Rolande Falcinelli

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). 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 impro