10 Introduction to the Diaries and Letters of the North American Recital Tours (1953, 1955, and 1958)

Colbert-LaBerge Concert Management
announces first American Tour,
February–March 1953, of Jeanne Demessieux.
Brilliant French Organist
—Advertisement, probably autumn 1952¹

Jeanne Demessieux’s 1950s visits to North America occurred amidst a hectic schedule of recitals played all over France and in many other European countries, during a career that extended from 1947 to 1967. Therefore, before launching into a description of her tours on the other side of the Atlantic, I will provide a sampling of her activity closer to home.²

With Paris as her home base, Demessieux travelled widely over the course of two decades. She played in French cities from Marseille in the southeast to Lorient in the northwest, and from Bayonne in the southwest to Colmar in the northeast.³ Across the English Channel, she collected recital engagements in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.

Between 1948 and 1958 alone, Demessieux visited the Netherlands more than a dozen times, on some of these trips playing in multiple cities. In August 1949 she appeared for the first time at the Salzburg Festival, and in October and November of the same year in Lisbon. One of Demessieux’s first engagements in Switzerland took place in April 1950 when she performed in Geneva. February and March 1952 included appearances in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and the year 1956 saw her perform again in Switzerland, as well as in Germany and Italy. According to Trieu-Colleney, Demessieux also played in Spain, though the year is not specified.⁴

Meanwhile, Demessieux recorded music for Decca, becoming the first female organist to sign a contract for recording of solo music on pipe organ.⁵

Principal locations were St. Mark’s, North Audley Street, London in 1947, 1949, and 1950; Victoria Hall, Geneva in 1952, 1953, and 1955; and the Paris Church of the Madeleine in 1958 and 1959.⁶ Between 1958 and 1962, a German radio station, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, recorded her playing on three Hamburg organs.⁷

Demessieux’s travel for recitals and recording sessions alternated with teaching. In 1950 she garnered the position of organ teacher at the Nancy Conservatory in northeastern France, travelling there two days a week.⁸ Then, in 1952, continuing to commute from Paris, she accepted the organ-teaching post at the Royal Conservatory of Liège in Belgium. A series of recitals Demessieux gave at the Liège Conservatory in April of 1952 were the first of her many performances there in the 1950s and 1960s.

Organization of Demessieux’s North American tours

Jeanne Demessieux made recital tours of North America in 1953, 1955, and 1958.⁹ Each time, she departed by ocean liner from the French port of Le Havre, arrived in New York at the end of January, and toured the continent in February and March. As readers will discover, the letters she wrote to her parents while overseas in 1953 and 1955 are colourful in description and enthusiastic in tone. The travel diaries, which she kept during the 1955 and 1958 tours only, detail her more mundane experiences, the difficulties of the touring life, and the strangeness of some of the people and customs she encountered.

According to the diaries, one of the trials of touring was dealing with the management company that organized all three of her tours. Colbert-LaBerge Concert Management (originally LaBerge) had a lengthy history of touring European concert organists in North America.¹⁰ In addition to bringing European composers—including Milhaud, Prokofiev, Ravel, and Respighi—as well as pianists and chamber groups across the Atlantic Ocean, the company had organized the North American recital tours of selected European organists, most notably Joseph Bonnet, Marcel Dupré, Louis Vierne, André Marchal, and Jean Langlais, all from France.¹¹ To be represented by this management company certainly placed Demessieux in a distinguished line of touring French organists.

Lilian Murtagh, who had been working for LaBerge since 1930, came to be in charge of the organ division.¹² When Laberge died in 1951, his business was acquired by the U.S. impresario Henry Colbert, who continued the company under the name Colbert-LaBerge. Meanwhile, Murtagh continued to handle organists’ tours and was likely responsible for the organization of all three of Demessieux’s North American tours; this is borne out by letters concerning the 1958 tour retained by her travel assistant Claudine Verchère.¹³

Publicity for each of Demessieux’s 1953, 1955, and 1958 tours began the previous year with announcements placed by Colbert-LaBerge in U.S. organ magazines The Diapason and The American Organist. These advertisements featured the phrase “brilliant French organist” and laudatory excerpts from newspaper reviews. To announce the 1958 tour, quotations from newspapers were organized under the headings “Press Acclaim in America” and “Press Acclaim Abroad,” assuring potential recital sponsors that Demessieux belonged to the first rank of international organists.¹⁴

Having secured recital engagements, Lilian Murtagh and her staff were responsible for arranging Demessieux’s visa, travel overseas, itinerary, train tickets from one city to another, and hotel accommodation. They also negotiated program details between the recital sponsors and Demessieux and forwarded organ specifications prior to her leaving France.

