Jehan Alain was regarded as one of the most talented young composers of the 1930s. That promise was ended when he fell in the early days of the German invasion of France in 1940, at the defense of Saumur. After the war, his sister, the famous organist Marie-Claire Alain, helped keep his memory alive by championing his organ music. Towards the end of the twentieth century, when composers who did not adopt the serial method of composition stopped being treated as irrelevant side issues in music history, Alain (1911-1940) joined his near contemporaries Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) and Henri Dutilleux (b. 1916) in a tide of rising esteem, and his music was recognized as occupying a middle ground between those two composers in the 1930s.

Alain's music is post-Debussian, with a highly personal use of old modes and free rhythms. Like Messiaen, he was drawn to mystical subjects. This beautiful prayer, whose title means "Prayer for us mortals," was originally written for two male singers and organ. It is a touching, exceptionally sensitive, and moving setting of a text by Charles Péguy. A few months after learning of Alain's death on the front Duttileux wrote a luminous orchestral version of the organ part. ~ Joseph Stevenson, Rovi

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