The life of French harpsichordist Huguette Dreyfus, Part 4: La Reine des coeurs

Born in New York City, Sally Gordon-Mark has French and American citizenships, lives in Europe, and is an independent writer, researcher, and translator. She is also a musician—her professional life began in Hollywood as the soprano of a teenage girl group, The Murmaids, whose hit record, Popsicles & Icicles, is still played on air and sold on CDs. Eventually she worked for Warner Bros. Records, Francis Coppola, and finally Lucasfilm Ltd., in charge of public relations and promotions, before a life-changing move to Paris in 1987. There Sally played harpsichord for the first time, thanks to American concert artist Jory Vinikour, her friend and first teacher. He recommended she study with Huguette Dreyfus, which she had the good fortune to do during the last three years before Huguette retired from the superieur regional conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison, remaining a devoted friend until Huguette passed away.

During Sally’s residence in France, she organized a dozen Baroque concerts for the historical city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, worked as a researcher for books published by several authors and Yale University, and being trilingual, served as a translator of early music CD booklets for musicians and Warner Classic Records. She also taught piano privately and at the British School of Paris on a regular basis. In September 2020 she settled in Perugia, Italy. In May 2023 Sally will be the guest editor of the British Harpsichord Society’s e-magazine Sounding Board, devoted entirely to the memory of Huguette Dreyfus. For more information: www.sallygordonmark.com.

Read Part 1 here.

You had to be crazy to want a career. It was impossible to see what the possibilities were.

—Huguette Dreyfus¹

In 1950 Huguette Dreyfus was finding it difficult without a harpsichord of her own, a situation making it expensive to practice—a crucial problem in her case, since, like others in her generation, her training had been on the piano. She had just discovered the harpsichord in her first year (1949–1950) of Norbert Dufourcq’s music history class at the Paris Conservatory, then located on rue de Madrid. That year, he focused on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and Pleyel loaned him a harpsichord for his classroom. He also created an unofficial harpsichord class at the conservatory, taught by his former student, Jacqueline Masson. To practice, Huguette rented a rehearsal room upstairs in the Salle Pleyel concert hall, at 8:00 a.m. several days a week.²

During Ruggero Gerlin’s summer classes at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, which she attended from 1953 through 1959, Huguette was always among the few students who were invited to perform a short program in the end-of-term concerts in September. Finding time to rehearse on the class harpsichord, a contemporary one with pedals by an obscure Italian maker named Cella, was difficult because it was shared by all of Ruggero Gerlin’s students, so Huguette resorted to practicing discreetly during the Italian siesta from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.³

Huguette conferred with her mother Marguerite and her brother Pierre, knowing that it would be too expensive for the now fatherless family⁴ to purchase a new harpsichord. Her brother asked a friend who frequented auction houses to let him know if a double-manual harpsichord ever came up for sale. Nothing happened for a long time. Then in late 1957, Pierre found what was purported to be an original eighteenth-century Nicolas Blanchet double-manual harpsichord in a shop specializing in eighteenth-century French antiques—probably Maurice Bensimon’s at 5 rue Royale in Paris. Little was known about the instrument, except that it had once been in the collection of Raymond Russell. It was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in June 1956 to Pelham Galleries in London, and according to the gallery owner’s son, Alan Rubin, Bensimon was a client of Pelham’s.⁵

On January 16, 1958, Huguette flew to London to accompany violinist Madeleine Massart in a concert the next day at the French Institute. She may have met with Raymond Russell, because his address is noted in her agenda. Before flying home on January 25, she went to see the instrument collections at Fenton House and the Victoria & Albert Museum, for which Russell had recently written the catalogs. It is not known when her harpsichord was delivered or from where, but her agenda reveals that in March she was frequently in touch with Marcel Asseman, the harpsichord technician for Pleyel, Erard, and the Salle Gaveau. He worked on the instrument, but it is not known what he did.⁶ In an interview, Huguette admitted that when she first touched its keys, after having played Pleyel and Neupert harpsichords, she wondered how she would ever be able to play “the beast.” It had plectra made of plumes, making for a different attack. Huguette adapted to it: “This historical instrument was a good teacher for me. It completely changed my touch.”⁷

Huguette entered the international music competition in Geneva, Switzerland, in March 1958, and soon after gave her first radio interview on a French program, La Discothèque classique, which aired on July 29. She went to Siena as usual for her summer classes with Ruggero Gerlin at the Accademia Chigiana, and from there went directly to Geneva. 

The 14th Concours d’exécution musicale opened on September 20, 1958. Huguette arrived there alone and exhausted, and she could not speak at all as she had laryngitis. Seven harpsichord contestants had signed up—four women, three men. The first round was on stage with no audience. The players were separated by a curtain from the jury, composed of Isabelle Nef, Ralph Kirkpatrick, Thurston Dart, Ruggero Gerlin, Aimée Van de Wiele, Eta Harich-Schneider, and Eduard Müller. (With the exception of Dart and Müller, with whom Gustav Leonhardt had studied for a year, all had been students of Wanda Landowska.) The players were instructed to remain still and silent. Jill Severs, also a contestant, remembers that one of the men wore velvet slippers for playing the pedals. Huguette played a Bach prelude and fugue on a Neupert. Its sonority disturbed her, and she realized during the fugue that a coupler had been left only halfway in position. But, by listening to the music and playing with total concentration, Huguette maintained her composure.

The second round took place on October 1 at 2:00 p.m. in the conservatory auditorium. Huguette, the only remaining contestant, played before a paying audience a program of obligatory pieces by Bach, Scarlatti, and Rameau, finishing with three Mikrokosmos pieces by Bartók. The last round, a public recital, took place on October 3 in Victoria Hall:

Miss Dreyfus (France), harpsichordist, opened the round with the Concerto in G Major of Haydn, which seemed Lilliputian in the nave of Victoria Hall. Meticulous performance, faultless register, sometimes too weak given the surroundings, and a little prosaic over all.⁸

There was no winner in the harpsichord competition that year, but Huguette did receive a silver medal. Nonetheless, she was invited to perform in a concert of laureates in her hometown of Mulhouse on October 10, 1958. She received 10,000 francs for her performance of the Haydn Concerto in G. The fact that she did not win first prize did not diminish the attention that her distinction in the competition brought her. In her biography, the silver medal eventually metamorphosed into a gold one or a first prize, possibly at the insistence of her record labels because of the crucial importance given to credentials in France. 

Huguette continued traveling to Siena for summer lessons with Gerlin through 1959. On September 13, 1955, she and Jill Severs, who, like Huguette, had been coming since 1953, performed a four-hand piece written by Ferenc Sulvok, a Hungarian composition student at the Academy that summer. Another classmate was Kenneth Gilbert; the three became lifelong friends. Normally, the courses were limited to four summers, but on July 16, 1957, Gerlin wrote to Huguette, “Two words quickly to let you know that I obtained authorization from the Academy to bring back my former students to continue taking my courses for an unlimited number of times!”⁹ He invited her and Sylvie Spycket to attend and said he was happy to have acquired a Neupert harpsichord for Bach’s music, which delighted the students, too, because the Cella had been a difficult instrument to play expressively due to its hard touch.¹⁰

At the time, the important harpsichordists in France were Pauline Aubert, Marcelle Charbonnier, Marcelle Delacour, Marguérite Roesgen-Champion, Aimée Van de Wiele, and Robert Veyron-Lacroix, who played Pleyel or other contemporary harpsichords. Copies of historical harpsichords were not being made then in France. In October 1959, Huguette started meeting regularly with Michel Bernstein, founder of Valois Records and later Astrée, which specialized in early music played on period instruments. It was her former professor of musical aesthetics, Alexis Roland-Manuel, who had told Bernstein about Huguette. She invited Bernstein to her apartment so she could play her own harpsichord for him. Bernstein was dazzled; he had never heard a period harpsichord before. He asked her to sign a contract with Valois, one of the first record labels—along with Erato, Harmonia Mundi (France), and Archiv—founded after the first vinyl LP record had been invented in 1948.¹¹

There were reservations on Huguette’s part as to whether she was ready to record, but Gerlin encouraged her to go ahead and would help her by giving her extra lessons in Paris. On February 3, 1960, Huguette gave her first solo performance on the radio in the ensemble Norbert Dufourcq created, Histoire et Musique, composed of interested musicians and former students. With an immense and inspiring enthusiasm, Dufourcq presented the program: 

We and our young artists are hunting for early music manuscripts, hidden among thousands of documents, to get them published. What a joy it is for us! . . . I have tried to impart to my students the noble objective of reconstituting and reviving this music from texts that we have to transcribe.¹²

This is exactly what Huguette did; she played six pieces by D’Agincourt, which had not been published since 1733. 

Between April 26 and 28, 1960, Huguette recorded her first LPs for Valois in Copenhagen on a Bengaard harpsichord with pedals, which was felt by Michel Bernstein and Huguette to have the closest sound to a period one. François Couperin’s Pièces de clavecin, Livre II, sixième et onzième ordres (Valois, MB 798) was released in 1962 and received the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque de l’Académie Charles Cros, the first of many prizes her albums would receive.

Nouvelles Suites de Pièces de Clavecin by Jean-Philippe Rameau (Valois, MB 920) followed that year. The LP received a favorable review in one of France’s leading newspapers:

On an excellent modern harpsichord of Danish fabrication, Huguette Dreyfus plays the Nouvelles Suites de pièces written for the harpsichord by J.-P. Rameau. Huguette Dreyfus is one of the rare contemporary virtuosos who know how to draw out of the harpsichord all its resources of sound and plunge the listener into the true atmosphere of compositions from the past.¹³

Huguette made her first appearance on national French television, resplendent in an eighteenth-century dress and wig, on March 30, 1961. In the program, Voyage au pays de la musique, she played La Poule by Rameau.¹⁴ Soon afterwards, Huguette played her first solo recital on April 7, 1961, in Lyon’s Salle Witkowski and received an enthusiastic review in a local newspaper:

Miss Huguette Dreyfus gave to her audience (more numerous than had been hoped for) a beautiful harpsichord recital (of music by Chambonnières, François Couperin, J. S. Bach, and Scarlatti). . . . Miss Dreyfus revealed herself as the most exquisite and energetic of harpsichordists. Faultless technique, quivering sensitivity, elegant style, and continual accuracy.¹⁵

In 1962 she met a harpsichord maker from Grasse, Claude Mercier-Ythier, who had just opened a shop and studio in Paris specializing entirely in the sale and rental of harpsichords, À la corde pincée, the first of its kind in France since the French Revolution. It was a pivotal meeting for both, as their amicable professional association would last over forty-five years. At the time, he represented the harpsichord manufacturer Neupert, a competitor of Pleyel that gradually stopped making harpsichords by the early 1960s. Claude restored a 1754 Henri Hemsch that would become Huguette’s favorite performing instrument for concerts, summer workshops, and recordings. When Huguette toured in Europe, he often traveled with her, bringing an instrument, as Huguette never traveled with her own. Claude enjoyed telling the story of having saved Huguette on tour, when the man next to her grabbed her skirt under the dinner table and would not let go when she got up to leave.¹⁶

Huguette’s career was blossoming that year; she was concertizing in France and abroad, and her first records were successful. During her long and rich career, Huguette would tour the United States, Canada, South America, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Japan, and most of Europe. She would perform in concerts and on recordings with other illustrious artists and conductors, including friends and former students: András Adorján, Marie-Claire Alain, Olivier Baumont, Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Boulez, René Clemencic, Alfred Deller, Ruggero Gerlin, Marie-Claire Jamet, Christian Lardé (with whom she recorded twelve albums), Lily Laskine, Yannick Le Gaillard, Maxence Larrieu, Gaston Maugras, Eduard Melkus (ten albums), Yehudi Menuhin, Pierre Pierlot, Rafael Puyana, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Luciano Sgrizzi, Henryk Szeryng, Luigi Fernando Tagliavini, and Blandine Verlet.

The ensembles she performed in regularly included the Quatuor Instrumental de Lutèce with flautist Jacques Royer, oboist Emile Mayousse, and cellist Jean Deferrieux; Norbert Dufourcq’s ensemble, Musique et Histoire; the Paul Kuentz Orchestra; and the other principal Parisian orchestras: L’Orchestre Lamoureux, Le Collegium Musicum de Paris, directed by Roland Douatte, the bassoonist Fernand Oubradous’ chamber orchestra, and an ensemble that gave private concerts, Fiori musicali, created and conducted by Robert Dalsace.

On May 24, 1962, she and Christian Lardé played with Yehudi Menuhin in an ensemble directed by Nadia Boulanger,¹⁷ in a performance for the Singer-Polignac Foundation.¹⁸ It may be that Irene Kedroff, whose vocal class Huguette had accompanied for several years at the Ecole Normale de Musique, had recommended Huguette; she had been the soprano in a quartet directed by Nadia Boulanger for many years before World War II. On another occasion, in an undated letter to Huguette from her office in the Fontainebleau castle, Miss Boulanger invited her to perform in a tribute to architect Louis Le Vau by the Institut de France: “It would give me a particular pleasure to organize this concert with the gracious participation of a small group of eminent artists.”¹⁹

Huguette’s collaboration with orchestra conductor Paul Kuentz (in his 90s, he is still conducting his orchestra in Paris) gave another boost to her career—over a period of ten years, she was a featured soloist in his orchestra, going on her first tour in 1962. They performed throughout France and Belgium. The Festival Franco-Allemand de la Jeunesse took them to Cap d’Ail on the Côte d’Azur for three days in December. While Paul Kuentz’s orchestra was rehearsing, Jean Cocteau was decorating the outdoor amphitheater. In a friendly gesture, Cocteau designed the cover of their program and posed for a photograph with the orchestra.²⁰

In 1952, a Dominican priest named Henri Jarrié²¹ was appointed chaplain to the artists’ colony in Nice, where he knew Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Henri Matisse, and others. His love of music would have significant consequences for Huguette’s career in the 1960s. Being an amateur musician and composer, he supported the Fédération internationale des Jeunesses musicales by helping to organize concerts, such as those by the Kuentz Orchestra, and conference-concerts. In 1961, Father Jarrié became vicar of the Dominicans living in Saint-Maximin-La-Baume. The thirteenth-century Basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene in Saint-Maximin is home to a magnificent and historic organ with 2,692 pipes, constructed in the late eighteenth century by Jean Esprit Isnard, a Dominican brother, and his nephew, Joseph. Father Jarrié and Dr. Pierre Rochas undertook raising the funds necessary for its restoration. Philippe Bardon, one of the students in Huguette’s final class at the Conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison, now holds the title of organist at the basilica in Saint-Maximin.

The convent²² had been put up for sale by the Dominicans, and during the period in which it remained unsold, Father Jarrié opened its buildings to a summer academy and concerts. Dr. Rochas and others created the l’Académie d’été de l’orgue classique français, and Father Jarrié, with the collaboration of Bernard Coutaz, the founder of the record label Harmonia Mundi (France), created a series of concerts in the cloisters, which evolved into the annual festival, Les Soirées de musique française, the first opportunity for the modern French public to hear Baroque music.²³ Huguette regularly performed there, as did Eduard Melkus, Christian Lardé, Marie-Claire Jamet, and other eminent artists. In the audiences were intellectuals and artists who flocked to the convent every year, and this certainly helped her and others become known in the 1960s. Alfred Deller, signed to Harmonia Mundi, and Huguette performed a program of English Baroque music one year. In 1971, Father Jarrié left the priesthood to become a music teacher, giving Huguette a harpsichord piece that he had composed for her, Trois plaisanteries.²⁴

In 1963, Huguette and the Kuentz orchestra toured Canada and the eastern United States, performing mostly for universities. In the orchestra the year before, she had met flautist Christian Lardé, and they formed a trio with Jean Lamy on viola da gamba. They performed in concerts and recorded for Valois, with frequent appearances on radio and television. Their LP, Pièces de clavecin en concerts by Rameau (Valois, MB 798), released in 1963, received the Grand Prix de l’Académie du Disque Français and the Grand Prix des Discophiles in 1964. By then, Huguette had already recorded fifteen albums released on the labels Valois, Erato, and Harmonia Mundi, the latter two acting as distributors for Valois.²⁵

In 1965 Huguette met Eduard Melkus²⁶ during her first summer of teaching at the Summer Organ Academy of Classical French Music²⁷ in Saint-Maximin-La-Baume, which also offered workshops in harpsichord, flute, and chamber music. During the 1950s, the Viennese violinist had been one of a group of Austrian musicians and composers who, under the influence of Josef Mertin, professor at the Vienna Musikhochschule, created the Originalklangbewegung or “original sound movement.” This group also included René Clemencic, founder of the ensemble Musica Antiqua in 1958. The movement would influence Gustav Leonhardt, then a professor at the Vienna Music Academy, and Nikolaus and Alice Harnoncourt, all of whom Melkus, also a professor at the Academy, introduced to Mertin. 

