Jean Langlais
Jean Langlais (15 February 1907 – 8 May 1991) was a French composer of modern classical music, organist, and improviser.
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[edit] Biography
Jean Langlais was born in La Fontenelle (Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany), 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 in Paris, where he began to study the organ, with André Marchal. From there, he progressed to the Paris Conservatoire, obtaining prizes in organ, which he studied with Marcel Dupré, composition, which he studied with Paul Dukas. 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 from 1961 to 1976. However, it was as an organist that he made his name, following in the steps of César Franck and Charles Tournemire 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.
[edit] Music
Langlais was a prolific composer, composing 254 works with opus numbers, 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, 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"
[edit] Messe Solennelle
This piece was written after Louis Vierne'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[1].
[edit] Bibliography
- Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music, by Ann Labounsky, Amadeus Press, 2000. ISBN 1-57467-054-9
- Ombre et Lumière : Jean Langlais 1907-1991, by Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais, Paris: Éditions Combre, 1995. ISBN 2-9506073-2-2
[edit] References
- ^ Personal conversation with Dr Indra Hughes, then Director of Music at Auckland Cathedral of the Holy Trinity