Demessieux typically travelled alone; only during the 1958 tour did her student Claudine Verchère join her as an assistant, and would have helped deal with common distractions such as last-minute changes to train tickets and payment of expenses during the tour. Local organizers looked after meeting Demessieux at the train station and transportation between hotel and recital venue, leaving room for mishap. For example, according to the diary entry for February 17, 1958, when Demessieux arrived by train in Sacramento that day, there was no one to meet her, which meant that she had not only to find for herself the church where she was to practise but someone to open the organ.

A church was the venue for most of Demessieux’s North American recitals, though a few recitals took place in university halls. The sponsor was, most often, the local American Guild of Organists (AGO) chapter and, less often, the church where the event was held.

Repertoire performed

During each of the three tours of the 1950s, Demessieux was prepared to perform two set programs, making six in total. As will be noted within the translation of the travel diaries and letters, on occasion, a local circumstance caused a variation, e.g., a work from one program was inserted into the other. By and large, though, Demessieux alternated what will be referred to as “Program No. 1” and “Program No. 2” as she went from place to place. Her principal aim in her programs was to celebrate standard organ repertoire as taught by Dupré, and a sampling of contemporary organ music.¹⁵ For Dupré and Demessieux, the basic canon included pieces he had edited for his Anthologie des maîtres classiques de l’orgue (Bornemann, 1942); works from the latter occurred on half of the six set programs.¹⁶

Each of Demessieux’s programs progressed historically, and was built around a framework of music by Bach (usually a free piece paired with a chorale prelude), by Franck (or sometimes Liszt), and from the twentieth century. To illustrate this approach, the program that Demessieux played at First Presbyterian Church in Glens Falls, New York on February 6, 1955, is reproduced below:¹⁷

Toccata in F major —Bach
“Come now, Saviour of the Heathen” —Bach
Second Concerto in B-Flat major —Handel
      Maestoso
      Allegro
      Andante
Second Chorale in B Minor —César Franck
Allegro (from Sixth Symphony) —Ch. M. Widor
Intermezzo (from Suite) —Jean Berveiller
Triptyque —Jeanne Demessieux
      Prélude
      Adagio
      Fugue
Improvisation on a submitted theme

The above is representative of the set programs for the 1953 and 1955 tours, when one of Handel’s concertos, as arranged for organ solo by Dupré, appeared regularly in the first half. Also during the first two tours, one of Demessieux’s two programs always included a movement from a Widor symphony. Occasionally she included a transcription. In 1955, “Program No. 2” featured Franck’s Rédemption: Interlude symphonique, arranged for organ by Demessieux’s friend Jean Berveiller. In 1958, “Program No. 1” opened with Dupré’s arrangement of the Overture to Bach’s Cantata No. 29, and “Program No. 2” contained a Vivaldi-Bach Concerto.

The second half of every program contained one or two of Demessieux’s own compositions: one of the Études, a movement from the Sept Méditations sur le Saint Esprit, one of the Twelve Choral Preludes on Gregorian Chant Themes, or, as illustrated above, her entire Triptyque. The other twentieth-century composers most often represented, though only by a single movement, were Olivier Messiaen and Jean Berveiller. Exceptionally, one of her set programs from the 1953 tour included a movement by Dupré (“The World Awaiting the Savior” from Symphonie-Passion) and a movement by Langlais (“Les Rameaux” from Trois Poèmes évangéliques).

Reception of Demessieux’s North American Recitals

The vast majority of reviews that Demessieux received in North America appeared in local newspapers, courtesy of local music critics who had been impressed by Demessieux’s credentials as a Parisian organist, and amazed by all that they heard. Thus, she was able to write to her sister Yolande and parents of how very good her reviews were (letter of February 5, 1953 to her parents; 1955 letter to her sister after her return to France, undated). For example, Fred Lissfelt of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, reviewing her February 10, 1953, recital at Pennsylvania College for Women, wrote,

Jeanne Demessieux, organist of the Church of the Saint-Esprit in Paris . . . represents not only an important church but a great tradition in French organ playing, avoiding the many sensational effects that other nations attain through brilliant registration, and holding firm to clarity of technique and a suave assurance in the art of improvisation, all of which she demonstrated well in her program.
Her playing of the baroque style of Bach and Handel is brilliant but also intensely musical in her sincere attention to details of contrast.¹⁸

Some reviewers admired her handling of melodic line, phrase, and nuance, and the clearness of her counterpoint. Richard Montague wrote in April 1953,

Demessieux’s playing . . . is accurate, rhythmic, sensitive, dramatic, clear, chaste, vigorous and intelligent. . . Her nuances seem always inevitable and affectation is unknown to her.¹⁹