Eduard had come to Saint-Maximin with his friend Lionel Rogg; the two were recording an LP together, Sonates galantes, for Harmonia Mundi, which had a recording studio in the convent. Huguette passed by during a rehearsal, they introduced each other, and she and Eduard ended up improvising. Out of this spontaneous combustion came a professional partnership that spanned over forty years and a close friendship that would last for the rest of Huguette’s life. They would regularly perform together in France, Austria, and abroad. She would often be a guest soloist with his chamber orchestra, the Capella Academica Wien, performing in Vienna’s prestigious Albertina Museum concert hall. Among the thirteen albums they recorded together were the “Mystery Sonatas” by Biber and award-winning LPs of Haydn trios that were recorded in Vienna, Huguette playing a historic fortepiano from Paul Badura-Skoda’s collection.²⁸

In 1967, the head of Valois Records, Michel Bernstein, launched a promotional campaign for his agents, announcing:

Since the artist’s career is becoming more and more international, and (her) records have received excellent reviews everywhere and are retransmitted on national radio, we are organizing a month of a Promotion Huguette Dreyfus, which will last from May 1st until the 31st 1967. Everyone knows Huguette Dreyfus counts among the four or five greatest harpsichordists in the world, alongside Kirkpatrick, Puyana, Malcolm and Ružicková. And on a purely national level, there’s no artist her equal.²⁹

That year, Huguette’s career was soaring, but the happiness that its success brought her was shattered by the sudden premature death of her beloved brother Pierre on May 2. He was only forty-six, and they had been very close. A surgeon, he had a sudden heart attack during an operation. Six months later, her mother passed away at the age of sixty-five. Huguette carried on with her busy schedule, but it took a long time for her to recover from her grief. She would spend the rest of her life in the apartment on Quai d’Orsay by Pont Alma that her father had purchased for the family in 1949.³⁰ At some point, she made the difficult decision not to marry, convinced that marriage was incompatible with a career, perhaps impossible if she were to have children.

The 1970s would be the apogee of the harpsichord renaissance in France. “Standing room only” was commonplace. People would wait two hours in line and still be content if they could stand in the back when all the seats were taken.³¹ The City of Paris hosted the annual Festival Estival de Paris and the semi-annual Concours international pour clavecin. In 1974, the Forum international du clavecin, sponsored by the Festival Estival, took place in Paris, featuring harpsichord makers and artists; among the soloists were Huguette, her former student Blandine Verlet, and Rafaël Puyana.³² Huguette sat on the jury of the concours many times, along with other distinguished harpsichordists like Kenneth Gilbert, Zuzana Ružicková, Scott Ross, and Rafaël Puyana.

In 1971 she left Valois Records to sign with Archiv, Eduard Melkus’s record label, which had released their recording of the Biber sonatas. He encouraged her to do so. One of her motives was her belief that she would have the chance to record Bach’s keyboard pieces in their entirety.³³ But it was her friend Zuzana Ružicková who had been given that opportunity by Erato.³⁴ Michel Bernstein would always remain bitter about what he considered her betrayal.³⁵ Huguette maintained that she had not abandoned him, that it was a reasonable decision in light of the evolution of her career. Valois, a small company, did not have its own distribution network and could not afford her the same benefits as Archiv, the early music division of its parent company, Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, Deutsche Grammophon being its classical division.

In May 1973, Huguette performed in the Fifth International Harpsichord Festival in Rome. It was a prestigious event; its concerts in the Basilica of Saint Cecilia were given by some of the twentieth century’s greatest harpsichordists: Huguette, William Christie, Gustav Leonhardt, Colin Tilney, and Kenneth Gilbert. The following year, Henryk Szeryng personally telephoned Huguette to invite her to go on tour with him in Italy in May. Because Szeryng was an international celebrity, Huguette was billed as his accompanist, and his agent accordingly booked her into an inferior hotel. Szeryng was outraged and covered the expense himself for her to have a room in his own hotel.³⁶

Huguette’s student and eventual close friend, Yannick Guillou, was on holiday in Venice then, and they all enjoyed meals and museum visits together. The last day, Guillou went to the hotel to say goodbye while Huguette and Szeryng were preparing to leave for Rome. Someone at the reception desk told Guillou that Szeryng wanted to see him: “I went up and found this master whom I’d venerated since my youth (. . .) dressed only in his shoes, black socks, underpants, and a towel around his neck.”

Szeryng dictated a press release to him, announcing that the City of Venice had made him a Commanditore, telling him to deliver it the next morning. Time was passing, and an irritated Huguette knocked impatiently on the door to remind Szeryng that they had a train to catch. When Guillou, peeking around the door, said she could not enter the room because Szeryng was in his underwear, she replied, “I saw worse horrors during the war,” pushed the door wide open, and strode in.³⁷ They would perform together on many other occasions and record an album of Handel and Corelli. Szeryng told Melkus that he considered her the best harpsichordist in France.³⁸

Huguette and Szeryng were invited to play in the seventy-fifth anniversary concert season at Wigmore Hall in London along with Arthur Rubinstein, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Julian Bream, and other illustrious performers. In June 1977, they performed a program of Bach sonatas; she played Bach’s Partita Number 2 for her solo. Lionel Salter in a review for The Gramophone, wrote: “Her phrasing is musical, her touch varied, and her registration, while subtly varied, is an object lesson to harpsichordists with fidgety feet or who are afraid to let the music speak for itself!”³⁹

Huguette was considered France’s pre-eminent harpsichordist. In 1978 Alfred Deller wrote to Huguette, asking if she would be interested in their performing together in a duo, to which she responded enthusiastically. Over the years, they had concertized and recorded together, and he had joined her in Saint-Maximin to give masterclasses. Deller proposed a ten-day tour in the 1979–1980 season.⁴⁰ Unfortunately this project never came to fruition; he passed away on July 16, 1979.

The Japanese flautist Miwako Shirao Rey made Huguette’s acquaintance while studying with Christian Lardé at the academy in Saint-Maximin. In the summer of 1978, Huguette called on her for assistance when the director of the group Tokyo Solisten came to Paris to discuss Huguette’s agreement to perform in concert with them in Japan the following year. Miwako acted as translator and helped to make the arrangements.⁴¹ The invitation had originated with Mariko Oguino Oikawa, soloist in the ensemble, a friend of Miwako’s and Huguette’s first Japanese student. She had come to her for private lessons between 1971 and 1974, while studying at the Paris Conservatory with Robert Veyron-Lacroix. Mariko accompanied Huguette to Japan in 1979 to assist her.⁴² The concert with Huguette and the Tokyo Solisten took place on April 23, and Huguette gave a solo recital the next day. On April 29 Huguette and the Tokyo Solisten recorded three concerti of Johann Christian Bach for Columbia Records; the CD was released by Denon. 

Huguette returned to Japan in 1981 to give a concert on April 10. A reviewer remarked: “Elegant and audacious, and full of liveliness at each moment, her music satisfied us with the charming sound of the harpsichord.”⁴³

In 1982 Huguette signed a contract with the Tokyo-based Denon label for whom she would record over thirty LPs and CDs.⁴⁴ She stayed for a month in 1983, spending time with the Oikawa couple and their child Reine, who later studied intermittently with Huguette and is now a harpsichordist in Japan.⁴⁵

Sometimes in her travels and concerts, the inevitable mishaps that plague every traveling artist occurred. Once on a makeshift stage when she stood up to take a bow, she found that one of her spiked heels had caught in the planks. Smiling, she slipped her foot out, took her bow, and walked off stage, with one foot on tiptoe. Another time, during a performance of a Bach concerto for four harpsichords, the page turner of the player next to her turned the page too soon, causing the player to lose her place and stop. With presence of mind and a practiced gift for improvisation, Huguette played her colleague’s part while maintaining her own until the woman could resume playing. When Huguette traveled to meet Eduard Melkus, his favorite gift from her was cheese, a gift that Zuzana Ružicková and her husband, composer Victor Kalabis, also appreciated. So Huguette never left home without a selection of fine French cheese. Once, however, her suitcase got lost by the airlines, and she had to wait a couple days in fear that her one evening gown would turn up, reeking of rancid cheese. Fortunately when the suitcase arrived, she found that the cheese had been successfully shrink-wrapped, so her gown was safe.⁴⁶

Huguette continued to give concerts until, for reasons of health, she stopped in January 2009, after seventy years of performing in public, something she had loved to do since childhood. The day of a concert, if she was out of town, she would visit a museum. Otherwise, she would devote her attention to the upcoming concert and rehearse in the morning.

I believe a lot in the relationship between music and other forms of beauty and of art. If it is possible, before a concert, I stop concentrating on the technical execution for a moment and look outside the music for other sources of beauty—an art exhibit, architecture, a landscape, contemplation that is good for the soul and for musical interpretation. It is like giving water to a flower for it to bloom easily.⁴⁷

When she stepped onstage, she could immediately feel if the audience was receptive to her or not, or just indifferent. “The artist has to make contact without forgetting the music.”⁴⁸ When she did make contact, she rejoiced in the “success of love” even if she was dissatisfied with her performance.⁴⁹ As she told harpsichordist Richard Siegel, “If you touch someone in the audience, that’s what counts.”⁵⁰ Love, on many different levels, was what she wanted to communicate when she played. It was as if she were on fire, as if she could hardly contain the music’s energy inside her. You knew she was not thinking of individual notes when she played; she had already studied the music thoroughly, mastering its complexities, its style. It was as if she were the conduit for electric, irrepressible currents of music, flowing from a distant inexhaustible source. Whether Huguette played a Scarlatti sonata rapidly and energetically or pieces by François Couperin—La Ménetou in a measured and tender way, and Les Lis naissans very delicately—her performance was always expressive.

Expression is essential no matter what the period of music—expression that touches the soul. Expression in early music approaches speech, the expression
of language.⁵¹

She could play expressively because she was entirely present in whatever she did, giving her total attention. This stemmed from the love and respect she had for life, its creatures, and creative expression . . . a mentality that would also make her an extraordinary teacher.

To be continued.

Notes

1. Huguette Dreyfus, radio interview, Musiciens pour demain, France Musique, July 1979. 

2. Agendas, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Site Richelieu, VM FONDS 145 DRE-3 (5).

3. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, December 8, 2008.

4. Huguette’s father, Fernand Dreyfus, was struck and killed by a car in front of their apartment building on October 10, 1951. (Interview with Françoise Dreyfus, July 25, 2016.)

5. Alan Rubin, email to author, March 14, 2021.

6. Jean-Claude Battault, interview with author, Cité de la Musique, Paris, March 9, 2022. 

7. Huguette Dreyfus, radio interview, France Musique, July 29, 1996. 

8. Journal de Genève, No. 232, October 4–5, 1958.

9. Ruggero Gerlin, BnF, VM FONDS 145 DRE-1 (16).

10. Jill Severs, interviews with author, August 8, August 24, and September 6, 2022.

11. Michel Bernstein, Qobuz e-magazine, Les souvenirs de Michel Bernstein (VII), “Être toujours à la pointe,” https://www.qobuz.com/be-fr/info/magazine-actualites%2Fchers-disparus%2Fles-souvenirs-de-michel-bernstein32073.

12. Norbert Dufourcq, Concerts de Paris, radio program, March 31, 1960, Inathèque de France (INA), BnF, site Mitterand, Paris.

13. Colette Arnould, La Libération, Friday, May 12, 1961. 

14. Inathèque de France (INA), ID Notice CPF86642589, BnF, site Mitterand, Paris.

15. Le Dauphiné Libére, April 12, 1961.

16. Claude Mercier-Ythier, interview with author, August 5, 2016.

17. BnF VM FONDS 145 DRE-1 (19). Nadia Boulanger was one of the founding members in 1921 of the American Conservatory of Fontainebleau and its director from 1948 until her death in 1979.

18. Concert program in author’s collection. The Princess of Polignac was born Winnaretta Singer. Her father, Isaac Merritt Singer, the sewing machine manufacturer, bequeathed her a fortune, and she became the predominant patron of the most important creative people in Paris, primarily musicians, before her death in 1943. The foundation still sponsors concerts, symposiums, and other cultural events.

19. BnF VM FONDS 145 DRE-1 (19).

20. Paul Kuentz, interview by author, Paris, France, 2017. 

21. Arcade Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, October 2007. https://www.yumpu.com/fr/document/read/5783360/henri-jarrie-arcade-paca. 

22. The convent is now a hotel. The term “convent” applied originally to the structure that housed priests in orders—not monks who lived in monasteries—and nuns. It is only in recent history that the meaning changed, applying only to nuns.

23. The festival in Aix en Provence had been created in 1948, but there was no emphasis on early music.

24. Conserved in the departmental archives of the Var region, No. 64 J 1-171-64 J 25.

25. “Huguette Dreyfus, Complete Discography,” compiled by Sally Gordon-Mark, https://www.dolmetsch.com/huguettedreyfusdiscography.htm.

26. In his nineties at the time of publication of this article, Eduard is still conducting his orchestra in concert.

27. The Academy summer workshops still exist, but only organ classes are given. 

28. Eduard Melkus, conversations with author from 2016 to 2022. 

29. BnF, site Richelieu, VM FONDS 145 DRE-3 (12). 

30. Françoise Dreyfus, op. cit.

31. Mario Raskin, interview with author, October 17, 2022.

32. Information from programs in the author’s collection.

33. Eduard Melkus, op. cit.

34. Ružicková was the only harpsichordist to have recorded Bach’s work in its entirety. A box-set of all the discs was released by Warner Classics in 2016.

35. Michel Bernstein, Qobuz, op. cit. 

36. Eduard Melkus, op. cit. 

37. Yannick Guillou, letter to author, March 2, 2017.

38. Eduard Melkus, op. cit.

39. Lionel Salter, The Gramophone, BnF, VM 145 FONDS DRE-5 (3).

40. Alfred Deller, letter to Huguette Dreyfus, BnF VM FONDS DRE-1 (3).

41. Miwako Shirai Rey, email to author, October 21, 2022.

42. Miwako Shirai Rey, phone interview by author, August 16, 2022. 

43. Shigeru Oikawa, interviews by author and written account, dated September
25, 2017.

44. “Huguette Dreyfus, Complete Discography,” op. cit.

45. Aozawa Tadao, Ongaku-no-Tomo. April 1981.

46. Anecdotes related by Huguette Dreyfus to the author.

47. Huguette Dreyfus, interview, Corriere dell’Umbria, February 18, 1999. Translated from Italian to English by the author.

48. Huguette Dreyfus, interview, France Musique, July 29, 1996.

49. Huguette Dreyfus, interview, 1979, op. cit. 

50. Richard Siegel, phone interview, summer 2021. 

51. From author’s notes of conversations with Huguette Dreyfus.

Born in New York City, Sally Gordon-Mark has French and American citizenships, lives in Europe, and is an independent writer, researcher, and translator. She is also a musician: her professional life began in Hollywood as the soprano of a teenage girl group, The Murmaids, whose hit record, Popsicles & Icicles, is still played on air and sold on CDs. Eventually she worked for Warner Bros. Records, Francis Coppola, and finally Lucasfilm Ltd., in charge of public relations and promotions, before a life-changing move to Paris in 1987. There Sally played the harpsichord for the first time, thanks to American concert artist Jory Vinikour, her friend and first teacher. He recommended she study with Huguette Dreyfus, which she had the good fortune to do during the last three years before Huguette retired from the superieur regional conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison, becoming a devoted friend.

During Sally’s residence in France, she organized a dozen Baroque concerts for the historical city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, worked as a researcher for books published by several authors and Yale University, and being trilingual, served as a translator of early music CD booklets for musicians and Warner Classic Records. She taught piano privately and also at the British School of Paris. In September 2020, she settled in Perugia, Italy, where she is studying medieval music and continues to offer her services as a translator in the world of the arts. Sally was the guest editor of the March 2023 issue of the e-magazine published by the British Harpsichord Society, Sounding Board, Number 19, devoted entirely to the memory of Huguette Dreyfus. For more information: sallygordonmark.com.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this series appeared in the March 2023 issue of The Diapason, pages 18–20; part 2 appeared in the April 2023 issue, pages 14–19; part 3 appeared in the July 2023 issue, pages 10–15; part 4 appeared in the August 2023 issue, pages 10–14.

Et les fruits passeront la promesse des fleurs.

—François de Malherbe¹

Huguette Dreyfus’s performing career started while she was still a student in 1956, skyrocketed in the 1960s, and lasted until the end of 2008. During that half-century, she gave concerts all over the world, made 117 recordings,² and, in France alone, appeared on about 200 radio broadcasts and thirty television programs.³ Huguette received prizes, medals, and awards throughout her life in recognition of her achievements. What’s more, her reputation as an extraordinary pedagogue travelled beyond France’s borders, attracting harpsichordists, pianists, and organists from all over the world to study with her. Huguette once said in a radio interview:

For me, pedagogy is a very important part of my professional life, and I would say that in general, it is also very important for the evolution of an artist, because it prevents one from stagnating in one’s convictions. . . .⁴

Huguette greeted the arrival of the twenty-first century with her usual unfailing enthusiasm, intellectual curiosity, and energy. In the fall of 2000, she performed with Eduard Melkus at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and was featured several times on French radio. In 2000 and 2002, she gave masterclasses in Budapest and at the Villecroze Academy in France, and again in 2003 and 2004 at the Conservatorio di Musica “Giuseppe Verdi” in Milan, Italy.

