Music for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
Litanies – Jehan Alain (1911-1940)
Jehan Alain was a near contemporary of the great composer and organist Olivier Messiaen, possibly rivalling his vision and genius, but Alain’s life was cut short when he was killed in action at the age of 29, just five days before France withdrew from World War II. He had received his first organ lessons from his father and then progressed to the Paris Conservatoire. He became a brilliant keyboard player and a compulsive composer, who saw music as revelatory of states of the soul, and who was drawn to music’s power to create a sense of mystery rather than express emotions.
Jehan Alain’s most famous work is the organ piece Litanies, this Sunday’s postlude in church. The plainsong phrase which opens the music is repeated continually, propelled by a locomotive rhythm to an ecstatic climax. Alain once wrote about how to play Litanies: ‘You must create an impression of passionate incantation. Prayer is not a lament but a devastating tornado, flattening everything in its way. It is also an obsession. You must fill men’s ears with it, and God’s ears too! If you get to the end without feeling exhausted you have neither understood [Litanies] nor played it as I would want it.’ Jehan’s sister Marie-Claire was a life-long champion of his music; I had the privilege of hearing her play Litanies in recital many years ago. In keeping with the composer’s own comments about the piece, his sister related – much to the relief of the organists in attendance – that her brother was more intent on the intense effect of the very fast crashing chords near the end than on complete accuracy.
The score itself is headed with a quotation which can be related to the death of another of Alain’s sisters in 1937, the year in which it was written: ‘When the Christian soul is in distress and cannot find any fresh words to implore God’s mercy, it repeats the same prayer unceasingly with overwhelming faith. The limit of reason is past. It is faith alone which propels its ascent.’
Gerald Harder