Memoirs

The AGO is pleased to provide a link to the digital publication of the selected memoirs of Charles Tournemire in English, edited by Marie-Louise Langlais, translated by Susan Landale.

“In 2014, I edited the French long version of Tournemire’s Memoirs, but I then had the idea that an English translation of this text, limited to material relating to music and the world of the organ and organists, would be useful and welcomed. This is that work.” –Marie-Louise Langlais.

Read Memoirs by Charles Tournemire.

Paris, Monday July 27, 2020
TO : American Guild of Organists
James Thomashower, Executive Director
Bill Valentine, Director of Information, Technology and Digital Communications

Dear Sirs,

My sincere thanks to the AGO, this great association that provides constant
support to organists and the organ world. It has enabled The Memoirs of Charles
Tournemire to appear here on the internet, for free, in my edited version,
translated into English.

One can thus get an idea of the way that Tournemire viewed his own work, his
personal life, his contemporaries, and the historical period in which he lived. This
great composer, who was born 150 years ago and who died tragically at the
beginning of World War II, was one of the major figures of the 1930s, a
particularly rich period in the history of the organ in France, a period whose
importance and influence have never dimmed.

The date of this publication of Charles Tournemire Memoirs coincides with that
of an important Conference in honor of Vierne and Tournemire, scheduled for
presentation at The Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, MD, but unfortunately postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Marie-Louise Langlais, Ph.D.