In a letter to a former student, Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, Huguette wrote that she was “continuing to teach, but playing less. . . . I often go out, and I lead an active life.” She mentioned that she would sit on national and international juries in 2004 and would give another concert in Vienna in March with Melkus and his ensemble, Capella Academica Wien.⁵ Until 2012, she continued to give interviews on French radio. On December 28, 2003, she participated in a documentary on French television, Johann Sebastian Bach: the Last Years, along with Philippe Herreweghe and other major artists.⁶

In the new century, CDs of her recordings continued to be released, notably reissues of Bartok’s Mikrokosmos; the historic recordings of C. P. E. Bach’s Concerto pour flûte et orchestre en ré majeur, with Jean-Pierre Rampal on flute and Pierre Boulez conducting the chamber orchestra; and with Henryk Szeryng, George Frideric Handel, 6 Violin Sonatas, Arcangelo Corelli, La Folia. The Japanese label Denon released her recordings of Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias in 2005 and the 16 Harpsichord Transcriptions in 2006. In 2008, the CD of Konzert für Cembalo und Streicher, Schauspielmusik zu Ritter Blaubart [Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings, Playful Music for the Knight Bluebeard] by Hugo Distler came out on the Musicaphon label. Huguette had recorded the concerto in 1964 but did not play on the Bluebeard recording, which was done in 2002.⁷ The last reissue in her lifetime would be in 2013, Henri Dutilleux: The Centenary Edition, a compilation of remastered discs by Erato.⁸

In February 2006 in another letter to Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, Huguette wrote that she had been ill since the beginning of January with a severe case of infectious bronchitis.⁹ Illness was unusual for her, even though her schedule had always been demanding and full of voyages. Later in the year she was chosen by the Fondation Prince Louis de Polignac to present its prizes in a ceremony “under the high patronage of her very serene highness, the Princess Antoinette of Monaco.”¹⁰

In 2008 the two concerts that would bring her career to a close were personally meaningful. On May 28 Huguette performed Bach’s fifth Brandenburg Concerto with old friends Eduard Melkus conducting the Mulhouse Conservatory Chamber Orchestra and soloists Antje Lallart and Miwako Shiraï-Rey on violin and flute, respectively. This concert in her honor took place in the Saint Jean Temple in her native Alsatian city of Mulhouse, which had presented her with a municipal medal on May 25. In a local review, it was noted:

Known throughout the world, Huguette Dreyfus, the harpsichordist from Mulhouse, contributed considerably to the renaissance of early music. This Baroque festival pays tribute to her. . . . Huguette Dreyfus has only performed here twice before: the first time [as a prizewinner] of the Geneva competition, then a second time at the Temple St. Jean, in the context of a Bach festival organized 30 years ago. . . .¹¹

Huguette’s final concert would be with her musical partner of more than fifty years, violinist Eduard Melkus. He invited her to perform with him and his ensemble in Vienna on November 27, 2008, in honor of her eightieth birthday on November 30. That summer, she had given her last masterclass 
at Villecroze.

After having officially retired, Huguette accepted an invitation from Kristian Nyquist, a former student, to give a masterclass at the school where he taught, the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe. Noticing that her neck seemed to bother her, he hesitated to ask her to play, but she surprised him by giving an impromptu but masterly performance for his students.¹²

In March 2009 Huguette participated in a major two-day conference on Wanda Landowska at the Cité de la Musique in Paris; her interview was broadcast on the radio. Introduced as “fervently admired by her students . . . luminous and profoundly human,” she was interviewed on March 5 by the event’s director, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger. She began by speaking about her teacher, Ruggero Gerlin, who had been a student and disciple of Landowska for twenty years before the Second World War, when Landowska had to flee to the United States and he had to return to Italy. A detailed description of his style of teaching in her class at the Chigiana Academy in Siena followed. This led to a discussion of the Pleyel and Neupert harpsichords available at the time, and then to the acquisition of her own instrument, which, because of its quills, informed her touch. Huguette said that at the time the player had to accept what was available and adapt. “The truth of it is that I always liked the instruments that I was playing at the time that I knew them.” Interestingly enough, Eigeldinger gave her free rein, and she did not speak directly about Wanda Landowska at all.¹³

In October of that year, Huguette gave up her car, cancelling the insurance. She showed signs of having pain in her neck and back, but true to her nature, she did not complain. Those dearest to her would soon depart: her cousin Nicole on February 11, 2010, and Myriam Soumignac on September 7, 2012. She had already lost two of the teachers that had inspired her the most—Ruggero Gerlin in 1983 and Norbert Dufourcq in 1990—and her close friend and collaborator Luciano Sgrizzi in 1994.

On March 21, 2010, Huguette spoke as the guest of honor at the annual event hosted by the association of harpsichordists, Clavecins en France. That year it was held at the former location of the Paris Conservatory at 14 rue de Madrid, where many past students and colleagues, including her friends Kenneth Gilbert and Myriam Soumignac, came to pay tribute to her. In 2012, France Musique produced a two-hour comprehensive interview with Huguette in two parts, and seemingly for the first time on air, Huguette spoke about her personal life, even going back to her childhood.¹⁴

In 2013 Huguette was honored in Brazil, where she had given masterclasses during the entire month of October 1975 under the auspices of the Museum of Art in São Paulo, which had organized a unique event, the “Course-Festival of Harpsichord Interpretation.” As a result of those classes, several of her young students (Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, Ana Cecilia Tavares, and Ilton Wjuniski), who had had little opportunity to come into contact with a harpsichord before, received grants to come study with her in Paris, and they did. It is believed that her presence in Brazil and her influence inspired a surge in interest for the harpsichord in general. Harpsichordist Marcelo Fagerlande, who had witnessed the enthusiasm of the participants, created a Harpsichord Week (Semana do Cravo) when he became professor in the School of Music at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and he eventually organized a tribute to Huguette. On October 30, 2013, a video conference with Huguette was arranged, since she could not make the trip to Brazil, and she was greeted by many of her former students.¹⁵

Shortly thereafter, in November, Huguette fell and fractured her skull, which resulted in her being in a coma for months. But she miraculously survived, and on November 30, 2014, Huguette returned home to be greeted on the phone by worried friends calling to wish her a happy birthday. During the following year, she recuperated slowly, seeing family and friends who came to visit. On June 7, 2015, she gave an interview, captured on video, to her old friend Rémy Stricker, a musicologist and former radio producer.¹⁶ However, the following year after a second fall, she was readmitted to the Corentin-Celton hospital in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, just south of Paris. A steady flow of friends, relatives, and students kept her company. When she stopped speaking, her silence, something that had always been unimaginable, was deeply unsettling.

The last time I saw Huguette, on May 14, 2016, a piece by Mozart was playing on her bedside radio. Small pots of roses stood under the windows. She had always loved flowers, but could have no garden, just as she had always loved animals, but could have no pets. She had no children; she had never married, but she had created a family nonetheless of her friends and students. For she did nurture many of her students, and for some of us, she was a mother. Sitting by the bed, holding her hand, my mind was unable to accept the incomprehensible fact of her absence, for she was no longer conscious of her surroundings. I had never known her to be inanimate before, so against all reason, I kept expecting her to say something or pat my hand. I wondered if her expectations and hopes had been fulfilled, if her unfailingly cheerful façade had been supported by real happiness. Her vitality that had seemed inexhaustible and indestructible was now mysteriously gone.

Huguette passed away serenely in the early morning hours of Monday, May 16, 2016. According to her wishes, a simple ceremony was held at the Père-Lachaise cemetery, where her ashes were eventually scattered in its memorial garden.

§

Huguette’s orphaned students honored her with concerts and book dedications. On May 5, 2018, Maria de Lourdes Cutolo (who had traveled from Argentina just to participate), Frank Gousset, Elisabeth Joyé, Frank Mento, Kristian Nyquist, Joël Pontet, Brice Sailly, Yasuko Uyama-Bouvard, Marie Van Rjhin, and Ilton Wjuniski performed in a memorial concert at the Rueil-Malmaison conservatory where she last taught. The auditorium was packed, despite little publicity, and latecomers had to stand in the uppermost balcony. Harpsichord makers Claude Mercier-Ythier and Marc Ducornet were in attendance: Claude mounted a display he had created out of color photocopies of all of Huguette’s LP covers, and Marc loaned his most popular concert harpsichord. Each player prefaced their performance with an anecdote about Huguette. After the concert, which ended with a moment of silence, we celebrated her memory with a reception as jolly as she would have wanted it to be. We lifted our glasses to her, wishing she were with us.

The following month, on June 18, the Conservatoire de musique, danse, et art dramatique de Mulhouse Huguette Dreyfus was inaugurated. Xavier Lallart, the director of the conservatory at the time, had nominated her as a candidate for the name, and she emerged the winner after a public municipal election. Given her love of teaching, no tribute to her could be more significant than this. According to Eduard Melkus, it was also Lallart who was behind the concert in May 2008 in Mulhouse. His wife Antje, conductor and violinist, had been old friends with Huguette, having met her through Eduard Melkus, with whom she had studied.¹⁷

In addition to her extensive discography, she left behind three publications: Mélanges François Couperin, published by A. et J. Picard et Cie of Paris in 1968; Rencontres de Villecroze (1995) François Couperin: nouveaux regards, actes des Rencontres de Villecroze, 4 au 7 Octobre 1995, sous la direction d’Huguette Dreyfus; and J. S. Bach: Goldberg-Variationen, Variations for Piano, BWV 988, Wiener Urtext Edition, Schott/Universal (UT50159), “Edited from the new Bach-Edition by Christoph Wolff. Fingering and comments on interpretation by Huguette Dreyfus.”

Beginning early in her career, many of Huguette’s recordings received France’s most prestigious prizes. She was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque de l’Académie Charles Cros¹⁸ in 1962, 1970, 1971, 1972; the Grand Prix de l’Académie du Disque français¹⁹ in 1964 and 1968; the Grand Prix des Discophiles in 1964; the Prix de l’Institut de Musicologie de l’Académie du Disque français in 1970; the Grand Prix du Président de la République from l’Académie Charles Cros in 1985; and the Prix de la Nouvelle académie du disque in 1995.²⁰

Huguette bequeathed her papers, photographs, recorded and published music, concert programs, and posters to the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris. Her archives are located at the Richelieu site, identified as FM FONDS DRE in the catalogue. To the Musée de la Musique in the Cité de la Musique-Philharmonie de Paris, she bequeathed her harpsichord, “Le Dreyfus,” and an 1821 Broadwood fortepiano. She left her Neupert spinet to an anonymous person, and her piano was sold at auction.

In an interview with musicologist Denis Herlin,²¹ Huguette told him that her brother had purchased her harpsichord from an antique dealer on Rue de Rivoli in Paris, and that she went to see it there, as did Norbert Dufourcq at her request. The harpsichord, said to be a Blanchet, had been in Raymond Russell’s collection, and was auctioned in June 1956 to the Pelham Galleries. She acquired the instrument in 1958 and hired the leading technician of the time, Marcel Asseman, to do necessary repairs to render it playable, but not to restore it.

When the Musée de la Musique acquired the harpsichord, its authenticity was questioned. Rumors had been circulating for years in Paris that it was not an authentic Blanchet, but no one wanted to tell Huguette. William Dowd, in partnership with Reinhard Von Nagel from 1971 to 1985, came to her apartment sometime in 1973 to examine the harpsichord for a piece he was writing on the Blanchet workshop. Without being able to disassemble it, he noticed that the keyboards and action had been replaced. He saw evidence of an earlier restoration, which could have been done in England, possibly by Arnold Dolmetsch, or in France before Raymond Russell acquired it. But without consulting Russell’s archives in Edinburgh, the instrument’s prior history cannot be ascertained.

The museum submitted Huguette’s harpsichord to scientific tests and a minute examination before undertaking its restoration. Analysis showed that the instrument had been reconstructed in the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century by an unknown person. Technicians often leave identifying marks in the instrument, and one was found from Marcel Asseman. The wood was determined to be from the eighteenth century, which could mean that an old harpsichord had been rebuilt. Neither the soundboard nor the decoration on the bentside are original. The rose, a harpsichord maker’s trademark, is not considered to be Blanchet’s. Therefore, it has been concluded that the instrument was not built by Blanchet or anyone in his atelier. However, because it has historical significance, having been played by Huguette and her illustrious students, it has been named after her. The harpsichord is now completely restored and available for concerts, recordings, and masterclasses, according to Huguette’s wishes.²²

During her lifetime, the French government bestowed its highest awards on her, acknowledging her service to her country. There are two French national orders: the highest is the Legion of Honor, the second one is the National Order of Merit. They are very similar in their award criteria, the main difference being the minimal period of service: ten years for the National Order of Merit, twenty years for the Legion of Honor. Both of them have three ranks, Knight, Officer, and Commander; and two titles, Grand Officer and Grand Cross. Huguette was awarded the Knight of the National Order of Merit medal on June 6, 1973, then one for Officer on April 3, 1987, and then one for Commander on May 14, 2004. On December 30, 1995, she was awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honor medal, and then promoted to Officer on December 31, 2008.²³ She was also honored by the Austrian government, which made her a Commandeur de l’ordre national du Mérite, and Officier des Arts et des Lettres et du Mérite de la République d’Autriche.

Aside from the recordings, instruments, and publications she left behind, Huguette’s most important legacy may have been the indelible imprint she left on the performers she taught, who in turn became teachers themselves. For example, it was she who inspired concert artist Elisabeth Joyé to take up the harpsichord:

I was 17, passionate about music, and I played the piano. My dad was the treasurer of a music festival in the south of France, and I was the official page-turner. That summer, Huguette Dreyfus had been invited to the Collégiale de Six-Fours to play all of the Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord on the Hemsch harpsichord that belonged to Claude Mercier-Ythier. I was turning the pages and was immediately fascinated by all that Huguette was doing on that magnificent instrument as to expressivity and dynamics. I was familiar with the Neupert harpsichord as being the instrument that played bass continuo in an orchestra. I adored Bach’s music that I was playing a lot on the piano. That night, I made the decision to start playing the harpsichord. Huguette advised me to study with André Raynaud in Aix-en-Provence because I did not envisage moving to Paris at the time—I was young! The following year, no doubt thanks to my obstinacy and my passion for Bach and the harpsichord, I was accepted into Huguette’s class at the Bobigny Conservatory, where I remained for three years before leaving for the Netherlands. I remember her lively and exacting teaching. I stayed in touch with Huguette until the end of her life, and we shared a great deal of memories. We also spoke about teaching and the young generation.²⁴

One of her colleagues, Françoise Lengellé, recalls her experience working with Huguette when they taught at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Lyon, France:

The relationship between two colleagues that Huguette and I were able to have—outside of the admiration that I felt for her as an artist—was a source of permanent evolution and creativity for me. Watching and listening to her teach were always superb lessons in themselves. I was always thankful for her great culture, humor, and the epic laughs at Lyon and elsewhere that we shared. I owe her so much.²⁵

And so do many of us, as well as the audiences to whom Huguette introduced the harpsichord and the lesser-known Baroque repertoire in the 1960s. Later, it would be twentieth-century contemporary music for harpsichord that she would help make known to the public. Although future audiences will not be able to experience her effervescence and artistry in person, the recordings she left behind for future technology to embellish and the seeds she planted in her students will ensure her enduring presence in the perennial transmission of harpsichord music from generation to generation.

Notes

1. “And the fruits will surpass the promise of the flowers.” François de Malherbe, “Prière pour le Roy Henry Le Grand allant en Limozin,” Œuvres poétiques de Malherbe, E. Flammarion (Librairie des Bibliophiles), 1897, Paris, pages 108–113.

2. Huguette Dreyfus’s complete discography, compiled by the author, dolmetsch.com/huguettedreyfusdiscography.htm.

3. INA, http://inatheque.ina.fr/docListe/TV-RADIO/.

4. Huguette Dreyfus, radio interview by Myriam Soumignac, “Portraits en musique,” June 9, 1988, France Musique. INA, op. cit.

5. “Je sors beaucoup et mène une vie active,” Huguette Dreyfus, letter to Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, December 10, 2003.

6. Les chemins de la foi: Jean Sébastien Bach, les dernières années. France 2. INA, 
op. cit.

7. Robert Tifft, email to the author, June 13, 2023.

8. Huguette Dreyfus’s complete discography, compiled by author, op. cit.

9. Huguette Dreyfus, letter to Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, February 3, 2006.

10. Correspondance D, E, F. BnF VM FONDS 145 DRE-1 (3).

11. Coupures de presse, BnF VM FONDS 145 DRE 5 (4).

12. Kristian Nyquist, interview with author, March 5, 2022, Karlsruhe, Germany.

13. Huguette Dreyfus, interviewed by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, March 5, 2009. “Wanda Landowska et la renaissance de la musique ancienne,” March 4–5, 2009, Cité de la Musique, Paris, France.

14. Marcel Quillévéré’s radio interviews of Huguette Dreyfus, “Les traversées du temps,” France Musique. March 7, 2012 (part 1) and March 8, 2012 (part 2).

15. Marcelo Fagerlande, phone interview by author, October 21, 2022. Also see Sounding Board, number 19, page 33. 16. “L’Entretien d’Huguette Dreyfus et Rémy Stricker sur Roland-Manuel,” June, 2015. youtube.com/watch?v=NQ_NjzI_cV0. The film was produced by Les Amis de Maurice Ravel, boleravel.fr, and directed by Gérard Guilloury, gerardguilloury.com.

17. Xavier and Antje Lallart, interviews by phone, email, and in person from July 15 through November 2022.

18. Charles Cros (1842–1888), an important poet, scientist, and inventor who experimented in the reproduction of sound.

19. The Académie du disque français was founded in 1951 by Jean Cocteau, Colette, Arthur Honegger, the poet Guy-Charles Cros (the son of Charles Cros), and Michel de Bry. In 1964 Georges Auric and Darius Milhaud were co-presidents of the academy.

