Trois Danses pour Orgue - Jehan Alain, JA 120, AWV 119

Trois Danses, Joies - Deuils (7:58) - Luttes (20:27) (Three Dances, Joys - Sorrows - Struggles) Jehan Alain told several people that he thought Trois Danses was his most important work. By this he probably meant the score that he was preparing for full orchestra while involved in fighting the German invasion in Northern France. In its early stages (January 1939), a ‘short’ score had been produced for organ and double string quintet as; ‘the orchestration is not yet finished’. He had begun to recopy 'Trois Danses' for orchestra in early February 1940. On the 7th February 1940, Jehan wrote to his wife Madeleine from the front: "I am currently busy writing out the 'Trois Danses pour orchestre'. Since copying always bores me, particularly when there are forty pages (I have only a single exemplar), I am simultaneously making a version for concert organ. It will be a comfortable [sic] virtuoso piece." The work required handwriting around 40 pages of orchestral score, a process which he found ‘tedious’. The organ transcription was a pleasant distraction and by-product of this process. We know that the organ manuscript was finished and posted off to Noëlie Pierront on May 1st but we will never know how far he had got with the orchestration. Noëlie Pierront, played the premiere of the triptych in the year after the death of Alain on 23 March 1941 in the Parisian church of Saint-Germain des Prés at a memorial service given by a small group of friends. The composer never heard his most important work in its entirety... The music track for this video was played and recorded by Robert Fielding using the digitally recorded Walker organ in Blackburn Cathedral, Lancashire UK, made by Llannerch Organs for Hauptwerk software. 'Takes' were assembled using Cubase Elements 10 and the video was assembled using Shotcut. I have very much depended on the work of Helga Schauerte-Maubouet in her book ‘Jehan Alain - Understanding His Musical Genius’ for piecing together the information about 'Trois Danses'. This is an indispensable work for anyone interested in the music of Jehan Alain. The translation into English is by Carolyn Shuster Fournier and Connie Glessner. I have also used information from the new Bärenreiter Edition of the Alain organ works (edited by Schauerte-Maubouet) and Marie-Claire Alain’s ‘Critical Notes’. I have used the Leduc/Marie-Claire Alain edition to play from. LINKS Jehan Alain, Understanding His Musical Genius (editions-delatour.com) https://www.editions-delatour.com/gb/... Critical Notes on the Organ Works of Jehan Alain https://chimesmusic.com/books/analysi... Alain, Jehan - Bärenreiter Verlag https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/shop/... Youtube link to a recording of Alain's 'Prière pour nous autres charnels' (Péguy text used in video at c.19:40):    • Prière pour nous autres charnels pour téno...   The photograph of the Abbaye Saint-Germain-des-Prés is by Innen Langhaus West. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...