Jehan Alain's Trois Danses (Three Dances) for organ are most prominent among the ill-fated composer's 120 works. Alain undertook the Three Dances as piano pieces in 1937 and scored them out fully for organ in 1939. In 1940 he began an orchestration of this set, and he attempted to continue the work even though he was mobilized into the French army. However, the manuscript pages were sucked out of the window of a moving train into an open field as Alain moved toward his final engagement in battle. An attempt was made after his death to recover the manuscript, but none of it was found even though children in the countryside recalled that they had played with the "funny pages that came with the rain." Composer Raymond Gallois-Montbrun subsequently completed an orchestration, but it is primarily as an organ piece that the Three Dances are known.

The opening movement, "Joies" (Joys), begins with a nebulous rising figure that subsequently becomes the basis for all transitional material in the work. Most of "Joies" is centered on a nervous, insistent figuration in 7/8 time, and this pattern goes through a number of transformations. Before the big climax near the end of the piece, there is an amazing section in which Alain pits an uneven rhythmic figure in the middle of the organ's range against some very rapid patterns in higher registers, played pianissimo. Fans of metal and gothic rock music, take note—there is something for you here.

The middle movement, "Deuils" (Mourning), is a piece that expresses deep grief, and it may have some connection with Alain's loss of his younger sister Odile in a mountain-climbing accident. It begins slowly and mysteriously, and about midway through there is a section based on an ostinato pattern in 6/8, subjected to novel variations. This settles down to a quiet, somber solo melody by the conclusion of the movement.

Finally, in "Luttes" (Struggles), Alain reprises much of the rhythmic character of "Joies." While the overall texture is brighter in color, it is also more aggravated in content, indeed indicative of "struggle" without clear resolution of the conflict by the work's close.

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