Charles-Marie Widor

His mother was of Italian ancestry, and his paternal grandfather was an organ builder of Hungarian descent; his father was both an organ builder and performer who gave Widor his first lessons. The boy showed great ability and at the age of 11 became the organist at the lycée in Lyons. Upon the recommendation of Cavaillé-Coll, Widor went to Brussels, where he studied composition with Fétis and the organ with J.-N. Lemmens. Lemmens, who was the most recent member of a line of teachers connected directly to Bach, taught him traditional German interpretations of Bach to which he remained loyal for the rest of his life. He played the organ at St François in Lyons from 1860 and performed frequently in the provinces until 1870, when he was given a provisional one-year appointment succeeding Louis Lefebure-Wély at St Sulpice in Paris; there he remained for 64 years. In the 1870s he produced numerous compositions in various genres, and in 1880 his first stage work, the ballet La korrigane, was successfully produced at the Paris Opéra. At about the same time he became a music critic for the daily L’estafette, signing his articles with the pen name ‘Aulétès’. He also conducted the Concordia, a choral society which specialized in oratorios. On the death of Franck in 1890, Widor became professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire; six years later, when Théodore Dubois assumed direction of the Conservatoire, Widor replaced him as professor of composition. He was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1910 and became the permanent secretary four years later. During World War I he used his numerous contacts to obtain money for artists who had suffered misfortunes. In 1916 he introduced the idea of founding the Casa Vélazquez, a counterpart to the Villa Medicis, at which French artists could study Spanish culture. This project came to fruition at Madrid but the building was apparently destroyed in the 1930s. Widor continued to perform regularly until the age of 90; he was succeeded at St Sulpice by Marcel Dupré.