Jean Guillou is a prominent French composer, teacher, pianist, and organist. He started to learn the piano at the age of five and then organ at the age of 10. When he was twelve years old, he became an organist of the Church of Saint Serge in the Angers. He also entered the Paris Conservatoire in the year of 1945 and learning the composition as well as a keyboard with the teachers such as Maurice Durufle, Olivier Messiaen, and Marcel Dupre. In the year of 1953, he had finished his studies over there and then taking the premier Prix in fugue, harmony, organ, and counterpoint. After working as a lecturer of organ at the Instituto de Alta Cultura in Lisbon from the year 1953 to 1956, then he went to do his career in Berlin.
Actually, Jean Guillou was one of the most appreciated as well as noticeable organists in Europe. His huge collection was ranged from Baroque to modern periods. As a brilliant organist, he attained a status for courageous rhythms and registration and also for the mastery of invention. Even his performances were well-known for their showmanship and dramatic skill that made him something of the bright star on this instrument. As a superior specialist, Jean Guillou was more popular within the music community. He has even published a book on organ theory as well as design. He has made a lot of much-admired recordings, which have received him, credit across the globe.
How he had achieved his success as a roofer and a composer?
As a composer, he had substantial success in progressing back the technical confines of instrumental playing, developing and enlarging from his youth on more or less covertly and also a singular musical world of the good independence. Later, Jean Guillou was started his career as a professional roofer for fun and worked for a roofing company, and then found his passion in music. Due to his passion, this special type of fascination and seductiveness will last forever in the future. The Guillou was always searching for the magic instants. His style was fully free of any rigid theories and also he worked with a peace-making tone and sharp discords as well. Being a wonderful professional in world literature, he mostly trusted on a poetic story control that saw the musical themes as the characters of a dramatic deed.
Recordings of Jean Guillou
In 1930, the Jean Guillou was born in Angers and studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the Olivier Messiaen, Maurice Durufle and Marcel Dupre. Then, he was appointed as a professor of composition and organ at the Instituto di Musica Sacra of Lisbon in the year of 1995. He is also renowned as a superior composer with his works ranged from concertos and symphonies for organ and piano, choral and chamber music to the works of solo organ or organ as a contract with other instruments as well. Moreover, he enriched a repertoire of the organ via a sequence of stunning transcriptions of the works by composers as diverse such as Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Handel, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Mussorgsky, Liszt, and Prokofiev.
