Xavier Darasse, born on September 3, 1934, in Toulouse, France, was a French organist and composer whose early training at the Conservatoire national de musique de Paris under Maurice Duruflé, Rolande Falcinelli, Jean Rivier, and Olivier Messiaen laid the foundation for a versatile career. After a career‑ending accident in 1976, he devoted himself to teaching and composition, producing works such as Organum I (1970) and Pedal‑Exercitium (1988). He was appointed director of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris in 1991, and he died of cancer on November 24, 1992, leaving an unfinished opera adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
