Born to a family of musicians in 1911—his sister is the renowned organist Marie-Claire Alain—the precocious Jehan Alain was forging a pungently distinctive personal style from the musical upheavals of the young century while still a student at the Paris Conservatoire, with Dupré for organ and the skeptical Dukas for composition. Among his contemporaries—Messiaen, Daniel-Lesur, Poulenc, Duruflé—he was recognized as a peer. While still taking classes, his skirling, jazzy Litanies (1937) achieved fame with organists around the world. Mobilized in August 1939, he fought in Flanders, participated in the evacuation of Dunkirk, and was killed in action near Saumur in 1940, aged 29, leaving behind some 127 works.

Duruflé's Prélude et fugue sur le nom d'Alain, Op. 7 is an homage to his fallen friend, composed in 1942. By manipulating the alphabet around those letters with musical significance, Duruflé finds an equivalent for Alain in the notes ADAAF, which yield a syncopated theme picked out against the Prélude's flickering scherzo, thrice interrupted by a plangently descending quoted from Litanies. Its slowing last announcement ends the Prélude and leads directly to the attractive fugal subject, which undergoes a regular exposition. The development suggests a radiant smile before the scherzo returns, contrapuntally worked to a brilliant climax of great power.



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