In March 1955, Theodolinda Boris commented,

Everything under Mlle Demessieux’[s] fingers was crisp, so that even involved contrapuntal threads sounded with a truly admirable clearness. Demessieux’[s] rhythm had a wonderful vitality[,] and her handling of melodic line and phrase was like that of a master violinist or sensitive singer.²⁰

Others commented on how “in control” she was, including Charles van Bronkhorst, who observed in April 1958 that

Mlle Demessieux was in perfect control at all times: registration, dynamics[,] and technique were combined to yield maximum results.²¹

Writing in The American Organist, Scott Buhrman, editor of the magazine and an organist himself, had praised Demessieux’s staccato in a review of her 1953 debut recital at Central Presbyterian Church in New York:

If we have ears to hear with, a close scrutiny of how Miss Demessieux uses staccato, only rarely perverting the organ to its mud-thick legatos, will do much to revolutionize the funereal organ recital.²²

Scott Buhrman also voiced criticisms, though, particularly in March 1955, such as,

The first half of the program was played on hard and loud Diapason and mixture combinations; even the [chorale prelude] Blessed Jesus was done that way, devoid of any touch of tenderness.²³

In April 1958 the organist Frank Cunkle, editor of The Diapason, heard

thick, heavy registration . . . mechanically perfect meter . . . too often absence of a flowing line and remarkably little feeling of artistic communication.²⁴

As Ellis points out, a recital could invite criticism of Demessieux’s registration choices by one reviewer and approval by another.²⁵ Concerning the February 2, 1953 debut concert at Central Presbyterian Church in New York, organist Searle Wright voiced the following complaint:

Demessieux, like many of her many French compatriots, seems to be satisfied only with the most sharply contrasting stops available, regardless of the timbre of individual voices and their blend or lack of blend in combination or opposition. The result is the use, both for ensemble or solo playing, of the biggest, hootiest flutes, the edgiest reeds, etc.²⁶

Reviewing the same recital, Scott Buhrman praised Demessieux’s registration of Franck’s Pastorale, by emphasizing that here she

[taught] Americans another lesson they’ve tried to forget, namely that a mess of colors is not nearly so good as clear-cut pure colors. She contrasted reeds against flutes . . . the flutes were unmuddied by the addition of unnecessary supplementary voices, the reeds were ditto.²⁷

Demessieux’s choices of repertoire generally drew no criticism. One reviewer, however, Ray Berry, complained in June 1958 that the program was “not sufficiently relieved by music of a lighter character.”²⁸

Critics who remarked on Demessieux’s improvisations frequently applauded their complexity. For example, Theo Powell Smith closed his review of a February 1953 recital with:

And for an encore an elaborately wrought prelude and fugue on Bach’s “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” with its intricate brilliance.²⁹

Rudolph Elie, writing in March 1953, went into more detail:

The theme, a harmonically and rhythmically bold one in two parts with endless enharmonic values, emerged in a three-part fantasy culminating in a full-blown fugue of exceeding complexity combining, at the end, both themes, the whole ending in a charming coda to achieve an ovation for the organist.³⁰

Occasionally, a writer was dismissive of Demessieux’s improvisation. Barbara Owen commented in June 1958,

The improvisation was, as it often unhappily is, the dullest spot on the program. The theme submitted was a Gregorian chant[,] Adoro te devote, which would seem an excellent vehicle. However, she did little with it, beginning with the usual meanderings over a solo melody, and building up to the inevitable climax replete with 64-foot stop and blazing reeds.³¹

At the same time, Owen, like many other reviewers of Demessieux’s North American recitals, was as much struck by what she saw as heard, describing Demessieux as

an organist who could tear flawlessly through the most difficult manual and pedal passages almost literally without batting an eyelash, and wearing high-heeled shoes at that . . . sitting still and upright in the midst of a tumult of sound.”³²

Others noted Demessieux’s slight build and described her as being “like a timid child,” “frail,” a “petite but astounding young lady,” or a “young girl”—as if her personal appearance belied her ability to control an organ.³³

Incidentally, the early music movement was fully under way in North America as well as in Europe in the 1950s when Demessieux concertized in North America. Performers of music from the Baroque and earlier periods increasingly advocated that, technically and stylistically, this music be played in the manner of the period in which it originated.³⁴ They also promoted use of musical instruments constructed in, or modelled after those of, the era.³⁵

Demessieux never delved into these concepts. As taught by Dupré, she continued legato playing of Bach and other early organ music, and she performed her repertoire on every organ she encountered, whatever its mechanism or tonal design.³⁶ For Demessieux’s North American recitals, which as noted above, all began with music by Bach, the organs available to her were largely romantic- and symphonic-style instruments. For example, the organ that Owen heard her play in June 1958 at Woolsey Hall was by E. M. Skinner. This, in turn, would explain why a historian of the organ and its performance practice such as Owen would make only passing reference in her review to authenticity:

With the Vivaldi[-Bach] Concerto . . . she [Demessieux] was back on solid ground and though her interpretation was again not the Baroque one it was nonetheless exciting.”³⁷

There is no doubt, in my opinion, that Demessieux performed in the style of an illustrious but, by the 1950s, bygone age. Writing in the New York Herald Tribune in 1953, composer Virgil Thomson (1896–1989), who had lived and studied in Paris, commented,

All evening long your reviewer, who has known most of the great organ playing of our time, from that of Widor and Bonnet and Vierne through Dupré to Messiaen, could only think of those masters as company for this extraordinary musician and virtuoso.³⁸

On the other hand, in The American Organist in 1955, Scott Buhrman diagnosed his own lack of enjoyment in Demessieux’s playing when pointing out that

[s]he has everything in the world she needs excepting enough conceit to break away from the binding traditions of the organ world.³⁹

In other words, Demessieux was both praised and disparaged for performing in the style of a previous generation of French organists.

Translators’ Note Concerning Demessieux’s Language describing People of Colour

Judging from Demessieux’s diary entry of February 12, 1955—evidently written in a hotel lounge in Syracuse—which mentions briefly, “Some splendid jazz heard in the hotel,” she appears to have had an appreciation for jazz. Therefore, she may have been aware, if only through her friend Jean Berveiller, that there was a community of African Americans in Paris, many employed as jazz musicians.⁴⁰ That said, to my knowledge, nothing Demessieux wrote in Paris ever refers to Black people as such.

It is striking, therefore, that in her writings from North America, she pointedly draws the reader’s attention to people of colour in several places. In a passage from a letter penned on her first tour, Demessieux treats Black people as an exotic part of the landscape:

In Louisiana, it was hot and humid, with such a scent of magnolias and flowers as to make one queasy. And the endless forests conceal cabins on stilts where one sees Black women surrounded by a flock of kids [volée de mioches], all splashing around in the water (February 25, 1953).

In her diaries, Demessieux also draws attention to people of colour encountered in service roles like taxi driver, train steward, or server (e.g., February 6 and 14, 1955; March 6 and 8, 1958). She occasionally describes African Americans as noirs, other times as [n*****].⁴¹

To mitigate the appearance of racism, Trieu-Colleney, in her transcription of the diaries, omitted all passages referring to [n*****] or jaunes, retaining only mention of noirs. In the present translation, all references have been retained, and we have translated [n*****] (as well as noir) as Black and jaune as Asian.

While the outdated and offensive terms have been replaced in translation, mention of race by its mere presence will still arguably sound bigoted to modern readers, particularly due to the condescension of tone and context frequently accompanying these mentions. Demessieux described in her 1958 diary, for example, one evening when, having found the hotel restaurant closed, she and Claudine Verchère went in search of a place for supper. They ended up “in a café filled with Black and Asian men, with two women of the same type” (February 2, 1958). Demessieux made a point of noting that they had been served very graciously, as if this were not necessarily to be expected in such an establishment. She then remarked concerning the experience as follows:

I was on the verge of depression… and C. V. could not believe her eyes at this Bohemian [life] consisting of climbing and descending the entire social ladder in one fell swoop.

In other words, Demessieux seems to refer to people of colour as being of a lower social order than (white) Americans with whom they ordinarily mingled.

In another diary description, her words come across as casually patronizing. At a train station in El Paso, Demessieux observed,

Once again, the noble Black man [le bon [n*****]] is all devotion, keeps watch from afar, and laughs like a child (February 26, 1958).

Buried in this statement is the notion of a centuries-old archetype. According to literary critic Tomaz Cunningham, in eighteenth-century French literature,

le bon [n*****], the good or noble [n*****] . . . took the form of the exceptional slave who was devoted to his master, even going so far as to acknowledge the benefit of his own enslavement. . . Le bon [n*****] was the black male who knew his place in the racial hierarchy and lived in stoic acceptance of his servile position.⁴²

By adopting the clichéd phrase, Demessieux failed to observe the individual person but drew upon a deep-seated stereotype. She then unpacked it by describing the man as knowing his place and being as simple as a child. While racial prejudice may not have been Demessieux’s conscious intention, the unconscious racism of her spontaneous comments demonstrates that she was indeed a product of her time in terms of her condescending views toward people of colour.

Readers are now invited to turn to the actual letters and diaries from Demessieux’s North American recital tours in the 1950s.

NOTES: