Jehan-Aristide Alain

Jehan-Aristide Alain (1911–1940) was a French organist, and composer. Born in Paris, into a family of musicians, he attended the Paris Conservatoire between 1927 and 1939, where he studied the organ with Marcel Dupré, under whose direction he took first prize for Organ and Improvisation in 1939. His studies in composition with Paul Dukas and Jean Roger-Ducasse won him the Prix des amis de l'orgue in 1936 for his Suite for Organ, Op. 48: Introduction, Variations, Scherzo and Choral. He was appointed organist of Eglise Saint-Nicolas de Maisons-Laffitte in Paris in 1935, and remained there for four years. His short career as a composer began in 1929, when Alain was 18, and lasted until the outbreak of the Second World War 10 years later. His music was influenced not only by the musical language of the earlier Claude Debussy and his own contemporary Olivier Messiaen, but also by an interest in the music, dance and philosophies of the far east, a renaissance of baroque music, and in jazz. He wrote choral music, including a Requiem Mass, chamber music, songs and three volumes of piano music. But it is his organ music for which he is best known. His most famous work is Litanies, composed in 1937. Alain became a dispatch rider in the Eighth Motorised Armour Division of the French Army; he took part in the Battle of Saumur, in which he was killed. He was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre for his bravery.