20. Huguette Dreyfus’s complete discography, compiled by author, op. cit.; Biographie Huguette Dreyfus, https://www.whoswho.fr/decede/biographie-huguette-dreyfus_23542.

21. Denis Herlin, Sounding Board, number 19, page 35, March 2023.

22. Jean-Claude Battault, interview with author, March 9, 2022, Cité de la Musique, Paris, France. For more information on the instrument, see “Guillaume Finaz and ‘Le Dreyfus,’ ” Sounding Board, number 18, page 33, May 2022.

23. Alice Bouteille, director of communication, Cabinet du grand chancelier, Paris, France. Email to author, February 1, 2023. Translated from French by the author.

24. Elisabeth Joyé, email to author, April 1, 2023. Translated from French by the author.

25. Françoise Lengellé, email to author, April 11, 2023. Translated from French by the author.
 

Acknowledgments

After Huguette passed away in 2016, the first person I interviewed was our mutual friend, Claude Mercier-Ythier. He was eager to help me with my project to document Huguette’s life, giving me information and photographs. We made plans to collaborate on her discography, based on the accounts he painstakingly kept of her recordings. Since then, I was fortunate to meet six other contemporaries of Huguette: Eduard Melkus, Zuzana Ružicková, Anne-Marie Becksteiner Paillard, Paul Kuentz, Jill Severs, and Marie-Claire Jamet, who graciously welcomed me and shared their memories. Some gave me videos, recordings, and photographs of Huguette. Sadly, Claude, Zuzana, and Anne-Marie have since passed away.

However, the first person I must thank is Huguette herself. For many of her students, she was a midwife, a catalyst. She revealed me to myself, and I switched tracks, moving in a different direction towards a life that better suited my true nature. She showed me that I could perform the music I loved if I worked in a more efficient way and focused my attention only on the piece as I played. “The only thing that’s important is the music,” she once told me. In 2000 Huguette wrote the recommendation letter required for me to obtain a research pass at the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, and I discovered another life-changing passion.

With gratitude for their assistance and/or participation in articles I have written on Huguette for both The Diapason and Sounding Board, I thank Judith Andreyev, Andrew Appel, Jean-Claude Battault, Olivier Baumont, Christine Bayle, the late Anne-Marie Beckensteiner-Paillard, Nanon Bertrand, Dr. Brian Blood (Dolmetsch Foundation), Alice Bouteille (Cabinet du grand chancelier), the Conservatoire Emmanuel Chabrier de Clermont-Ferrand, Jocelyne Cuiller, Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, Laurence Decobert (Bibliothèque nationale de France), Renaud Digonnet, Matthew Dirst, Françoise Dreyfus, Marc Ducornet, Mahan Esfahani, Marcelo Fagerlande, Guillaume Finaz, Catherine Findlayson, Elisabeth Giuliani, Katarina Glachant, Stuart Gordon (who restored many otherwise unusable images), François-Pierre Goy, Yannick Guillou, Ellen Haskel-Maserati, Denis Herlin, Marie-Claire Jamet, Elisabeth Joyé, Niamh Kenny (l’Académie musicale de Villecroze), Mark Kroll, Paul Kuentz, Chiaopin Kuo, Laetitia Faetibolt (City of Mulhouse, France), Antje and Xavier Lallart, Susan Landale, Véronique LeGuen, Yohann Le Tallec (Bibliothèque nationale de France), Françoise Lengellé, Edna Lewis, Jean-Rémy Macchia, Eduard Melkus, Frank Mento, the late Claude Mercier-Ythier, Laure Morabito, Marie-Claire Moreau-Mangin, Novine Movarekhi, Pamela Nash, Jenny Nex (The University of Edinburgh), David Noël-Hudson, Kristian Nyquist, Shigeru Oikawa, Larry Palmer, Olivier Papillon, Miriam Pizzi (Accademia Musicale Chigiana), Mario Raskin, André Raynaud, Julie Reid (archivist, Centre du patrimoine), Jean-Paul Rey, Marie Van Rhijn, Lionel Rogg, Salvo Romeo, Christophe Rousset, Alan Rubin, the late Zuzana Ružicková, Pascal Scheuir, Lucile Schirr (Archives, Strasbourg, France), Didier Schnorhk (formerly with the Concours de Genève), Jill Severs, Miwako Shiraï-Rey, Richard Siegel, Laurent Soumignac, Ana Cecilia Tavares, Pascal Teixeira da Silva, Mariko Terashi, Robert Tifft, Catherine Vallet-Collot (Bibliothèque nationale de France), Reinhard von Nagel, Yasuko Uyama-Bouvard, Kamila Valkova Valenta, Jory Vinikour, Daniel Wagschal, Olivia Wahnon de Oliveira (librarian of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels), Peter Watchorn, Jed Wentz, John Whitelaw, Laura Widolf (Conservatoire Huguette Dreyfus), Ilton Wjuniski, and Aline Zylberajch-Gester.

I am especially indebted to Françoise Dreyfus and François-Pierre Goy for their involvement, support, and assistance, without which these articles could never have been written. Special thanks go to Pamela Nash, Robert Tifft, and Jed Wentz for reading my drafts and making important observations. I am very fortunate to have benefited from their good natures, knowledge, and expertise. For their constant encouragement for me to write over the years, my heartfelt thanks go to Selina Hastings, Stuart Gordon, and Richard Hieronymus.

Born in New York City, Sally Gordon-Mark has French and American citizenships, lives in Europe, and is an independent writer, researcher, and translator. She is also a musician—her professional life began in Hollywood as the soprano of a teenage girl group, The Murmaids, whose hit record, Popsicles & Icicles, is still played on air and sold on CDs. Eventually she worked for Warner Bros. Records, Francis Coppola, and finally Lucasfilm Ltd., in charge of public relations and promotions, before a life-changing move to Paris in 1987. There Sally played harpsichord for the first time, thanks to American concert artist Jory Vinikour, her friend and first teacher. He recommended she study with Huguette Dreyfus, which she had the good fortune to do during the last three years before Huguette retired from the superieur regional conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison, remaining a devoted friend until Huguette passed away.

During Sally’s residence in France, she organized a dozen Baroque concerts for the historical city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, worked as a researcher for books published by several authors and Yale University, and being trilingual, served as a translator of early music CD booklets for musicians and Warner Classic Records. She also taught piano privately and at the British School of Paris on a regular basis. In September 2020 she settled in Perugia, Italy. In March 2023 Sally was the guest editor of the British Harpsichord Society’s e-magazine Sounding Board, No. 19, devoted entirely to the memory of Huguette Dreyfus. For more information: www.sallygordonmark.com.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this series appeared in the March 2023 issue of The Diapason, pages 18–20; part 2 appeared in the April 2023 issue, pages 14–19.

“I was very attached to her, as one is to teachers who allow you to make huge strides in little time.” —Judith Andreyev²

By the 1980s, it had become customary for harpsichordists and organists from all over the world to come to France or the Netherlands to study and perfect their technique with Huguette Dreyfus, Kenneth Gilbert, and Gustav Leonhardt. Huguette’s concert tours and recordings had brought her international renown. She had a great gift for teaching, and with foreign students she could speak English, German, and Italian fluently. “Huguette has an absolutely fabulous sense of teaching, and she can communicate what she knows with enthusiasm.”³ Many of her students who had succeeded professionally continued to play for her before concerts, recordings, and tours. But Huguette would say in an interview late in life that her students did not need her as much as she needed them.⁴ Her students who became concert artists include harpsichordists Olivier Baumont, Emer Buckley, Jocelyne Cuiller, Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, Gaby Delfiner, Yves-Marie Deshays, Matthew Dirst, Elisabeth Joyé, Yannick LeGaillard, Laure Morabito, Pamela Nash, Kristian Nyquist, Mariko Oikawa, Joël Pontet, Christophe Rousset, Heather Slade-Lipkin, Noëlle Spieth, Ann Cecilia Tavares, Yasuko Uyama-Bouvard, Blandine Verlet, Jory Vinikour, Ilton Wjuniski, as well as organists Philippe Bardon, Véronique LeGuen, Frank Mento, and David Noël-Hudson.

Huguette began teaching when she was only fourteen years old, during her family’s stay in Switzerland with relatives after they had fled France over the Alps in December 1942. This was after she had received a first prize in her piano exam at a superior level from the Conservatory of Clermont-Ferrand. When she entered the Conservatory of Lausanne, she enrolled at the virtuoso level and was allowed to pass her final exams in Clermont-Ferrand when the war ended, winning another first prize. After settling in Paris in 1945, she taught privately while she pursued her own studies at the Paris Conservatory, the Ecole Normale de Musique (she also received top prizes at the two schools),⁵ and in Ruggero Gerlin’s two-month summer harpsichord course at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. Teaching would remain very important to her all her life, even when she became one of the most important French harpsichordist of her generation. 

It is not commonly known that her earliest protégé was Blandine Verlet, whose individual and distinctive way of playing would have found sustenance in Huguette’s tendency to encourage her students to think for themselves and find their own interpretative styles. Blandine took private lessons with her regularly beginning in 1958, when she was enrolled in Marcelle Delacour’s class at the Paris Conservatory, until as late as 1969 (although less frequently once her own career took off).⁶ It is clear from Huguette’s agendas and documents that she gave her particular attention. On September 16, 1962, Blandine’s father, the distinguished Dr. Pierre Verlet, chief conservator of the Louvre Museum and renowned art historian, wrote: 

Please allow me to express our gratitude to you for all you have done for Blandine. You were a mother to her in Siena, from which she returned this morning, delighted.⁷

In 1963 Blandine was awarded a unanimous first prize from the judges as well as a special prize at the International Competition of Munich. Huguette not only coached her for the competition, but would promote her career in general by introducing her to her own mentors, Alexis Roland-Manuel and Norbert Dufourcq, inviting her to programs on which she was featured, proposing she study with Gerlin in Siena, and inviting her to play on a recording of the Bach concerti in 1965.⁸ In 1969 Dr. Verlet would write regarding a radio program on which Blandine had appeared with Huguette, after having returned from studying with Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale University:

How to thank you too for the place that you gave to Blandine in the [radio] program. A little secret: in a quick word, two days after her arrival home she said: “I’ve already taken the piece to heart again. . . . Mademoiselle Dreyfus has magnificently made me work. . . .”  Again all my admiration and my gratitude.⁹

In later years, the two women would become estranged, and as a result, Huguette’s teaching and nurturing of Blandine have been overlooked.

From July 1 through August 9, 1966, Huguette gave harpsichord lessons along with Pauline Aubert and Marguerite Roesgen-Champion during an early music event, “Summer in France,” sponsored by the Paris American Academy of Music in Fontainebleau, at the invitation of Nadia Boulanger, its director.¹⁰ In 1967 she was named professor of harpsichord at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, a position that she kept until 1990. Her students included a young Christophe Rousset, who ended up taking his lessons in her home on Saturdays, because his school schedule did not permit them during the week.¹¹

From 1971 until 1982, Huguette taught basso continuo at the Sorbonne where Olivier Papillon was in her class.¹² When she left there, she asked harpsichordist Richard Siegel to take her place.¹³ During that period Huguette was also the harpsichord professor of what was then a municipal conservatory in Bobigny, just north of Paris. Students in that class included Maria de Lourdes Cutolo and Ilton Wjuniski, who were scholarship recipients from Brazil, Elisabeth Joyé, Joël Pontet, Gaby Delfiner, Renaud Digonnet, and Yannick LeGaillard. In 1982 she was named harpsichord professor at two major conservatories in France: what were then called the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique in Lyon and the Conservatoire supérieur de région in Rueil-Malmaison. A harpsichord class was created at the latter specifically for her, and also an organ class for Marie-Claire Alain.¹⁴ When it came time to retire, Huguette left the Lyon conservatory in June 1993 (Françoise Lengellé took her place) and then a year later the Rueil-Malmaison conservatory, where Olivier Baumont, a former student and now the professor of harpsichord at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, replaced her.

In addition to her regular teaching positions, Huguette gave annual summer workshops in the Provence region of France, first in Saint-Maximin-La-Baume and then in Villecroze. Claude Mercier-Ythier described how it came about:

An event happened that would be very important for us: the creation of early music classes at Saint-Maximin’s former monastery . . . where there is an extraordinary organ. The young man who should have taught there was Louis Saguer. [However, shortly before he was supposed to start teaching,] he had been invited to give an important series of concerts in Argentina. The organizer, Dr. Pierre Rochas . . . looked desperately for a replacement. So I took him to see Huguette Dreyfus who immediately took on the classes, without knowing that we would spend [15 summers there]. Huguette was a pedagogue without equal, with an international reputation.¹⁵

In 1964, five lecture recitals were held by Huguette. They were so successful that a year later, harpsichord classes were organized.¹⁶ Claude Mercier-Ythier provided the instruments. Her frequent collaborator at the time, Christian Lardé, joined her. He taught flute, and together they gave classes in ensemble playing. The classes were given under the auspices of the French Organ Academy for the Interpretation of 17th and 18th century music (l’Académie de l’orgue français pour l’interprétation de la musique des XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles), which was created not only by Dr. Pierre Rochas, but by a Dominican priest, Father Henri Jarrié, as part of their efforts to save the convent from destruction and restore the famous organ in the basilica. 

Father Jarrié’s contribution to the early music revival in France seems to be unknown; his story is worth telling. Born in 1924, he began his theology studies in the Saint-Maximin monastery. A musician, he had taken piano lessons from the age of six and also composed music. Among the many artists and intellectuals who visited Saint-Maximin was André Coeuroy, a musicologist and critic, who took a look at his compositions and encouraged him. Then at the music festival in Aix-en-Provence, he met Louis Saguer, also a composer, and arranged to study musical analysis and composition with him. In 1952 he received the unusual post of “Chaplain to the Artists” in Nice, coming into contact with Cocteau, Picasso, and Matisse, among others. Then in 1961, Père Jarrié was named parish priest of the village of Saint-Maximin. 

The Dominican order was preparing to sell the monastery there, which they had already left. Father Jarrié and others formed a group to safeguard it, and by the end of the 1960s it had become a cultural center. Father Jarrié inaugurated a series of concerts in the cloisters that became the first festival to focus on early music; at the time, the only music festival that existed in France was in Aix-en-Provence. The Dominican priest and Dr. Pierre Rochas were also responsible for the restoration of the Basilica of Saint Marie-Madeleine’s historic eighteenth-century organ built by Frère Isnard and the creation of the Academy, which together with the concert series would be important not only for Huguette’s career, but also for the international dissemination of early music. For fifteen years, Huguette went there every summer to teach and concertize. Eventually Eduard Melkus joined her and Christian to teach violin. In 1971 Jarrié left the priesthood to consecrate his life to music and teaching:

There were so many students who frequented my courses during 15 years. They came from all over the world and then spread the knowledge that they had acquired in their own respective countries.¹⁷

There were many lighthearted moments that eased the intensity of the lessons. Among Huguette’s archived documents is a Certificat St Maximin: “The Jury certifies that Mlle Huguette Dreyfus and Christian Lardé took the Viennese Waltz class in the performance course at the 15th Summer Academy of St-Maximin. Ed. Melkus.”¹⁸ A participant, harpsichordist Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, remembers playing Brazilian music for Huguette, which she loved, while Eduard improvised on the violin.¹⁹

Maria de Lourdes Cutolo and Ilton Wjuniski were two young Brazilian harpsichordists whom Huguette had met in São Paôlo, then the capital of Brazil, on the occasion of the “Course-Festival of Harpsichord Interpretation” held in São Paôlo’s major art museum (MASP) from October to December 1975. The courses were taught by Helena Jank, Maria Helena Silveira, and Felipe Silvestre. New works for solo harpsichord were commissioned from composers Souza Lima, Osvaldo Lacerda, and Almeida Prado. Huguette was invited to give classes and recitals from October 3 through 26. During her stay, she flew to Rio to meet Roberto de Regina, an important harpsichordist, teacher, and the first to build a harpsichord in Brazil.²⁰ He also created the first early music group there.²¹

Huguette’s teaching influenced several pupils profoundly. “Stimulated by this contact, some young artists pursued training with the harpsichordist in France, such as Ilton Wjuniski, Maria Lucia Nogueira, and Maria de Lourdes Cutolo.”²² They were awarded scholarships by the festival sponsor, the Secretary of Culture, Science, and Technology, to come to France.²³ A decade later, Ana Cecilia Tavares, another Brazilian artist, would also go to study with Huguette at the Rueil-Malmaison conservatory near Paris.²⁴ Harpsichordist, teacher, and author Marcelo Fagerlande credits Huguette with the surge in interest for the harpsichord in Brazil after her stay there.

Maria Lourdes de Cutolo wrote to Huguette several times in early 1976 to solicit her help in finding lodgings in Paris and a spinet to use. Huguette sent her information on spinets, but in the end, moved her own spinet into a spare bedroom, where Maria could practice every day if she liked.²⁵ Huguette often helped students with practical concerns as well as with personal problems, at the same time guarding a professional distance. She maintained the reserve between people of different positions, or those who do not know each other well, that prevails in European culture: the maestro or maestra is treated with respect, and familiarity would be inappropriate. Her students were invited to address her by her first name, but never would have thought to address her by the familiar “tu.”

