Rolande Falcinelli Explained

Rolande Roberte Ginabat-Falcinelli (18 February 1920 – 11 June 2006) was a French organist, pianist, composer, and music educator.

Biography

Rolande Falcinelli (born Ginabat), the grandniece of Marcel Falcinelli and granddaughter of Louis Napoléon Falcinelli (both painters), was born in Paris and entered the Conservatoire de Paris 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). She was the favourite student of the In 1942, she received the second Grand Prix de Rome in composition.

From 1946 to 1973, she was titular organist at Sacré-Cœur in Paris. She was succeeded by her student Daniel Roth. Additionally, she taught organ at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau from 1948 to 1955, and at the École Normale de Musique in Paris from 1948 to 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, such as Patrice Caire, Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin, Francis Chapelet, Maurice Clerc, Xavier Darasse, Yves Devernay, Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet, Pierre Gazin, Naji Hakim, André Isoir, Philippe Lefebvre, Jean-Pierre Leguay, Odile Pierre, Pierre Pincemaille, Louis Robilliard, Daniel Roth, and Louis Thiry.

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, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department of France. From her marriage with Felix Ludwig Otto, a producer from Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg, Germany, she had a daughter, Sylviane (born 1956), a musicologist.

Compositions

Organ solo

Organ with other instruments or voice

Piano solo

Chamber music

Piano and orchestra

Songs

Choral works

Voice and orchestra

Symphonic Orchestra

Ballet

Transcriptions for organ solo

Pedagogical works

Selected discography

Bibliography

External links