Jean Langlais

Jean Langlais (1907-1991) was a French composer, organist, and music educator. Blind from age two, Langlais was educated at the National Institute for the Young Blind, and he came to be a teacher and choir director there for 40 years. Langlais' career as a performer and lecturer took him to the United States, where he gave more than 300 recitals. In style, Langlais' music is modernist, highly chromatic, and often strongly dissonant, though his reliance on church modes and quotations of Gregorian chants lends his works some accessibility, and a calm, meditative tone is characteristic of his many choral and organ pieces.