Another country important to Huguette was Japan, where she made lifelong friendships. She met a Japanese student, Miwako Shiraï, at Saint-Maximin where the flautist was studying with Christian Lardé. When Huguette was invited in 1979 by Mariko Oikawa, a former student in France, to play concerts in Japan and record an album with the group, Tokyo Solisten, of which Mariko was the harpsichordist, she called upon Miwako to accompany her and act as translator. In Japan, Huguette was welcomed by the father of another of her students, Yasuko Uyama-Bouvard, who had come to France in 1976. Her father, wanting to introduce the ever-curious Huguette to Japanese culture, invited her to an “exceptional restaurant where there is Shiki-botyo, the knife ceremony, which was performed in the past by the cook to the Japanese court. The cook prepares fish without touching it with his hands.”

Huguette returned to Japan in 1981. During Huguette’s free time, Mariko and her husband Shigeru, with their daughter Reine, about three, took her on visits. Yasuko came from France to stay for a week at the urging of her father who, grateful that Yasuko had won first prize at the Festival Estival international harpsichord competition in Paris in 1979, wanted to honor Huguette. He presented her with a stay at a traditional Japanese hotel. Yasuko went with Huguette and Mariko to Nara Park (Shigeru had to take Reine back to Tokyo), where thousands of deer run free and it is possible to feed and pet them.²⁶

In 1983 Huguette spent nearly a month in Japan from October 8 through November 4, recording for Denon and performing in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kyoto. In her free time, she went sightseeing often with the Oikawa family:

The trip that left the biggest impression was our voyage to Kyoto. We visited Nara Park the day before her concert in Kyoto. She found herself surrounded by deer and she said that she was astonished that the most easily frightened animals in the world would eat out of the palm of a man’s hand. She spent a good amount of time playing with them. We also went by car to Hakone. Descending Mount Hakone, we encountered the historic Daimyô procession. We watched it and then walking in the city of Odawara, we visited the chrysanthemum festival.²⁷

Huguette would return to Japan in the future, but sadly, Mariko would not be there to welcome her. Only thirty-nine-years old, she passed away from cancer on July 25, 1988, leaving behind two children, Reine, and a boy, Kentaro,  born in 1984. Fifteen years later, Reine would become a harpsichordist herself and come to France intermittently to study with Huguette at Villecroze and in her home on Quai d’Orsay in Paris.

In 1979 Huguette left the Academy in Saint-Maximin. In 1983 she joined the Académie de Musique Ancienne in Villecroze to give summer masterclasses, which she did until 2008. Claude Mercier-Ythier, who had loaned his historic 1754 Henri Hemsch, Huguette’s favorite instrument, for the Saint-Maximin sessions, continued to supply it and other harpsichords for the classes at Villecroze. At both academies, friends, including Melkus, Lardé, and his wife, harpist Marie-Claire Jamet, joined her to concertize and give instrumental and chamber music classes. In Villecroze classes were held in the morning, and afternoons were free, when students practiced and swam in the pool. Sunday was a day off, and there were group outings organized for them, such as boat rides and sightseeing. It was “paradise on earth,” according to one of the students, Kristian Nyquist.²⁸

In addition to masterclasses in France during the summer, Huguette was invited regularly to give them all over the world. She also sat on juries for harpsichord exams at conservatories and for harpsichord festivals. For at least twenty-five years, there was a biennial international harpsichord festival in October in Paris, the Festival Estival. Huguette was often on the jury, and in February 1990 she was invited to write a page for the brochure celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of its creation on March 7 that year.²⁹ Often she sat on juries with friends, former students, and other distinguished colleagues, such as Colin Tilney, Zuzana Ružicková, Rafael Puyana, Gustav Leonhardt, Scott Ross, Kenneth Gilbert, and Luciano Sgrizzi.

Three radio programs in 1979³⁰ featured her and some of her students at the Bobigny Conservatory: Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, Christophe Rousset, and Ilton Wjuniski. When asked what she told students who express a desire to pursue a career, she called it a very big responsibility and said she tended to discourage the idea. By discouraging them, she meant that she did not want to “throw rose powder in their eyes and mislead” anyone. She would tell a student, “A career is very difficult even if you are very talented and are supported by your family. Your field has to be well learned, which takes a lot of time. It takes time to launch a career, and it requires a lot of courage.” Huguette herself had suffered big obstacles to her own career and had worked very hard and made sacrifices. But she knew that if the student was possessed “by the demon of music, by the demon of the stage, by the demon of a career,” nothing she said could change his or her mind. “The true, the pure artist will remain.” She recognized that the mere fact of playing before one’s peers in a classroom was already very intimidating, and she took her role very seriously. “The tighter the relationship between student and teacher is, the more the teacher has to pay attention.”³¹

When possible, Huguette gave her students the chance to perform publicly on radio programs where she herself was featured, and a few played on recordings of hers. Among her documents is a letter from a well-known French harpsichordist who was her student in the 1970s, “I know what I owe you, . . . you are the person who counts most in my harpsichord vocation.”³² Her kindness and generosity is still remembered today. She often gave students rides to the summer workshops in Saint-Maximin and Villecroze, which could not be reached directly by train. One of her American students, Ellen Haskil Maserati, remembers their trip to Siena to take Gerlin’s class, “She was really nice when we drove down. We stopped overnight in Lyon. She took me to dinner and had me try all the local food. She was very motherly.”³³

Her genius for teaching resided in her wanting to respond personally to her students, feeling that a teacher should always understand the personality of the student and determine what possibilities there were to develop. During the lessons she was demanding, but she did not ask for obedience. Her intention was not to impose her ideas; she preferred that the student have his or her own. In this approach, it is possible to see the influence of her teachers at the Paris Conservatory. One teacher, Norbert Dufourcq, when grading an essay she had written on the “different manifestations of choral music in the vocal works of Bach,” noted, “You have read many texts . . . to the point where [your essay ends up sounding] a bit like a catalog sometimes. What is lacking is a personal judgment, a thought that is yours and the fruit of your reflections as a good musician.” Also, Huguette’s pedagogy teacher, a Mr. Norpain, had given advice that she clearly had taken to heart, “Before speaking, listen to the student with so much attention that you immediately get a clear idea of his strengths and weaknesses.”³⁴

During a radio broadcast from Ville-croze on November 9, 2000,³⁵ Huguette said in the course of a masterclass: 

As far as I’m concerned, you arrive at technique through the music and not the other way around. . . . When you have something you want to express but you don’t have the technical means to express it, it’s up to you to find exercises that will permit acquiring those means. . . . To learn a sensitive touch, the finger has to feel the plectrum scratch the string. [She felt that “plucking the string” was not an accurate term.] There is an important relationship between the sensitivity of the fingers and the ear, and that’s what you must work on. The ear must hear differences. . . that makes part of the everyday work when you’re doing finger exercises. In fact, it’s musical, and I personally feel that no exercise should ever be done mechanically. You must always be in conversation with the music. Even if you do so-called daily exercises, you can always find these passages in pieces. You have to consider them musically. I always use as a reference the human voice or a wind instrument for understanding how to let the music breathe.³⁶

Huguette was famous with her students for her frequently repeated “proverbes dreyfusiens.” One student, Chiao Pin Kuo, remembered some of these aphorisms in a tribute to her after her death: 

The notes are not the music, the music lies between them.

When you play a piece, the listener has to understand everything as if he has the music in front of his eyes.

Without respiration, the music is dead.

To breathe is not to slow down, slowing down is not breathing.

It’s not enough to know how to play, you have to have a wide knowledge of not only harpsichord music but of all forms of art. If you are small-minded, you won’t ever be a great musician.

Practice, listen, converse, and feel the composer speaking.³⁷

Up until now, I have spoken in the third person. But now, as one of Huguette’s former students and friends, I will speak in the first person. It has been nearly a quarter of a century since I studied with her during her last three years at the Conservatoire de Rueil-Malmaison. But she made such an impact on me that I still recall most of her teachings. I had never had the opportunity to study with someone of her caliber before and must have realized that every bit of the experience was precious and needed to be carefully stored away in my memory. I was a middle-aged amateur pianist, and the first chance I ever had even to touch a harpsichord came the year before when I started taking lessons from the American harpsichordist, Jory Vinikour. He was in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship to perfect his prior training with Huguette and Kenneth Gilbert. It was Jory who encouraged me to audition for Huguette to enter her class at the conservatory. Despite trembling hands, I played for her and was accepted.

In our class at Rueil-Malmaison, we always celebrated birthdays, especially hers. One year, we threw a surprise party for her in the apartment of her cousin, Nicole Dreyfus (a famous attorney in France). Four students played variations of “Happy Birthday,” squeezed together at Nicole’s piano, I and another improvised a tango, and four held up one of her aphorisms, written out on pieces of paper. Huguette would have all her students over to dinner after the year-end exams, serving chocolate cake she had baked herself. At the conservatory, it was forbidden to eat in the teaching room, but Huguette installed a coffee maker, and we often ate our lunches there and celebrated birthdays and holidays with cake and champagne.

What Huguette taught me did not only concern the keyboard and written notes—it had to do with how to practice, making the instrument sing, acquiring the confidence to play difficult pieces, performing. . . . She said I could go as far as I wanted to in my playing, and I ended up being able to play pieces that I never would have been able to before. Her observations were always accurate, and her comments always constructive; Huguette could also say much with just an evocative gesture. All of this advice enabled me to play in public and be awarded a unanimous first prize in a jury exam, which would have been impossible before I studied with her: 

Listen to the bass.

To feel the beat and speed of a piece, walk ‘round the room, singing the melody.

To perform a piece, it needs to be more than 100% ready.

Be aware of the environment in which you’re practicing at home. When you’re learning a piece, the brain is storing it, not as isolated bits of information, but in its whole context, which will be reproduced when you perform.

Have everything prepared for performance, including the music so there are no loose pages to get lost or fall on the floor.

Listen to what you play all the way to the end. 

When one hand is playing a tricky passage, listen to the other one. (This was particularly effective when I was learning how to play ornaments.)

All that counts is the music.

Learning a fugue, sing each part separately. As you play one voice, add a second one with the other hand. Practice playing one voice while you sing with the other. While you play all the voices, follow each one individually. 

Playing each part hands together strengthens how it’s learned in the brain.

Don’t think about the notes. Imagine the trouble a centipede would have walking if it thought about how it moved!

Huguette rarely noted anything on my music, except to circle rests and add fingering—but only occasionally. More often, she would come by and tap on my shoulders, which had risen up to my ears with tension (terror, because of playing in front of the class, might be the more accurate word!). This recurring at every lesson, she showed me some exercises to relax them. She did not insist about fingering, saying that it was an individual decision, given that hands are different. Giving Glenn Gould as an example, Huguette pointed out that artists could sit or hold their arms in the “wrong ways” and still be brilliant.

Her own musicality was extraordinary. Once when I was playing in class, a woman from the conservatory office came to the door. Huguette told me to keep playing and went to speak to her. Suddenly she interrupted herself to call out to me, “B-flat!” I had made a mistake, and she heard it despite their conversation.

Referring to her practice of going to see something beautiful at a museum before giving a concert, she said in an interview with an Italian reporter, “It’s like giving water to a flower for it to bloom easily.”³⁸ To me, this quote could be a metaphor for her teaching. Once, when I was visiting her in the hospital before her death—some of her other students and I were in touch so as to maintain a continuous flow of visits—a nurse asked me if we were Huguette’s family members. “No,” I responded, “we’re the flowers in her garden,” knowing I’d puzzle her, but not finding any other apt way to put it in my distress. Now that I have gathered testimonials for a commemorative issue, I see that others felt as inspired and nurtured by her as I did, such as Yasuko Uyama-Bouvard who wrote, “She transmitted her love of music to me.”³⁹ Huguette could draw the best out of a student, and in my case, it changed the way I thought about myself and my capacities. Her next step was to help give me the capabilities to play the music I chose. Huguette took me as seriously as she would have if I had been young and a prospective professional. As another adult amateur student said, “Gratitude is the greatest homage that one can pay her.”⁴⁰

To be continued.

Notes

1. “The budding lilies,” title of the first piece by François Couperin in his 13ème Ordre, Troisième Livre. 

2. Email to author, December 7, 2016.

3. Radio interview, “Denis Herlin,” Les traversés du temps, France Musique, March 21, 2012.

4. Radio interview by Marcel Quillévère, “Huguette Dreyfus claveciniste,” Les traversés du temps, France Musique, March 7, 2012.

5. BnF VM FONDS 145 DRE-3 (12).

6. Agendes, BnF VM FONDS DRE-3 (5).

7. Letter from Pierre Verlet to Huguette Dreyfus, September 16, 1962, BnF VM Fonds 145-DRE (23). 

8. LP, The complete concerti for harpsichord, J. S. Bach, “A Critère recording,” Paris. Musidisc, France. New York: Nonesuch, HE 73001, 1965. Complete discography of Huguette Dreyfus compiled by the author. dolmetsch.com/huguettedreyfusdiscography.htm. 

9. Letter from Pierre Verlet to Huguette Dreyfus, July 15, 1969, op. cit.

10. Brochure, Paris American Academy of Music, “Summer in France,” 1966. BnF VM FONDS 145 DRE-3 (12).

11. Christophe Rousset, in emails to the author between 2016 and 2023.

12. Olivier Papillon, phone interviews with author, December 16, 2016, April 6 and
10, 2017.

13. Richard Siegel, interview with author, November 17, 2016, Paris, France.

14. Susan Lansdale, interview with author, March 23, 2018, Le Pecq, France. 

15. Claude Mercier-Ythier, in tribute to Huguette Dreyfus, Clavecins en France (CLEF) clavecin-en-france.org/spip.php?article288. Translated from French by the author.

16. Huguette Dreyfus, radio interview, Les traversés du temps, op. cit.

17. “Toujours jeune, L’Académie d’été, 40 ans déja.” Orgues Nouvelles, No. 15, Summer 2008, Lyon.

18. BnF, VM FONDS 145 DRE-3 (12).

19. Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, email to author, March 20, 2022.

20. Marcelo Fagerlande, phone interview with author, October 21, 2022.

21. bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Regina-Roberto.htm. 

22. Marcelo Fagerlande, Mayra Pereira, and Maria Aida Barroso, O Cravo no Rio de Janeiro do século XX. Rio de Janeiro: Rio Books, 2020. 

23. Ilton Wjuniski, tribute to Huguette Dreyfus, 2013.

24. Ana Cecilia Tavares, tribute to Huguette Dreyfus, 2022.

25. Letters from Maria de Lourdes Cutolo to Huguette Dreyfus, January 14 and February 2, 1976 BNF VM FONDS 145 DRE-1 (17).

26. Yasuko Uyama-Bouvard, emails to author, January 2023.

27. Shigeru Oikawa, letter to author, September 25, 2017, and tribute, January 2023.

28. Kristian Nyquist, interview on April 27, 2017, and later phone calls and emails. 

29. BnF, VM FONDS 145 DRE-3 (12). 

30. ‘Musiciens pour demain,” François Serrette, France Musique, February 15 and 22, 1979. 

31. “Musiciens pour demain,” op.cit., radiofrance.fr/francemusique/podcasts/les-tresors-de-france-musique/musiciens-pour-demain-avec-huguette-dreyfus-et-christophe-rousset-une-archive-de-1979-4597434.

32. Letter from Noëlle Spieth to Huguette Dreyfus, BnF VM Fonds 145 DRE-1 (17).

33. Ellen Haskil Maserati, interview with author, June 2018, Paris.

34. BnF VM FONDS DRE-3 (1).

35. Villecroze: l’atelier de clavecin de Huguette Dreyfus, Les chemins de la musique,  France Culture, Radio France, broadcast November 9, 2000.

36. Huguette Dreyfus, radio interview, L’Académie musicale de Villecroze, November 22, 2000. 

37. Translated from French by the author.  clavecin-en-france.org/spip.php?article288. 

38. Huguette Dreyfus interview, Corriere dell’Umbria, February 18, 1999. Translated from Italian to English by the author.

39. Email to author, January 5, 2023.

40. Pascal da Silva Texeira, email to author, December 2016.

Born in New York City, Sally Gordon-Mark has French and American citizenships, lives in Europe, and is an independent writer, researcher, and translator. She is also a musician—her professional life began in Hollywood as the soprano of a teenage girl group, The Murmaids, whose hit record, Popsicles & Icicles, is still played on air and sold on CDs. Eventually she worked for Warner Bros. Records, Francis Coppola, and finally Lucasfilm Ltd., in charge of public relations and promotions, before a life-changing move to Paris in 1987. There Sally played harpsichord for the first time, thanks to American concert artist Jory Vinikour, her friend and first teacher. He recommended she study with Huguette Dreyfus, which she had the good fortune to do during the last three years before Huguette retired from the Superieur regional conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison, remaining a devoted friend until Huguette passed away.

During Sally’s residence in France, she organized a dozen Baroque concerts for the historical city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, worked as a researcher for books published by several authors and Yale University, and being trilingual, served as a translator of early music CD booklets for musicians and Warner Classic Records. She also taught piano privately and at the British School of Paris on a regular basis. In September 2020, she settled in Perugia, Italy. In May 2023, Sally will be the guest editor of the British Harpsichord Society’s e-magazine Sounding Board, devoted entirely to the memory of Huguette Dreyfus. For more information: www.sallygordonmark.com

Read Part 2 here.

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every barrier only fires my firm resolve. He who is fixated on a star does not change his mind.

