Deuxième Fantaisie, AWV 91 (1936)

Jehan Alain (1911-1940) is one of the most fascinating figures in French organ music of the first half of the 20th century. Like his contemporary Olivier Messiaen, he syncretically combines different influences and styles in his music (impressionism, neoclassicism, exoticism, jazz) and thus achieves a peculiarly dazzling tonal language of great originality.

To me he seems less systematic than Messiaen, but like Messiaen he is driven by an ingenious intuition, and one wonders what paths he would have opened up for the music of the 20th century if he had not died far too early on the battlefield in the Second World War.

His Deuxième Fantaisie, composed in 1936, impressed me the very first time I heard it: In a three-part arch form, he develops three contrasting but subcutaneously related musical ideas, which are introduced in the calm opening section: a melancholy melody slowly swaying in 6/8 time, a darkly intense, chorale-like chordal theme and an oriental-sounding recitative. In the nervously flickering middle section, these themes are developed to a breathtaking climax before the final section returns to the meditative calm of the beginning.

Alain's musical language often seems improvisatory; nevertheless, his rhythmic organisation, for example, is quite refined despite all the freedom - many of the seemingly irrational nuances emerge just when one tries to realise the musical text as precisely as possible. Equally interesting is his handling of harmony and timbre, which often leads to beats, interferences and combination tones that lend his tonal or modal music a peculiar iridescence.