Rolande Falcinelli

Rolande Falcinelli (18 February 1920 – 11 June 2006) was a French organist, pianist, composer, and pedagogue.

Rolande Falcinelli entered the Paris Conservatory in 1932, where her teachers were noted pianist and pedagogue Isidor Philipp and Abel Estyle (piano), Marcel Samuel-Rousseau (harmony), Simone Plé Caussade (counterpoint), Henri Büsser (composition), and Marcel Dupré (organ and improvisation). In 1942, she received the second Grand Prix de Rome in composition. From 1946-1973, she was titular organist at Sacré-Coeur in Paris. Additionally, she taught organ at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau from 1948–1955, and at the École Normale de Musique in Paris from 1948–1955.

In 1948, at Salle Pleyel in Paris, Rolande Falcinelli performed from memory the (then) complete organ works of Marcel Dupré, whose music was in the center of her interests throughout her career as a performer and teacher. In 1955, she succeeded Dupré as professor of organ and improvisation at the Paris Conservatory, where she taught until 1987. Among her numerous students were many brilliant organists of our time, such as Odile Pierre, Pierre Gazin, Xavier Darasse, Louis Thiry, Yves Devernay, Francis Chapelet, André Isoir, Daniel Roth, Jean-Pierre Leguay, Sophie-Veronique Cauchefer-Choplin, Louis Robillard, Philippe Lefèbvre, Maurice Clerc, Patrice Caire, Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet, and Naji Hakim.

In addition to her numerous organ compositions, she wrote works for piano, harpsichord, solo instruments, orchestra, choir and songs. She also made numerous recordings, including several LPs with compositions of Marcel Dupré at the Auditorium Marcel Dupré in Meudon.

Rolande Falcinelli died on 11 June 2006, at age 86, in Pau, France. From her marriage with Felix Otto, a producer from Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg, Germany, she had a daughter, Sylviane (b. 1956), a French musicologist.

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