Marcel Dupré, a native of Rouen and, except for the war years, an almost annual visitor to London from 1920, was one of the world’s best-known organists. His teachers were Alexandre Guilmant (1837–1911) and Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937), whom he succeeded in 1934 as Organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, nearly thirty years after first becoming his assistant there. From 1926 to 1954 he was Organ Professor at the Paris Conservatoire, and its Director from 1954 to 1956. But Dupré was more than a widely travelled virtuoso organist and distinguished teacher; he was also an important twentieth-century composer for his instrument. His master, Widor, had set a model for a concert-style of writing for the organ in his ten organ symphonies. Dupré and his contemporaries developed this style in organ symphonies of their own, and in later years Dupré carried it further in symphonic poems and suites as well as separate pieces.