time united Dupré and Vierne and said that “third persons playing a role in their life” had disrupted it (March 8, 1945).

Extending the analogy, in both cases the fault lay arguably as much with Dupré’s reaction as with the “third person”: only someone radically unable to forgive would have doggedly refused, as Dupré did, to discuss with Demessieux her reported action or remark.

Dupré’s rejection of Demessieux from 1947 onward also meant that he no longer supported her career. Specifically, he refused to write her letters of recommendation or give any sponsorship that a former student of her calibre could have expected of him to help further her career in France.⁴²

Lack of Dupré’s endorsement, however, did not prevent Demessieux from being engaged to present a second series of recitals at the Salle Pleyel. These six took place during the period October 28, 1947 through January 20, 1948. They consisted largely of pieces from her vast repertoire that she had not played in the 1946 series, with an emphasis on Bach and Franck.⁴³ Two recitals included Demessieux’s own, most recent compositions: the December 12, 1947 recital featured the first complete presentation of Sept Méditations sur le Saint Esprit, and the January 20, 1948 recital the premiere of her Triptyque.⁴⁴

Emotionally, though, Demessieux suffered greatly because of Dupré’s rejection of her, meanwhile never knowing the reason for it. Presumably based on letters to which Trieu-Colleney had access, Demessieux’s biographer concluded concerning their falling out,

It was not only the loss of her best friend: an entire world of trust had collapsed. A great man had fallen from his pedestal, though she continued to admire him musically, and she remained conscious of all that she owed to him.⁴⁵

As evidence that Demessieux continued to venerate and defend Dupré, she published an article, “The Art of Marcel Dupré,” in 1950.⁴⁶ She began with a detailed biography, then described Dupré in glowing terms as recitalist, improviser, composer, and teacher, while emphasizing ways in which he was an originator and an innovator. Demessieux’s statement “Let us make no mistake about it: Dupré is not a purist chained to unchangeable norms,” describing him as a composer, was clearly aimed at those critical of him.⁴⁷

Then again, as Trieu-Colleney points out in her chapter “Jeanne and Organ Building,” Demessieux did not remain entirely of one mind with Dupré as regards organ design. The example used is the gigantic organ in the Philadelphia Wanamaker’s store that Dupré praised.⁴⁸ When Demessieux got to play the famous instrument during her 1953 North American tour, she found it disappointing.⁴⁹ Corroborating this difference of opinion, Demessieux described, in the February 2 entry of her diary from her 1958 North American tour, a 1930 Austin organ as being “horrible, heavy, [a] theatre organ. It’s what Dupré liked, unfortunately.”

Diary-keeping as an ongoing activity ended for Demessieux on Christmas Day, 1946. Apparently, she did not keep any sort of diary again until January 28, 1955, the day she departed Paris for her second North American concert tour. Beneath the title “Second Tour of America,” she subtitled this notebook “Journal de route”—Travel Diary. Three years later, she recorded day-to-day details of her 1958 North American tour in the same notebook. Trieu-Colleney, in her Demessieux biography, included the text of these two travel diaries, somewhat abbreviated, and interwove it with snippets of Demessieux’s 1953 and 1955 letters from the United States to her parents and sister. The next chapter of this present book presents a translation of these excerpts from letters quoted by Trieu-Colleney, interleaved with the entire text of the 1955 and 1958 travel diaries in translation. Where other sources give further evidence of recitals Demessieux played on her three North American tours, I have inserted this information between the textboxes for letters and diary entries.

NOTES: