Jeanne Demessieux

Jeanne Marie-Madeleine Demessieux (13 February 1921–11 November 1968), was a French organist, pianist, composer, and pedagogue.

Born in Montpellier, Jeanne Demessieux was the second child of Marie-Madeleine Demessieux (née Mézy) and Étienne Demessieux. After taking private piano lessons with her elder sister, Yolande, Jeanne entered the Montpellier Conservatoire in 1928. Four years later, she obtained first prizes in solfège and piano. In 1933, she began her studies at the Paris Conservatoire; studying piano with Simon Riera and Magda Tagliaferro, harmony with Jean Gallon, counterpoint and fugue with Noël Gallon, and composition with Henri Büsser. The same year, she was appointed titular organist at Saint-Esprit, a post she held for 29 years.

From 1936-39, Demessieux studied organ privately with Marcel Dupré, whose organ class at the Conservatoire she joined in 1939. After receiving a first prize in organ performance and improvisation in 1941, Demessieux studied privately with Dupré for five more years, before she played her début concert at Salle Pleyel in Paris in 1946. This was the beginning of her career as an international concert organist and improviser, but also coinciding with Dupré irrevocably turning his back to Demessieux. She gave more than 700 concerts in France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and the United States (1953, 1955, and 1958). Demessieux always performed from memory, having an active repertoire of more than 2,500 compositions, including the complete organ works of Bach, Franck, the major organ works of Liszt and Mendelssohn, and all of Dupré's organ works up to Opus 41. A prolific recording artist, she was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque Award in 1960 for her complete recording of Franck's organ works (1959).

In 1962, Demessieux was appointed as titular organist at La Madeleine in Paris. She combined this with demanding academic duties, serving as professor of organ and improvisation at the Nancy Conservatoire (1950–1952) and the Conservatoire Royal in Liège (1952–1968). In 1967, after several years of negotiations, she signed a contract with Decca Records for a recording of the complete organ works by Olivier Messiaen at Notre-Dame de Paris, which she could not comply to due to health reasons. According to her biographer, Christiane Trieu-Colleney, Demessieux underwent medical treatment and did not perform in concert for most of the last year of her life. Jeanne Demessieux died on November 11, 1968 in Paris, at age 47, from cancer. She was buried in the Demessieux family tomb in the Cimetière du Grau-du-Roi, not far from Aigues-Mortes.

Demessieux wrote more than 30 compositions. A third of these were written for the organ, but she also produced pieces for piano, fairly numerous songs, a handful of choral works (including an oratorio, "Chanson de Roland"), and orchestral works. About half of her output has been published as of 2021. The Dutch label Festivo has re-released on CD several of her LP recordings, including the above-mentioned 1959 recording of Franck's complete organ works.