Eulogy for Marie-Louise Audouin, given after the Requiem in St. Joseph’s, Uitenhage, by Susan Shields, on April 12, 2018. In 1970 I went to Paris to study piano and to live at the Cite Universitaire – the campus for foreign graduate students. Because of a very providential mistake on my part, I arrived in September, when actually their school year began in October. And “someone – else” still had what I thought was “my” room! That someone else was Marie-Louise. I was duly given another room for the month and was advised to go and meet Marie-Louise. I knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said. As I opened the door, the draft caused the window to fly open. “Well, don’t just stand there. Either come in or go out.” I chose to come in. and thus began our many years of friendship. After Marie had finished at the Teachers’ Training College in Grahamstown, she taught primary school in Uitenhage, Port Elizabeth, and Johannesburg, while obtaining her various piano licentiates. Then, in order to improve her playing further, she went to Paris to study with Mme. Sophie Svirsky, a Russian emigree. Mme. Svirsky had been a student of Annette Esipoff, the teacher of so many great pianists at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, before the Russian Revolution. After the revolution, Mme. Svirsky was one of those who managed to escape, and during her years in Paris, passed on a tradition of playing with a very clear tone and in long phrases. Marie, with her analytical mind, studied what Mme. Svirsky showed her and figured out exactly how this technique could be reproduced. In prior years, Marie had studied in Uitenhage with May Harper who taught according to the French piano tradition. It was from May that Marie learned the secret of keeping the music moving forward. And so, Marie’s own playing was a happy combination of the two schools of piano playing. But it was not the technique that made Marie’s music special. Sometimes – not always – but when she really felt like playing, her music had a special radiance that seemed to open up a crack to heaven. She could be playing a Brahms Intermezzo on a mediocre rental piano in her fifth-floor room in Paris, and it sounded more beautiful than anything played in the concert halls. At the end of her life, with fingers so crippled with arthritis that it was a miracle that she played at all, she could be playing Chopin on her ancient upright piano, and her music still sounded like pure gold. God truly gave Marie this very unique gift that I’ve never heard from anyone else, no matter how musically or brilliantly they played. After her years in Paris, Marie gave concerts all around the Eastern Cape and started a music school. Many of you know Aunty Marie as teacher who was able to impart successfully to students what she herself had learned. This talent is actually quite rare among musicians. For years, she had an incredible percussion band that gave her piano students a chance to work together in an ensemble. Scattered all over South Africa and around the world are her former piano students who learned to play beautifully, thanks to Aunty Marie. In her last ten years, she recorded for home-made CD’s so that she could share her playing with her friends. It was really a privilege and a blessing to know someone to whom God gave such special gifts and who shared them so generously with anyone ready to listen or to learn. Despite her increasingly poor health, Marie continued her teaching with the same level of commitment and devotion, semester after semester. And in fact, the Christmas concert of 2017, by all reports, was the “best-ever.”