—Leonardo Da Vinci¹

Huguette Dreyfus, France’s grande dame de clavecin, the self-proclaimed “inexhaustible chatterbox,”² slipped away silently near midnight on April 16, 2016. She was a world-renowned concert artist and teacher and the most important harpsichordist of her generation in France. Exuberant, intelligent, and quick-witted, her attention was almost always turned outwards, keeping her personal world out of the realm of discussion. In conversation, this tacit barrier was intuitively respected. Being unassuming, she spoke little about herself and even less about her past. Therefore, extensive research, interviews, and access to her archives in the Bibliothèque nationale de France were required in order to bring to light her rich and vibrant life. Revealed were the energy, courage, strength of will, and discipline with which she conducted herself from an early age.

Her birth certificate reads “Paulette Huguette Dreyfus,” but her doctor had made an error. Her parents had actually named her Huguette Pauline when she was born on November 30, 1928, in Mulhouse (Alsace, France). Her first ten years as the adored little girl of an upper-middle-class Jewish family were secure and full of warmth. Her father, Fernand, owned two feather factories, one in Mulhouse, the other near Vichy. Neither Fernand nor her mother, Marguerite (née Bloch), were musicians, but they did love to listen to music.³

Pierre, Huguette’s twelve-year-old brother and only sibling, took piano lessons. Huguette, aged four, asked for lessons too, but her mother told her that she was too young and only wanted to copy Pierre. However, the piano teacher, Madame Rueff, convinced her mother to give it a try, and it was soon understood that Huguette was motivated by music, not by her brother. At the end of the first lesson, she could read the notes. Because of health problems, Madame Rueff eventually recommended that Huguette study instead with the distinguished pianist Pierre Maire, a professor at the Ecole Normale in Paris, who also taught in nearby Epinal.⁴ Comfortable playing in public from the very beginning, Huguette participated in two of his recitals, one in 1938, the other on July 2, 1939, when she performed the third movement from Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata.⁵ She was ten. Two months later, World War II erupted.

The Alsace region on the border of Germany was the first to be evacuated. Huguette’s father took his family to Vichy, where they had friends. There she took lessons from pianist André Collard.⁶ Huguette entered the Clermont-Ferrand music conservatory under a pseudonym, since Jewish children were not allowed to enroll. There may have been a teacher in Strasbourg who had connections there and referred her. When the Nazis commandeered the University of Strasbourg, its professors had already moved to the University of Clermont-Ferrand, which would become a hotspot of resistance. The now-nomadic Dreyfus family also spent time in Montpellier, where her brother was studying medicine.⁷

After Nazi soldiers occupied all of France in 1942, Huguette and her family crossed the Alps on December 10, settling in Lausanne where her father’s sister lived. She enrolled in the Lausanne music conservatory for piano lessons at the “virtuoso” level. When the war ended, she received an attestation from the conservatory to be able to take her final exams in Clermont-Ferrand in March and June 1945, which she did, receiving first prizes.⁸

Pierre moved to Paris in 1945, and sixteen-year-old Huguette joined him, enrolling at the Ecole Normale de Musique to study with concert pianist Lazare-Lévy, whose illustrious students had included Clara Haskil. He had been a student of Louis Diémer, an important exponent of early music in the late 1880s. In 1920, Lazare-Lévy had been named professor at the Paris Conservatory, but he was forced to give up his position during the Occupation, because of German anti-Jewish laws. His teaching was widely respected for being innovative and original with respect to fingering, technique, and analysis of music. Huguette later acknowledged his influence on her, particularly his guidance with technique. She concluded her lessons with him in June 1948, obtaining a diploma at the superior level.⁹ She continued with counterpoint and solfège at the Ecole Normale in the fall and got a job there accompanying the vocal class of a Madame Kedroff, most likely the well-known soprano, Irene Kedroff, who had performed in a quartet under the direction of Nadia Boulanger.¹⁰ In 1949, her parents moved to Paris, where her father purchased a large apartment in a stylish building at 91 Quai d’Orsay, on the banks of the Seine by Pont Alma. The family would live there for the rest of their lives.¹¹

For the school year of 1949–1950, organist and musicologist Norbert Dufourcq chose Johann Sebastian Bach as the subject of his advanced music history course at the Paris Conservatory. While the conservatory had once owned period harpsichords, twenty-four of them were burned in 1816 and twelve sold at auction in 1822.¹² Fortunately, Dufourcq was able to obtain the use of a Pleyel harpsichord for his classroom. Huguette enrolled in his class that year, as did other future harpsichordists: Sylvie Spycket, Laurence Boulay, and Anne-Marie Beckensteiner. Conductor Jean-François Paillard and singer Jacques Herbillon were also among her classmates. This intense focus on Bach’s music surely made an impact on her: out of the 117 recordings she would make, thirty-six would be of Bach’s works. Dufourcq inspired his class with a fiery enthusiasm that comes across on his radio programs;¹³ she described him as “impassioned and lively.” This class would forever alter the course of Huguette’s life—it was the first time she would lay hands on a harpsichord. 

Huguette took an aesthetics and music analysis class with Olivier Messiaen and a pedagogy course while at the Paris Conservatory. In autumn 1950, attracted by his personality, she joined the musical aesthetics class of Alexis Roland-Manuel. She had been listening religiously to his radio program, Le Plaisir de la Musique, transmitted live every Sunday at noon. This erudite composer, music critic, and radio broadcaster recognized her gifts and would become her ally; if anyone acted as her mentor, it would have been him.¹⁴

There was no harpsichord class at the Paris Conservatory, so Dufourcq created an unofficial one (referred to in conservatory records as an “annex”), inviting a former student, Jacqueline Masson, to teach it. Accompanied by her mother, Huguette auditioned for the class and was accepted along with Anne-Marie Beckensteiner and Laurence Boulay, but the class lasted for only eight months. On June 15, 1951, Huguette passed her exam, playing the Bach Toccata in F-sharp Minor, with Aimée van de Wiele, a former student of Wanda Landowska, on the jury.¹⁵ Huguette had abandoned the piano for the harpsichord, but she did not know where to turn for the training she needed in order to play an instrument and a repertoire so uncommon at that time.

In the years following World War II in France, conditions for early music performers were quite different than they are now. It was difficult even to listen to early music; there were few recordings, and urtext and facsimile editions were not available. Most radio transmitters had been blown up during the war, and LP records and television did not exist. In order to hear the music they were studying, students had to sight-read manuscripts they found in French archives and libraries, write them out themselves, and attend any concerts they could. There were no copies of historic instruments being constructed in France; contemporary harpsichords were expensive. Aix-en-Provence hosted the only music festival in the country, created in 1948. Since early music was little known to the public and there were few harpsichords, impresarios were skittish about scheduling concerts. Certainly there were not today’s masterclasses, and only the Schola Cantorum and l’Ecole de Musique Ancienne offered early music courses in France.

Either Dufourcq or Masson recommended to Huguette that she take Ruggero Gerlin’s summer class at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy. An audition there was mandatory, but she could not leave Paris. In October 1951, having survived the war, Huguette’s father was killed when he was struck by a truck in front of their apartment building. Her brother was temporarily replacing another doctor in the south of France, so it fell on Huguette to help her mother while she continued to work and pursue her studies.¹⁶ However, the following year she successfully auditioned for Gerlin. The Accademia granted her the first of three scholarships to assist with her travel and living expenses in Siena, there being no fees to pay.¹⁷

In June 1953, Huguette completed Dufourcq’s comprehensive course—studies in French and foreign vocal and instrumental music—as well as Roland-Manuel’s course, receiving nothing but the highest marks. On July 15, she arrived in Siena. Classes were scheduled annually from mid-July to mid-September. The Accademia had been founded in 1932 by Count Guido Chigi Saracini in the palace where he resided, because he “adored music but detested traveling,” according to Huguette. Operas and nightly concerts were given in the palace theater. The Accademia had a library, well stocked with books and music scores, a notable collection of musical instruments, and an important art collection. To Huguette, it was like being in a dream.

Having been granted the first of four scholarships, Jill Severs entered the class in 1953 along with Huguette, Jacqueline Masson, Françoise Petit, Sylvie Spycket, and Anne-Marie Beckensteiner. Kenneth Gilbert joined them the following year. The class remained small every year. Huguette audited classes by George Enesco and Andres Segovia. Students she met over the years from other classes included a twelve-year-old John Williams, Narciso Yepes, and Claudio Abbado. Jill remembers, “After the war, to discover Italy in the early 1950s was a revelation; a new world of warmth, beauty, colour, hope and optimism.”¹⁸ The summers spent in Italy affected Huguette deeply, as did the warm Italian temperament. Every morning she would go to the same bakery for coffee and the Siennese specialty, panforte. If she did not appear, it was assumed that she was ill, and the owner would bring her a tray of tea and sweets. Huguette would later say that with memories like that, she could never have been a pessimist.¹⁹

Ruggero Gerlin, born in Venice, had come to Paris to study with Wanda Landowska in 1920. He eventually served as her teaching assistant, and they often performed together on European tours. During the lessons at the Accademia, Jill Severs heard him sometimes refer to Landowska as “ma mère.”²⁰ Their close collaboration was cut short by World War II. Landowska, fleeing the Nazis, left for New York in 1940, and the following year, Gerlin returned to Italy. He settled in Naples, where he taught harpsichord at the prestigious Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella. After the war, he returned to Paris where he stayed until his death in 1983.

Although his “admiration for her was without limits,” Gerlin did not use or teach Landowska’s technique, which surprised Huguette. He also preferred a Neupert to a Pleyel, Landowska’s favorite, but Huguette did not ask him why. He was very sensitive, and if he thought his response could be construed as criticism of Landowska, Gerlin would withdraw into himself, according to Huguette.

Gerlin’s classes were held in French, and Huguette found them intense and tiring.²¹ There were three classes a week, lasting four hours each, during which the students remained silent.

I recognize, having taught a lot since, that he was absolutely correct in imposing this. Even if the students are talking about things concerning the class, it is very disturbing for the professor and very disturbing for the students’ concentration. So we were in prayer for four hours and we learned a ton of things. Gerlin was extremely meticulous. . . . He had an intelligent way of teaching fingering. . . . Above all, the fingering had to be adapted to the interpretation, that is to say, to the musical phrase.

The students generally worked on music by Bach, Rameau, Couperin, and Scarlatti, the quartet that would dominate Huguette’s concert programs later.

At first, the class shared a Cella harpsichord, “a sort of false copy of a Pleyel made by an Italian maker.”²² Jill remembers it being hard to play expressively on the Cella with its hard and unresponsive touch. It was later replaced by a Neupert, which was “extremely different from a Pleyel” and was for Huguette “a complete discovery,” an improvement on the Pleyel. The Neupert was “called the Bach harpsichord at the time, 8′ and 4′ above, and 8′ and 16′ below.”

Gerlin was extremely meticulous. . . . We could spend hours on two measures for the quality of the sound. Touch was extremely important, fingering, analysis of a work. . . . At first, the interpretation was left to the discretion of (the student), which was discussed at length. He did not always agree and if he didn’t, there was no question of arguing afterwards. . . . In the end, he always won.²⁴

But his comments were always respected. Jill Severs has kept her copies of music with fingerings he noted, all this time.

Although his manner was reserved and his moods not always easy to fathom, Gerlin was very gracious. According to Jill Severs, neither silence nor pieces were imposed. The silence came naturally as a result of the intensity of the lessons and the concentration they required, and students could choose to play the pieces that they had selected to prepare. To her, his lessons were a source of “discoveries and inspiration.”²⁵ If he was reserved in his expression of emotions, he always spoke passionately about music.

Anne-Marie Beckensteiner, who had married Jean-François Paillard in 1952, took the class the following year, while her husband searched for manuscripts in Italian libraries. She later wrote:

Gerlin’s lessons were exciting, and he noticed Huguette’s touch very quickly, her “pretty little round hand,” as he used to say, and had her show her hand position to us as an example. We began with the (Bach) inventions with two and three voices, and Huguette’s facility in playing them so easily, with so many colors, with such facility of expression and phrasing, overjoyed Gerlin. . . . He did not content himself with the inventions, very soon—Scarlatti. And what a school it was for us!!! The Count, all dressed in white, often proposed musical evenings. (Huguette) had an unquenchable thirst for music and the harpsichord was truly “her” instrument.²⁶ 

Each summer session ended with a concert in which Huguette, Jill, and Kenneth Gilbert were always invited to play. Count Guido Chigi Saracini was usually in attendance. As Jill Severs recalls, “Those chosen to perform in the beautiful white and gold Sala di Concerto were presented with an enormous bouquet of red or white carnations.”²⁷ Gerlin would be Huguette’s sole maître, and she attended his classes in Siena for a total of eight summers.

From 1954 on, Huguette worked tirelessly, playing continuo and accompanying other artists in concert. She also taught privately, an average of ten students a month. Although her days were filled with appointments noted in her neat, roundish penmanship without flourishes, her evenings were spent going to the opera and concerts. With virtually no teacher ten months out of the year, one of the ways she studied was by listening to music. 

Her day began at 8:00 a.m. at the Salle Pleyel, where she rented a practice room.²⁸ Huguette joined her first ensemble, the Quatuor Instrumental de Lutèce, in 1954. In January 1956, they recorded a disc, her first, of unpublished Boismortier and Naudot sonatas, fruits of the research encouraged by Dufourcq. She also played continuo in Robert Dalsace’s ensemble Fiori musicali, the Fernand Oubradous Orchestra, Maxence Larrieu’s Instrumental Quartet, l’Orchestre Lamoureux, and Le Collegium Museum de Paris, directed by Roland Douatte. 

On July 28, 1956, invited by Roland-Manuel, she played in a chamber group on his program, Le Plaisir de la musique, the first of 194 radio appearances. Wanting to learn more about performance practices, Huguette studied for three years with Antoine Geoffrey-Dechaume, an important figure in the early music revival. Having been initiated into early music by Arnold Dolmetsch, he studied period treatises and published an influential book at the time, Les Secrets de la Musique Ancienne. She liked him and thought him interesting, but stopped seeing him finally because she could not bear his “absolute fanaticism” with regard to historical performance practices.²⁹ Nevertheless, what she did learn from him, based on French music and texts, was important because it included basso continuo. She was also in frequent contact with the French musicologist Marcelle Benoît, another student of Norbert Dufourcq.

In November, she would turn thirty, the usual age limit for conservatory studies and harpsichord competitions. If she were to have a career, she would have to distinguish herself. She needed an instrument of her own. Ever since childhood, she had been determined to be a musician. Huguette was doing everything she could to lay the foundations for a career, but the clock was ticking.

To be continued.

Notes

1. Les Carnets de Léonard de Vinci (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1942), volume I, page 98 (translation by the author).

2. Huguette Dreyfus, radio interview by Marcel Quillévéré, “Traverses du temps,” France Musique, Paris, 2012.

3. Françoise Dreyfus, interview by the author, Paris, July 25, 2016.

4. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, Paris, December 8, 2008.

5. Recital program in the author’s personal collection.

6. Having studied with Paul Dukas, Alfred Corton, Yvonne Lefébure, and Nadia Boulanger, Collard became an eminent pianist, as did his daughter, Catherine Collard.

7. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, op. cit. 

8. Bibliothèque nationale de France, VM Fonds 145 DRE-3 (12). 

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid. Irene Kedroff and her family had emigrated from Russia to Paris in 1923, where her father formed the Quatuor Kedroff consisting of Irene, her parents, and her cousin Natalia.

11. Françoise Dreyfus, interview, op. cit.

12. Florence Gétreau, “Les précurseurs français: Moscheles, Fétis, Méreaux, Farrenc, Saint-Saens,” Wanda Landowska et la renaissance de la musique ancienne (conference in March 2009), under the direction of Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger. Musicales Actes Sud/Cité de la Musique, Paris, October 2011. 
citedelamusique.fr/pdf/insti/recherche/wanda/pdf_complet.pdf.

13. “Concerts de Paris,” Radiodiffusion Télévision Française, March 10, 1960, INA ID PHD88011289.

14. Huguette Dreyfus, video interview by Rémy Stricker, June 7, 2015. Youtube.

15. Olivier Baumont, “La classe de clavecin du Conservatoire de Paris,” La Revue du Conservatoire, 30/11/2016, URL: https://larevue.conservatoiredeparis.fr:443/index.php?id=913.

16. Françoise Dreyfus, op. cit.

17. Accademia documents in the author’s personal collection.

18. Jill Severs, “Tribute to Kenneth Gilbert,” Sounding Board xv, The British Harpsichord Society, https://www.harpsichord.org.uk/sounding-board-issue-15/.

19. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, op. cit.

20. Jill Severs, video interview by the author, August 24, 2022.

21. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, op. cit. 

22. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Wanda Landowska symposium, Paris, March 5, 2009. 

23. Jill Severs, video interview by the author, August 8, 2022.

24. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, op. cit.

25. Jill Severs, interview, op. cit.

26. Anne-Marie Beckensteiner-Paillard, her tribute to Huguette Dreyfus, https://www.clavecin-en-france.org; also her interview by author, Saint-Malo, October 23–25, 2016.

27. Jill Severs, “Tribute to Kenneth Gilbert,” op. cit.

28. Agendas (1955–1967), Bibliothèque nationale de France, VM Fond 145 DRE-3 (5). 

29. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, op. cit. 

Jesse Eschbach is a graduate of Indiana University, Bloomington, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he was a student of Robert Glasgow. He completed his formal education during a five-year residency in Paris as a student of Marie-Claire Alain, specializing in early French music in her conservatory class at Rueil-Malmaison where he was awarded both a Prix d’Excellence and a Prix de Virtuosité. As one of the last students of Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier, he studied the complete organ works of her husband, Maurice Duruflé, as well as much of the French symphonic repertoire.

