Jean Langlais
Encyclopedia
Jean Langlais was a French composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 of modern classical music, organist
Organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...

, and improviser.

Biography

Jean Langlais was born in La Fontenelle
La Fontenelle, Ille-et-Vilaine
La Fontenelle is a commune in the Ille-et-Vilaine department in Bretagne in north-western France.-Demographics:Inhabitants of La Fontenelle are called Fontenellois.-References:* ;* -External links:*...

 (Ille-et-Vilaine
Ille-et-Vilaine
Ille-et-Vilaine is a department of France, located in the region of Brittany in the northwest of the country.- History :Ille-et-Vilaine is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

, Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

), a small village near Mont St Michel, France. Langlais became blind due to glaucoma when he was only two years old, and was sent to study at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles
Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles
Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles, , in Paris, was the first special school for blind students in the world, and served as a model for many subsequent schools for blind students.-History:The INJA was created in 1784 by Valentin Haüy.It was not until the late 18th century that society began to...

 in Paris, where he began to study the organ, with André Marchal
André Marchal
André Marchal was a French organist and organ teacher. He was one of the great initiators of the twentieth-century organ revival in France.Marchal was born blind...

. From there, he progressed to the Paris Conservatoire, obtaining prizes in organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...

, which he studied with Marcel Dupré
Marcel Dupré
Marcel Dupré , was a French organist, pianist, composer, and pedagogue.-Biography:Marcel Dupré was born in Rouen . Born into a musical family, he was a child prodigy. His father Albert Dupré was organist in Rouen and a friend of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who built an organ in the family house when...

, composition
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...

, which he studied with Paul Dukas
Paul Dukas
Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...

. He studied also gregorian improvisation with Charles Tournemire.

After graduating, he returned to the National Institute for the Young Blind to teach, and also taught at the Schola Cantorum
Schola Cantorum
The Schola Cantorum de Paris is a private music school in Paris. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d'Indy as a counterbalance to the Paris Conservatoire's emphasis on opera...

 from 1961 to 1976. However, it was as an organist that he made his name, following in the steps of César Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....

 and Charles Tournemire
Charles Tournemire
Charles Tournemire was a French composer and organist, notable partly for his improvisations, which were often rooted in the music of Gregorian chant...

 as Organist Titulaire at the Basilique de Ste-Clotilde, Paris in 1945, a post in which he remained until 1988. He was much in demand as a concert organist, and toured widely across Europe and the United States.

Outside music, Langlais was a colorful and charismatic character. He died in Paris aged 84, and was survived by his second wife Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais and three children, Janine, Claude and Caroline.

To celebrate the contributions of this prominent twentieth-century artist on the centenary of his birth, an English-language DVD, Life and Music of Jean Langlais, was released in 2007 by the Los Angeles chapter of the American Guild of Organists
American Guild of Organists
The American Guild of Organists, or AGO, is a national organization of academic, church, and concert organists in the U.S., headquartered in The Interchurch Center in New York City. It was founded in 1896 as both an educational and service organization...

.

Music

Langlais was a prolific composer, composing 254 works with opus number
Opus number
An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

s, the first of which was his Prelude and Fugue for organ (1927), and the last his Trio (1990), another organ piece. Although best known as a composer of organ music and sacred choral music, he also composed a number of instrumental, orchestral and chamber works and some secular song settings.

Langlais's music is written in a late, free tonal style, representative of mid-twentieth-century French music, with rich and complex harmonies and overlapping modes, more tonal than his contemporary, friend and countryman Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

, but related to his two predecessors at Sainte-Clotilde, Cesar Franck and Charles Tournemire.
His best-known works include his four-part masses, Messe solennelle, and Missa Salve Regina,his "Mass in simplicitate" for unison voice and organ and his many organ compositions, including :
  • Hymne d’actions de grâces from Three Gregorian Paraphrases
  • La nativité and Les rameaux (The Palms)(Poemes Evangeliques)
  • Chant héroïque, Chant de paix, and De profundis from Nine Pieces
  • Kyrie "Orbis factor" from Livre œcuménique
    • Incantation pour un jour saint (Incantation for Easter)
  • Suite brève
  • Suite médiévale
  • " Folkloric Suite"
  • Trois méditations sur la Sainte Trinité
  • Fête , Op. 51
  • "24 Pieces for harmonium or organ, Op. 6
  • " Organ Book"

Messe Solennelle

This piece was written after Louis Vierne
Louis Vierne
Louis Victor Jules Vierne was a French organist and composer.-Life:Louis Vierne was born in Poitiers, Vienne, nearly blind due to congenital cataracts, but at an early age was discovered to have an unusual gift for music. Louis Victor Jules Vierne (8 October 1870 – 2 June 1937) was a French...

's piece of the same name. Louis Vierne was a contemporary of Langlais in Paris and the two had quite a rivalry. Vierne's Messe solennelle was well received so Langlais felt it necessary to write a competing version.

This piece is also known for its unwritten high C for the treble part. This occurs in the Hosannas at the end of the Sanctus and Benedictus movements. The choir does a C-major arpeggio with the various voices breaking early to make the full chord. As written, the trebles finish on a high F. However, during initial rehearsals, a treble went up the C. Langlais liked to so much that he kept it and choirs since have repeated this.

External links

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