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 Jean Langlais was born in La Fontenelle (Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany), a small village near Mont St Michel, France. Langlais became blind 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. From there, he progressed to the Paris Conservatoire, obtaining prizes in organ, which he studied with Marcel Duprй, composition, which he studied with Paul Dukas, and improvisation, which he studied with Andrй Marchal.
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 Cйsar Franck and Charles Tournemire as Organist Titulaire at the Basilica of Sainte Clotilde in Paris in 1945, a post in which he remained until 1987. 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, for many years living with both his first wife and his mistress (later to become his second wife), and fathering a child at the age of 73.
Langlais died in Paris aged 84, and was survived by his second wife Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais.
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.
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 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 and countryman Olivier Messiaen. His best-known works include his four-part masses, Messe Solenelle, Missa Orbis Factor and Missa Salve Regina, and his Mouvement perpйtuel for piano.
His other acclaimed compositions include:
* Hymne d’Actions de Grвces from Three Gregorian Paraphrases
* La Nativitй
* Chant Hйroпque, Chant de paix, and De profundis from Nine Pieces
* Kyrie from Orbis factor
* Les Rameaux (The Palms)
* Incantation pour un Jour Saint (Incantation for Easter)
* Suite Breve
* Suite Medievale
* Trois Mйditations sur la Sainte Trinitй
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