Since 1986, Eschbach has served on the faculty at the University of North Texas, Denton, as professor of organ, instructing performance majors at all levels. Eschbach has several CDs to his credit, including a disc recorded at the Cathédrale de Perpignan entitled Music of the Second Empire and Beyond, released in 2003. Also released in 2003 was his 800+ page book, Stoplists of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, detailing the original stoplists of the majority of organs constructed by this French organbuilder, based extensively on the Lapresté collection. This research is still in progress, and an expanded second edition will be released in the next few years.

Due to focal dystonia in the right hand, his career was sidetracked for more than ten years, but due to the efforts of Dorothy Taubman and Sheila Paige, he has begun resuming his performance career. He has been a juror for several competitions, including the American Guild of Organists national competition, the Canadian International Organ Competition, and the Fort Wayne national competition.

On July 27, 2018, my dear colleagues and friends, Yannick Merlin and Béatrice Piertot, introduced me to Pierre Labric at his residence southwest of Paris in Dreux. Labric is perhaps best remembered in this country for recording the complete organ symphonies of both Widor and Vierne on the legendary Cavaillé-Coll instruments of St-Ouen, Rouen (Widor), and St-Sernin, Toulouse (Vierne). These recordings were marketed in the United States by The Musical Heritage Society after 1971 and introduced my generation to not only the symphonic style of Widor and Vierne, but also the sound universe of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.

After spending a delightful two and a half hours with Mr. Labric and speaking at great length about his mentor Jeanne Demessieux and his brilliant friend and colleague at the Paris Conservatory, Jean-Claude Touche, I asked Yannick and Béatrice on our return trip to Paris if Mr. Labric might consent to a written interview on the life and achievements of Jeanne Demessieux. Yannick Merlin received an enthusiastic response, and I drafted twenty questions, intending to explore Demessieux’s short but highly eventful life.

Mr. Labric, as the reader will soon observe, was most generous with his responses. He was never limited with any constraints suggested by a particular question, but “improvised” freely in his responses.

Only one question failed to elicit a direct response: I asked if Pierre Labric could confirm what Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier recounted years earlier. An incisive attack and release was the core of her legendary virtuosity,¹ and she attributed this to her study with Jeanne Demessieux, most especially what Mme Duruflé called the “deuxième mouvement,” or release of a note, which must have at least as much energy and clarity as the attack. This concept goes to the core of brilliant, virtuosic playing, sometimes forgotten today in France and the United States. Both Demessieux and Duruflé were capable of extremely brilliant tempos, yet every note was clearly heard and energetic, regardless of the acoustic. Regrettably, Mr. Labric seems not to have discussed this topic with Jeanne Demessieux, but confirmed, “M-M Duruflé was formed exclusively by Jeanne Demesssieux. In class, Dupré told us with the greatest admiration, ‘My children, see how Jeanne Demessieux is getting results from Marie-Madeleine.’ Yes, it was true.”²

The inevitable question did arise during our meeting in 2018 concerning the traumatic rupture between Dupré and Demessieux. I knew better than to launch “head-on” into this sad story with a French gentleman of Mr. Labric’s generation, always highly discreet. I did repeat what Marie-Madeleine Duruflé confided years earlier, and this elicited a broad smile and unmistakable twinkle of the eye. Given that direct descendants of the principal parties are still with us, and since the cause of the saga can never be proved, I can only repeat what others have said: Jeanne Demessieux was utterly blameless, and Dupré was foolishly victimized and manipulated by individuals in his entourage who intended to overthrow Demessieux to suit their own agenda. It was a veritable plot originating from near unparalleled, despicable jealousy that nauseated everyone in the French organ world and well beyond. Seventy-five years later, condemnation of the injustice perpetrated on the young Jeanne Demessieux continues to resonate. Marcel Dupré enjoyed almost complete authoritarian control of the French organ world and was more than capable of destroying, or otherwise compromising, a promising career.³

Mr. Labric, born in 1921, grew up in the Rouen area and received his early training from Marcel Lanquetuit before admission to Dupré’s class at the Paris Conservatory. His career was largely devoted to recording, resulting in releases of the complete organ symphonies of Widor and Vierne, the complete organ works of Jeanne Demessieux, sonatas of Mendelssohn, preludes and fugues of Saint-Saëns, the major organ works of Liszt, and the Promenades en Provence of Eugène Reuchsel. He was Demessieux’s suppléant at the Madeleine, and also assisted Pierre Cochereau at Notre-Dame Cathedral. As he approaches his centennial, it seemed especially appropriate to begin collecting some of his indelible memories of one of the most eventful epochs in the history of our profession.

Jesse Eschbach: If I remember correctly, Jeanne Demessieux was Marcel Dupré’s assistant in the organ class [at the Paris Conservatory] towards the end of the war. Was it at this time that you met Jeanne Demessieux for the first time? How did she prepare you for the organ class? Technique, repertory, interpretation, counterpoint, harmony, improvisation?

Pierre Labric: Yes, Jeanne Demessieux replaced Dupré in the organ class during the week of May 14–21, 1946. I’m transcribing the themes she had us work on [in improvisation]: What beautiful themes!

That day, she worked quite awhile with me. It was the year I was first runner-up. I believe I remember that she was happy with my improvisation. I attended her overwhelming competition for her unanimous first prize on June 6, 1941. The entire audience broke the law of silence: frenetic and long applause reflected the general enthusiasm. That day, our contact started.

How long did you work with Jeanne Demessieux?

I worked all my life, and I owe everything to Jeanne Demessieux.

At the end of your studies at the conservatory, did you remain in contact with Demessieux?

Yes, and after her appointment to the Madeleine, she asked me to play services in her place. I always remained in cordial contact with her and her dear mother after she became a widow. During a lesson, I asked her if, in the vast nave of a cathedral, one had to moderate tempo a little bit because of the reverberation. “No,” she replied, “It is necessary simply to articulate.”

What repertory did you undertake with Demessieux? Bach, Buxtehude, old French music, Liszt, Franck?

She had me work on her (Six) Études with great interest. They made me progress enormously. I started with the octave study, which I perfected during all of the school year 1948. I played it for her in May, and with her advice I worked on it during [summer] vacation. I played it for her again in September. She was happy with my work, and encouraged me to put it on my program on October 15 at St-Godard, Rouen. I was happy and . . . proud! I got her precious advice for the big Vierne works. I recorded all of them later, observing everything scrupulously. She had me work for part of the afternoon. Madame Demessieux prepared for us, delicately, a delicious snack that we savored with one of my friends who accompanied me to my lesson—she, too, has since passed! All of this downed with a cup of coffee for which I could never replicate the flavor.

“Mama has her little secrets,” Jeanne told us! My modest repertory was Liszt, Franck, Widor, Guilmant, Vierne, Duruflé, very little Litaize, very little Langlais, Jean-Claude Touch, Jean Guillou. A pirated version of my recording of his Toccata from one of my concerts at Saint-Ouen de Rouen is on the internet.

What preparatory studies did the teacher Demessieux want in place before taking a student?

She required a serious piano technique with etudes of Chopin or Liszt.

Did she ask for repertory studied at lessons be memorized?

No. I played all of my lessons with the text.

Could you describe the legendary memory of Demessieux?

For the magazine Étude (April 1950), the editors asked Jeanne Demessieux for an article on Dupré. She wrote fifteen sublime pages in which appeared not a shade of vengeance, not a trace of the least bitterness. The writing has the limpidity of the entire truth. What a marvelous lesson Jeanne Demessieux gave to Dupré.

The Rouen Philharmonic Society, directed by an excellent musician-pianist Pierre Duvauchel, was always running a deficit. Demessieux, who came for a sou, filled the coffers: a half hour before the concert, there wasn’t a chair left in the immense nave!

A poor priest had difficulties keeping his school afloat. He dared to ask Jeanne, then at the top of her international glory, if she would accept to give a concert for a rather low fee. Her secretary responded, “Miss Demessieux asks me to inform you she will offer a free recital for your school. A date has to be found according to her possibilities.” I have read the letter.

You recounted a beautiful anecdote concerning a trip Demessieux made to Normandy, around Deauville, I think. A priest from a little village asked her to visit his parish the day after the concert. What happened when she tried out the organ?

Jeanne Demessieux had given a concert in Deauville on August 27, 1956. You have the review written by Guy Bouchaux, which deserves to be read by everyone.

Verbal program notes were given by the Canon Leprieur, priest of Beuzeville about twenty kilometers away. Demessieux was to return to Paris by car with M. Haerpfer, the builder of the organs in Deauville and Beuzeville, which has a smaller organ.

Abbot Leprieur had invited Demessieux to visit the organ in Beuzeville the next day on her way back to Paris. The grapevine having done its work, about twenty from the audience of the day before greeted Demessieux when she got out of the car. Abbot Leprieur led her to the gallery, followed by the would-be listeners. She got to know in very little time the modest instrument of sixteen stops. She didn’t even need much more time for the giant consoles during her American tours. She went through each stop attentively and was getting ready to leave the keyboards. Abbot Leprieur then said suddenly, “Mademoiselle, would you play the Alain Litanies for us?” Without hesitating, Demessieux gave us a brilliant interpretation of the Litanies. After that, Galérant (in the photo) asked her for the Second Choral of Franck; another asked her for the “Toccata” from the Fifth Symphony of Widor; another suggested a Noël of D’Aquin. “Which one?” she asked simply. After, a gentleman I didn’t know asked for the “Carillon de Westminster.” Others requested several Bach pieces. All of these pieces were at random and not on the program from the day before. She played for two consecutive hours, responding with a perfect humility to the requests of each with the single aim of pleasing. There is the perfect example of a concert “requested by the audience.”

What happened when she tried the organ, you ask me? Nothing!

Jeanne was very reserved, always in perfect control, and also in control of her company. She never felt the need to ask questions. For her, all the problems were worked out ahead. If someone explained to her the reason for something because of this, because of that, she listened very politely, without feeling the need to open her mouth. She remained silent. She was like the diamond who never sought to shine, but was made to shine. She played the organ at Beuzeville most naturally, before several subjugated and privileged people, enthusiastic and astonished by such natural facility.

Jeanne was radiant taking leave of her improvised admirers. And we went to lunch at the rectory, as the photo attests, taken by the young curate of the parish when we arrived. Sixty-two years ago! Jeanne made a very quiet “impact,” yet strongly powerful, felt by everyone around her. Her rich personality radiated naturally without being conscious of it, so it seemed.

Monsieur Albert Dupré, father of the Dupré in question, was organist of the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll of Saint-Ouen de Rouen—“Orgue à la Michel-Ange” according to the famous estimation of Widor who came to inaugurate it. On the occasion of the first concert of Jeanne’s at Saint-Ouen, hearing about it, Dupré supposedly exclaimed, “Imagine, she dared play Papa’s organ!” The clumsy remark eventually got back to Jeanne Demessieux who spontaneously retorted, “Oh, Papa had nothing to complain about!”

She was very humorous.

I don’t think we have many recordings of Demessieux’s improvisations. Could you tell us about her style in improvisation? Did she often improvise in established forms such as sonata-allegro, fugue, double fugue, lied, variations, passacaglia, etc., or was she rather free?

During her concert tours in America, Miss Murtagh⁴ called Jeanne Demessieux, pointing out a day when Jeanne wasn’t on time. She scolded her on the telephone like a little girl. With her usual calm, her natural distinction, her nobility of a great lady, Jeanne Demessieux responded simply with, “Madam, I always⁵ do what I want,” cutting off any response. Many organists do what they can, starting with me! At the keyboard, Demessieux always did what she wanted. Her magnificent recordings are the proof!

As for her improvisations, if they were always inspired (again, she did what she wanted), they all were adapted to the character of the given theme. I heard her improvise many a time, the very first being her conservatory competition on June 6, 1941. The luminous cadenzas of the first two concertos of Handel were improvised before being written down and recorded on the Decca label. The first one astonished Guy Bouchaux at her concert in Deauville on August 27, 1956, as well as her improvisation on In Paradisum.

I recall yet today her extraordinary symphonic fresco on the Kyrie Orbis factor given to her by Fr. Boulzy at the end of her concert on November 7, 1953, at Saint-Eustache. She finished with a prodigious fugue. The large audience, which filled the nave, was cosmopolitan: French, Italians, Germans, English, Americans, Japanese applauded discretely when she came down from the gallery.

Examples are numerous and deliciously fascinating. I’ll limit myself to several: I heard Demessieux improvise at Saint-Ouen. For her, to improvise was to abandon herself to her rich and inspired imagination at the end of a concert. The mind free, on a magnificent instrument she loved, developing a very beautiful theme given to her by Maurice Duruflé, I remember elegant variations faithfully ornamenting the theme under the sumptuous sonorities of the “Cavaillé-Coll à la Michel-Ange,” which she knew how to transfigure like no one else.

To your question, I don’t know about recordings of her improvisations with the exception of the one on the Hamburg CD, The Legendary Jeanne Demessieux, done in several churches in Hamburg: St-Sophiekirche, St-Michaelskirche, St-Christianskirche on the label Festivo, 6961-862. Many years ago, I was fortunate to hear her splendid improvisations during her legendary concerts in the Netherlands.

M. Van der Oter, deceased, and his colleague Mr. Herman van Vliet, an excellent organist, played for me a magnificent improvisation in Masslouis, which I would ardently like to hear again, and another one, in the Netherlands, the given theme of which lended itself to rondo form, three refrains and three couplets. This quarter hour of true music was so perfect that it made me think of the truly vivid “Rondo Final” of the magnificent Fifth Symphony of Louis Vierne. Regrettably, I never heard either one again!

I found in the archives of Norbert Dufourcq a detailed study of the Madeleine organ written in 1965 by Jeanne Demessieux. This document attests to the fact that Demessieux had a great deal of expertise in organbuilding and especially on the style of Cavaillé-Coll. Dupré, as far as I know, didn’t teach these things to his students. How did Demessieux acquire this knowledge?

To your inquiry, I am going to offer the truest, most exact, most pertinent, the simplest response there is, that of Jeanne Demessieux herself:

I wrote to the periodical L’Orgue that I was waiting and hoping for the organ of the twentieth century:⁶ an intelligent synthesis, yet original in its audacity, of instruments from the past. In the absence of which, the promoters of neo-classicism will be burdened with the heavy responsibility of having implicitly condemned all⁷ organ repertory from Bach to the present. The works of Messiaen, Langlais, and others call for a complete radiance in sound where everything is possible.

These thoughts, harbingers of light and wisdom, are a veritable gospel of truth and for all time. And here is a striking aspect of Jeanne Demessieux.

Appointed titular organist of the beautiful Cavaillé-Coll of the Madeleine in 1962, where she succeeded Edouard Mignan, she was keenly interested in the preservation of her instrument. She watched jealously over its esthetic. Her keen awareness of eclecticism, fed by multiple experiences collected over all continents, gave her the ability to compare organs of different characters—following faithfully the evolution of building, with prudence and especially wisdom, while strongly opposing certain displeasing trends.

Her searching spirit always involved a curious look towards the future, without denying the lessons from the past. Her perfectionist and innovative spirit researched unceasingly balance and truth. Her art was enriched with a lofty spirituality. Her enthusiastic listeners perceived her marvelous message with a quieted serenity while others, more receptive, caught a glimpse of her in the light.

Did she have American students? I know that Frank Speller8 went to study with her, but did she have others?

I don’t know.

You mentioned her Te Deum. If I understood you correctly, this work was finished in Demessieux’s mind well before she wrote it down?

Your assertion is absolutely exact. The brutal and sudden rupture with Dupré, never understood by poor Jeanne Demessieux, necessarily accentuated her timidity and humility that were already the basis of her exceptional personality. “I never talk about my plans,” she responded to an overly gushing interlocutor.

At her concert in Deauville, I asked her discretely if she would soon give us the joy of a new work. “Yes,” she answered spontaneously. “I am thinking of writing a work in the spirit of the chorals of Franck on the Te Deum.” Overwhelmed, I didn’t push further, being content with this detail, so affectionately confided, I being one of the rare individuals—if not the only—to know the gestation of the most beautiful of the Te Deums. No reference concerning what I knew to be a serious confidence would be brought back to her, at least coming from me.

The streets of Rouen were all decked out with giant posters as if to announce the visit of the Queen of England: “Jeanne Demessieux on her return from America.” She returned from a big concert tour, during which she had played her Te Deum, not yet published, but for which I didn’t know the reason. It was on the program for April 30, 1958. That’s when I heard it for the first time, next to her, in the afternoon. I was astonished by the grandeur and the beauty of the work. It is impossible to find more moving accents to praise God. I asked her if she would consent to loaning me her manuscript. “But no, dear Pierre, I haven’t yet had time to write it down!” My eyes popped out of my head before such prowess that I never would have imagined. I remained speechless.

In matters of interpretation, did she use rubato or rather subtleties of touch, or a combination of both?

Jeanne Demessieux had an incredible phrasing. In the chorale preludes of Bach, she used two different cornets, which offered an agreeable echo effect. She played certain works with a surprising slowness, but never gave the impression of dragging.

She played quick tempos with an absolute mastery, a ravishing lightness. Listen to her in the delicious scherzo of the Grande Pièce Symphonique of César Franck where she excelled, in order to be convinced of the perfection found in her recording of the complete organ works of Franck, which came out in 1961.

