12 Facts About Jehan Alain

Jehan-Aristide Paul Alain was a French organist, composer, and soldier.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, 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.

Jehan Alain was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the western suburbs of Paris, into a family of musicians.

Jehan Alain's father, Albert Alain was an organist, composer and amateur organ builder who had studied with Alexandre Guilmant and Louis Vierne.

Jehan Alain studied the organ with Marcel Dupre, under whose direction he took first prize for Organ and Improvisation in 1939.

Jehan Alain was appointed organist of Eglise Saint-Nicolas de Maisons-Laffitte in Paris in 1935, and remained there for four years.

Jehan Alain described Le jardin suspendu as a portrayal of "the ideal, perpetual pursuit and escape of the artist, an inaccessible and inviolable refuge".

Jehan Alain wrote choral music, including a Requiem Mass, chamber music, songs and three volumes of piano music.

Always interested in mechanics, Jehan Alain was a skilled motorcyclist and became a dispatch rider in the Eighth Motorised Armour Division of the French Army.

Jehan Alain was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre for his bravery, and was provisionally buried at the place where he had died.

Jehan Alain left behind his wife, Madeleine Payan, whom he had married in 1935, his three children Denis, Agnes, and Lise, and a body of compositions viewed by many to have been amongst the most original of the 20th century.

The JA Catalogue, drawn by Marie-Claire Alain in 2001, uses partially numbers which Jehan Alain had formerly used to better classify his manuscripts.