Claude Delvincourt

Claude Étienne Edmond Marie Pierre Delvincourt (12 January 1888 – 5 April 1954) was a French pianist and composer of classical music. Biography Delvincourt was born in Paris, the son of Pierre Delvincourt and Marguerite Fourès. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, first under Léon Boëllmann, then under the centenarian Henri Büsser. Also, he was taught counterpoint and fugue by Georges Caussade and composition by Charles-Marie Widor. A Prix de Rome winner in 1911 and again in 1913 (on the latter occasion he shared the award with Lili Boulanger), he was appointed Director of Conservatoire at Versailles in 1932 and Director of the Paris Conservatoire in 1940, following the resignation of Henri Rabaud. During the German occupation of France, Delvincourt was forced to apply the racial laws of the Vichy government to the Paris Conservatoire, excluding Jewish professors and students. But he managed, with the help of his former teacher’s niece Marie-Louise Boëllmann, to prevent numerous students from being compelled to join the STO (law of 16 February 1943). He gathered the young musicians in the Orchestre des Cadets du Conservatoire and convinced the German authorities that they were