Jeanne Demessieux never stopped being a pianist. She had her [first] prize when she was 17. She brought her extraordinary technique to the organ. At one of her concerts I attended with my friend Marie-Claire Alain, at the end Alain told me, “You know, it’s magnificent! One really feels she’s a first prize in piano!” I responded, “It’s obvious. I agree with you.” Such was my total approbation.

The complete works for organ of César Franck recorded at the Madeleine in 1959 reveal interpretations where virtuosity is often highlighted. I’m thinking, for instance, of the allegros in the Grande Pièce Symphonique. As far as I know, only her student Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier played Franck like that. More than fifty years after these recordings first appeared, metronomic indications written by Franck himself were discovered in a letter addressed by Franck to an American organist,⁹ which tends to demonstrate that such virtuosity wasn’t at all scorned by César Franck. Jeanne Demessieux, it would seem, was right. Did she talk about these interpretations and her very personal ideas on the subject of Franck’s music?

Jeanne Demessieux revealed Franck like no one else, a recording of reference. What can I add?

Mr. Labric, you are perhaps the last to have often played the authentic Cavaillé-Coll of Notre-Dame, Paris,10 before the reconstruction and electrification in the 1960s. I would like very much if you would talk about this legendary instrument before the transformations occurred.

“My alter ego,” said Vierne speaking about his Cavaillé-Coll at Notre-Dame, Paris. Nothing better than these words could translate the nature of the emotional attachments that bound together one to the other. This was affirmed by Bernard Gavoty. Gavoty continued, “as the flower breaks loose from its sheath, the song swells and spreads forth. With his hands, the musician sculpts his work in a sonorous clay of which nothing can evoke the voluptuous richness. The entire organ seems to stir in contact with this soul that brings it to life.”

The organ of Notre-Dame de Paris was the absolute masterpiece of Cavaillé-Coll. In the fingers of Vierne, it offered a unique splendor. A musician from Rouen, André Haumesser went from time to time to the gallery of Notre-Dame to hear Vierne. He mixed in with the regulars, and at the instant Vierne was preparing to improvise, one of them said, “Let us listen to the word of Saint Thomas d’Aquin.”

I had the good fortune to often play the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll, admired throughout the world. I remember my first contact which left an indelible feeling. Léonce de Saint-Martin,11 a very distinguished and courteous man, welcomed me one evening after the cathedral closed, allowing me to play the second symphony of Vierne. From the first chord, I was veritably transported in the instant in an ethereal world by this river of sound that flowed under my fingers. The solo stops were ravishing in the following movements up to the sparkling “Final” in which the unique tutti of the instrument seemed indeed to want to explode the shell of the cathedral, as Gavoty wrote. But this prodigious power had nothing of any harshness. Rather, it was part of the incomparable splendor of the organ.

One Sunday of the Holy Trinity, Saint-Martin let me play Dogme, the fourth movement of Méditation sur le Saint-Esprit of Jeanne Demessieux, at the end of vespers. I was happy. This was still at the time of the old [mechanical] console.

Later, I gave Sunday concerts on the new electric console of Jean Herman, which worked very well. It was worthy of the consoles of Beuchet-Debierre. This console permitted me later to record very conveniently the Six Études of Demessieux, which require a perfectly regulated pedalboard.

I had the joy of playing six Sundays, the substitute for Pierre Moreau,¹² a very courageous man, recovering from surgery. I arrived Saturday evening. I had almost three hours. For my pleasure alone, I played the six symphonies of Vierne on the instrument that had inspired them. What an unforgettable emotion. Léon Bloy called the royal Cavaillé-Coll, “The organ of eternity.”

I took advantage of these occasions that came my way, I can say by chance, to play at the closing voluntaries, a finale from the Vierne symphonies for the greatest joy of a group of young musicians gathered around the console.

§

As Pierre Labric approaches his centennial, I am certain my American colleagues join me in wishing Mr. Labric every joy and happiness. He is, after all, one of the last remaining figures to have witnessed the joys, triumphs, trials, and tribulations of the legendary organ class at the Paris Conservatory during the post-war period. His recollections help us approach those years with a far deeper understanding of the legendary names that shaped my generation and beyond. Thanks, Pierre Labric, for sharing your pristine memory and impressions of an era that now seems so very distant to most of us. Most of all, thanks for transmitting the legacy of the legendary Jeanne Demessieux to future generations.

Notes

1. Derived from the traditional French harpsichord and piano “schools” where the fingers do most of the work. Arm weight, and arm movements in general, were not introduced at the conservatory until after World War II, although some French pianists were very aware of (and advocated) arm weight and arm movements before 1946.

2. Visit www.organ.music.unt.edu for a video of Mme Duruflé at the University of North Texas auditorium console filmed in February 1992, playing a segment of the Vierne Naïades and a Handel concerto. Although she never knew or consulted Dorothy Taubman, the core of Mme Duruflé’s virtuosity is derived in large part from the same precepts learned by and passed on through the great technician who was Dorothy Taubman: long fingers moved from the short extensor muscles, and very subtle forearm rotations, up-down movement, in-out movements, and lateral shifting of the arm when required by the music.

3. Lest the reader assume that I have migrated to the almost rabid, anti-Dupré groups prominent in France today, such is not the case. My students perform probably more Dupré works than any other studio in North America. My admiration for Dupré as a virtuoso and composer is unbounded, but from what I have learned from his students and others, he was a bit of a dictator and often poorly advised by members of his entourage. Jeanne Demessieux was not the only artist whose career was almost sabotaged by Marcel Dupré.

4. Lilian Murtagh (1907–1976) originally managed concert organists and others for the LaBerge and Colbert agencies before purchasing the organ division from Henry Colbert and forming her own management for organists in 1962. In 1976, her organization merged with Karen McFarlane to create Murtagh-McFarlane Artists Management. Jeanne Demessieux’s three North American tours (1953, 1955, 1958) were organized by Lilian Murtagh.

5. Underscored by Labric.

6. Underscored by Demessieux.

7. Underscored by Demessieux.

8. Frank Speller (1938–2017), former professor of organ at University of Texas for more than forty years, studied with Jeanne Demessieux in Paris sometime during the 1960s. He was one of the few American organists to study with her.

9. Rollin Smith, “César Franck’s Metronome Marks: From Paris to Brooklyn.” The American Organist, September 2003, 58–60.

10. Aristide Cavaillé-Coll finished his 86-stop masterpiece in 1868, inaugurated March 6 of that year by Franck, Chauvet, Guilmant, Widor, Saint-Saëns, Durand, and Loret. The organ was rebuilt and electrified in the 1960s.

11. Léonce de Saint-Martin (1886–1954) succeeded Louis Vierne as titular organist of Notre-Dame de Paris in 1937.

12. Pierre Moreau (1907–1991) served at Notre-Dame de la Gare, Paris, before his appointment to Saint-Marcel, Paris, 1935–1985, and was Saint-Martin’s suppléant at Notre-Dame. Under Pierre Cochereau, Moreau was promoted organiste adjoint, retiring in 1986. He studied with Charles Tournemire for five years and was awarded a first prize in organ in 1938 at the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles.

Mabel Zehner (photo credit: Ashland University Archives, Ashland, Ohio)

Giving thanks from A to Z, part 2: Moving to Dallas (1970)

During late spring of 1970 I was invited to present my Hugo Distler lecture and a masterclass on his organ music at the University of  Michigan, Ann Arbor. In conversations with the school’s late iconic organ professor Marilyn Mason she tried to dissuade me from accepting the offer from the Meadows School of the Arts of  Southern Methodist University to join its faculty to continue the harpsichord studio begun there by James Tallis who had passed away after only one year at the Dallas school. She warned me that I would be quite unhappy working with the head of the organ department, Robert Anderson, especially since I had been so independent and successful in Norfolk. In reality she was attempting to keep the Dallas position available for her student Allen Shaffer (a talented and delightful person whom I had known when he was studying at Oberlin). However, having worked with several difficult colleagues previously I strode forth into the fray and accepted the Dallas position even though it meant a demotion from my Norfolk full professorship and a huge reduction in salary. As it turned out Allen did extremely well by filling my Norfolk position, where he had fine success and succeeded Grover Oberle as the musician for Christ & St. Luke’s Episcopal Church—a plum position.

I did not have the difficult time with Robert Anderson that Mason had envisioned. We had a mutual respect for each other, and my forty-five years on the faculty of the Meadows School were mostly happy ones (and I did regain that full professorship and tenure, too). Among the early successes in Dallas were the interactions with the soon-to-be stellar harpsichord builder Richard Kingston. I introduced him to my beautiful two-manual harpsichord, commissioned from William Dowd in 1968 and delivered shortly after the dawn of 1969; it was Bill’s penultimate instrument to have foot pedals for changing the stops. This harpsichord served as a major influence for Richard’s instruments. He also benefited from several of the many harpsichord students that swarmed to SMU in those early years, several of whom took part-time jobs at Richard’s Dallas shop. We all benefitted from the generous leadership of the music department head Eugene Bonelli, who was promoted to dean of the Meadows School and somewhat later became CEO of the Dallas Symphony, which also benefitted from his leadership, as did the Dallas organ community, for it was under his guidance that the Meyerson Symphony Center acquired its C. B. Fisk, Inc., organ, Opus 100, and SMU its concert hall organ, Fisk Opus 101, as well as a Dowd double (complete with a Sheridan German soundboard painting) for the harpsichord studio! Guest artists of harpsichord renown included Isolde Ahlgrimm (who taught the harpsichord students during my first sabbatical leave in which I gathered much of the material for my second book, Harpsichord in America—suffering terribly during many visits to Honolulu for multiple  interviews with Momo Aldrich (Wanda Landowska’s first private secretary)—a generous and gracious person who was most worthy of the book’s dedication to her. Another important person who aided the book project was my longtime “older brother that I never had,” Richard Kurth, whom I first met during my father’s ministry in Neffs, Ohio, while we were both still in college. Richard’s career as a language teacher has been spent primarily at the Kamehameha School in Hawaii, and he was always a gracious and most helpful host during my working visits.

Not to be forgotten is the support that Dean Bonelli gave to the harpsichord curriculum through his support for the annual summer workshops that took place at Fort Burgwin, SMU’s New Mexico campus retreat near Ranchos de Taos. Helpful guest faculty members from California included: Neal Roberts and Tony Brazier; from London, Jane Clark and Stephen Dodgson; and closer to home, Susan Ferré and her husband Charles Lang, plus many others. It was during one of these early retreats that I met Dr. Charles Mize, who, with his wife Susan, had a delightful and welcoming summer home in Santa Fe, where they often provided post- or pre-workshop hospitality and other forms of support, as well as generously supporting many other harpsichord-related endeavors. To this list I must add my late partner Clyde Putman, who delivered many harpsichords to New Mexico, tuned them repeatedly as they adapted to the higher altitude, and brought them safely back home to Dallas. Without him I could not have organized and survived these intense (but glorious) summer retreats.

Among the many highlights of these forty-five years was that I gave an SMU faculty recital each fall, usually on the first Monday after Labor Day (an SMU record, I believe)—most often presenting works for both harpsichord and organ. Even more memorable, however, were the Dallas visits by Gustav Leonhardt, with whom I had studied during two of the summer academies that took place in Haarlem, the Netherlands. During the second of these summer events I found lodging in nearby Amsterdam and made the daily trip to Haarlem and back by train. Since it was my second workshop with the maestro we were on quite friendly terms, and would often meet at the train station to travel together to the daily masterclasses.

Having already introduced the Dallas arts community to the marvelous playing of Isolde Ahlgrimm, it was my great pleasure while I was dean of the Dallas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists to engineer a harpsichord recital as part of the chapter’s annual recital series. Leonhardt was the first, and he was my houseguest during several of his visits to “Big D.” Among the many memories from these visits were the rather erotic actions of my female dog Hunda Maris, who welcomed the great artist by trying to hump his leg. A second memory of that first attempt at hospitality came in the form of the thank you note in which “Utti” (as he was known to his close friends) displayed the sharp wit for which he was well known; the missive read, “Thank you for Kirkman and Breakfast,” referring to the fact that his bed was constructed above the 1797 Kirkman fortepiano that was stored in a wooden case below.

Leonhardt’s visit to SMU occurred in the form of a recital and masterclass during the festivities when SMU bestowed on him his first honorary doctorate. As part of my twelve years on the SMU faculty senate I had the opportunity to suggest that GL was a most worthy recipient. The senators and university president agreed, so one of the proudest moments of my life was reading the citation that I had written for the bestowal of the honor at Commencement. And thus it was that Leonhardt henceforward always addressed his missives to his “Doktor-Vater,” perhaps the first time in history that a student was father to the teacher?

Another exceptional artist who graced the AGO concert series was Don Angle, a graduate of Berklee College of Music in Boston and a valued coworker in the shop of William Dowd. In my opinion Don was master of the best harpsichord technique of any American player, and his dexterity, largely in his performances of jazz and very audience-friendly repertoire, was absolutely mesmerizing in its ease and beauty. It was another honor to house such a fine artist as a houseguest on Cromwell Drive. Both Angle and Leonhardt are no longer with us in person, but each has left an unforgettable legacy in their recordings and the ease with which they presented great music each time they were seated at the keyboards.

Graphic artists also have influenced my life, and especially important for my submissions to The Diapason, were the caricatures created so expertly by Jane Johnson. Who could forget her illustrations for “A Letter from J. S. Bach,” or her drawings of Mozart, Purcell, the Harpsichord Murder Mystery Reviews, and even her affectionate drawing “Fast Fingers,” which accompanied several of my columns, as well as providing the graphic for my note pads? I miss her nearly every month when I attempt to find just the right illustration for my submission. She, too, has passed away, but is lovingly remembered, and sorely missed.

Another group of import must be “my” composers. Among the living I especially prize Gerald Near who composed both his impressive Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra and his equally lovely Triptych for Harpsichord for me. The Concerto filled a need for such a work to be featured at an AGO national gathering in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Gerald conducted the premiere in the Minneapolis Orchestra Hall, and the necessity was that it had to be for an instrument other than organ, since that hall did not have a “king of instruments.” He also conducted that first performance heard by 1,600 auditors. I have never before or since felt so loved by an audience that applauded for such an extended ovation. Many of the listeners commented that it was the best of the new works at that AGO event. And, to my knowledge, it was not performed again until SMU’s magnificent student orchestra under the direction of Maestro Paul Phillips (who was a freshman clarinet major at SMU when I arrived there) gave an even better performance of this major addition to the repertoire. Equally composed for a concert celebrating an art exhibition, the Triptych has been an audience favorite during many concerts. When I decided to move the aforementioned summer harpsichord workshops to venues other than the New Mexico home base, one of the places to be selected was in Alsace. The townspeople who attended the first of the concerts there requested a repetition of Near’s work at the festive reception that concluded the summer event.

Equally important are works from Glenn Spring, Rudy Davenport, Neely Bruce, Vincent Persichetti, and others. I refer you to Frances Bedford’s magnum opus Harpsichord and Clavichord Repertoire of the Twentieth Century (page 597).

So, if I do not draw this article to a close it will be next year before we know it! So many influential persons to mention, such as Ivar Lunde (who edited and published Letters from Salzburg when Indiana University Press sent it back to me with the note, “We do not publish memoirs.” Ivar came to the rescue with his Skyline Publications, Eau Claire, and even provided the beautiful photo of Salzburg (where he, too, had studied) for the front cover and even, bless him, created the index, not one of my favorite tasks as I remember from the previous publications. Also, I should remember Alfred Rosenberger, whom I first met in Haarlem, who became the European “manager” who arranged many organ recital dates for me and who shared his love of Amsterdam and Dutch culture freely. Another departed figure is the fondly remembered best friend of early Dallas days, Sue Stidham, who joined forces with me to establish the Limited Editions series of house concerts that is now in its thirty-sixth year! And I should thank the magnificent organist André Marchal, blind from birth, who, during a visit to Oberlin, graciously gave me an organ lesson on early French music and who was able to criticize some of my fingerings simply by listening to the results, and who would correct those fingerings by gently placing his hands over mine. The list could go on and on.

However, I should like to end these words of gratitude with a return to my first organ teacher, Mabel Zehner. As her gift to me when I graduated from Crestline High School, she presented me with a copy of the first edition of The Bach Reader by Hans David and Arthur Mendel (W. W. Norton, 1945). I had not consulted it for many years until recently when I opened the tome to re-read what she had inscribed on the title page: “To Larry Palmer—one of the most gifted organists it has been my privilege to teach. God gave you a wonderful talent and may you use it for a lifetime of Success and Happiness.” Signed: Mabel Zehner, May 17, 1956. While I do not think I deserve her highly complimentary remarks, it reminded me of her great kindness and the joy that I felt when I could please her at my lessons. She was truly an inspiring teacher, and I am grateful that I have lived long enough to share her memory with others. As teachers and human beings it behooves all of us to reflect and give thanks for those who have guided and aided us on our career paths and who have helped us to achieve what we are able to do.

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The photograph of Mabel Zehner is provided courtesy of Ashland University Archives, Ashland, Ohio, and Archivist David Roepke (also an organist, whose mother studied with Miss Zehner). I wish also to give credit and thanks to my SMU colleague and friend Pam Pagels, Music and Arts Librarian at the Hamon Arts Library, for making the connection with Mr. Roepke.