One of Alain's seminal organ works, Le jardin suspendu (The Hanging Garden) is a feat of cross-cultural legerdemain. Ostensibly a dreamy evocation of Babylon and the 1,001 Nights, the piece is built upon a great structure of the European Baroque: the chaconne. Slow, soft, and remote, the work begins its four-bar ostinato not in the bass as expected, but in a very high register. (In keeping with the image of a suspended garden, no truly low notes tether the composition to the Earth.) Part of the melody seems a slow-motion version of "All the girls in France do the hoochie-coochie dance," although this may simply be an unfortunate coincidence. The music varies little during its several repetitions, except for a thicker, more animated section just past the midpoint. Before long, the piece reverts to its opening mood: mysterious, exotic, hypnotic.

© James Reel, All Music Guide