Marie-Claire Alain

Marie-Claire Alain was the youngest child in a family of distinguished musicians, born August 10, 1926, in St. Germain-en Laye, a Paris suburb. Her father, Albert Alain, a composer and amateur organ builder, had been a pupil of <a href="spotify:artist:6emD64QGKpOHsYaiPuhWf1">Guilmant</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:2gClsBep1tt1rv1CN210SO">Fauré</a>. Her sister Odile was a promising soprano and pianist who lost her life early in a mountaineering accident; her older brother, Olivier, was a composer, pianist, and musicologist. Her oldest brother was the renowned <a href="spotify:artist:0AFbebB7EpLm1qzqBRwyWt">Jehan Alain</a>, a composer and organist whose teachers included <a href="spotify:artist:1wyuV2UwDaVUPcvuC8YG68">Dupré</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:3KpcdlqCaWWruPfmM2rWy1">Dukas</a>, and Jean Roger-Ducasse. He numbered <a href="spotify:artist:6CS9O2pE67oq44GZuBEBuD">Messiaen</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:4IAWVxo2fpTBPn6k7GZ3eY">Poulenc</a> among his closest friends and his works for organ -- Litanies, in particular -- established him as one of the brightest stars among rising French composers in the decade before his battlefield death in 1940, at 29. A twin sense of loss and inheritance informed her studies and career.

With the allied liberation of Paris in August 1944, she entered the Paris Conservatoire, studying with <a href="spotify:artist:1wyuV2UwDaVUPcvuC8YG68">Dupré</a> for organ, Pié-Caussade for counterpoint and fugue, and <a href="spotify:artist:7Fph7U6qidZ2E97xKKsD4m">Maurice Duruflé</a> for harmony. <a href="spotify:artist:7Fph7U6qidZ2E97xKKsD4m">Duruflé</a> composed one of the finest of his small but masterly group of organ works as an hommage to Marie-Claire's brother, the Prélude et fugue sur le nom d'Alain, Op. 7 (1942). She studied with <a href="spotify:artist:7Fph7U6qidZ2E97xKKsD4m">Duruflé</a> from 1944 until 1950, schoolwork being augmented by private lessons. During her Conservatoire years, she carried off four Premier Prix. After the inauguration of her career in 1950, she took a prize for organ at the Geneva International Competition and gave her first public recital. The Amis de Orgue awarded her the <a href="spotify:artist:5aIqB5nVVvmFsvSdExz408">Bach</a> Prize in 1951. After a further two years of study with <a href="spotify:artist:1A1BQdzh8Bw8g0S4BtgSyl">Gaston Litaize</a>, she took up her career in earnest, giving well over 2000 recitals worldwide. Her recordings number in the hundreds, and she thrice recorded the complete organ works of <a href="spotify:artist:5aIqB5nVVvmFsvSdExz408">Bach</a>. By the 1980s, she had become known as a specialist in 17th and 18th century music, with numerous recordings of works by <a href="spotify:artist:4kVLtXuKJTE7SgYd2sQtaL">Couperin</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:6yi6O1O0DZ6X4ejbvumTaT">Grigny</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:35eG5pVUcUcmYLmWBlNTpN">Daquin</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2QOIawHpSlOwXDvSqQ9YJR">Vivaldi</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2YfFYZnshSzgfLsKZMM4VL">Buxtehude</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:62TD7509VQIxUe4WpwO0s3">Pachelbel</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1QL7yTHrdahRMpvNtn6rI2">Handel</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:3meioy7GWDwpwmjv2LPyAb">C.P.E. Bach</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:656RXuyw7CE0dtjdPgjJV6">Haydn</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:4NJhFmfw43RLBLjQvxDuRS">Mozart</a> -- among many others -- to her credit. But she also made distinguished recordings of Romantic repertoire with albums of works by <a href="spotify:artist:6MF58APd3YV72Ln2eVg710">Mendelssohn</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1C3sffOOvQNUwg4YIsvKqy">César Franck</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:1385hLNbrnbCJGokfH2ac2">Liszt</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:6wgviqppMkEUf4p2WJ2uVa">Widor</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:5s5DbmkHjHiMe5rlFdUMGL">Vierne</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:4IAWVxo2fpTBPn6k7GZ3eY">Poulenc</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:0AFbebB7EpLm1qzqBRwyWt">Jehan Alain</a> -- whose punctilious execution is suffused with passion -- carrying into the 21st century living traditions extending to the middle of the 19th. She was also much in demand as a teacher.