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Marie-Claire Alain was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 August 1926.
Her father Albert Alain (1880–1971) was an organist and composer, as were her brothers, Jehan (1911–1940) and Olivier (1918–1994). She began assisting her father when he played organ in the parish chucrh at the age of 11.
She studied at the Paris Conservatory in the organ class of Marcel Dupré, where she was awarded four first prizes. She also studied harmony there with Maurice Duruflé. She won the 2nd prize for organ at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1950.
She taught at the conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison and the Paris Conservatory.
Upon her death, the list of her students was described as a "who's who of the present-day organ world".
She was the most-recorded organist in the world, with over 260 recordings in her catalogue. Alain recorded the complete organ works of J.S. Bach three times as well as the complete organ works of over a dozen other major composers of works for the organ, as well as many individual works. She was devoted to the organ works of her brother Jehan, who died before she began her conservatory studies.
A recording of works for organ and trumpet with Maurice André was among her most popular. When her third recording of Bach's works for organ appeared in 1994, she explained to The Organ, a British journal, why she was recording them again: It's because of the instruments, the instruments above everything else, and the fine state to which they have been restored—and the fact that they are now accessible.
These recordings use instruments from Bach's time, and we know that Bach even played some of them—it's an extraordinary feeling, to put your hands on the keyboard, knowing that he was there 250 years before you! Alain had a long association with the St Albans International Organ Festival.
She succeeded her father as organist of the parish church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye after his death in 1971 and served for 40 years.
Marie-Claire Alain died on 26 February 2013 in Le Pecq, a suburb of Paris.
Scores published under the direction of
Marie-Claire Alain
My research activity focuses since several years on the relationships between mathematics and music. In particular, I'm interested in the algebraic formalization of musical structures and processes, a subject which was at the center of my PhD in computational musicology within the Doctoral Program entitled "Musique, Histoire, Société" and organized by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), the Institut of Research and Coordination on Acoustics and Music (IRCAM), the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse of Paris (CNSMDP).
The thesis, entitled "Méthodes algébriques dans la musique et la musicologie du XXème siècle : aspects théoriques, analytiques et compositionnels", was supervised by Alain Poirier and defended the 12th of December 2003 at IRCAM with the score "mention très honorable et félicitations du jury".
The jury was composed by Gérard Assayag (computer scientist and Head of IRCAM Music Representation Team, my research laboratory during the period of the thesis), Marc Chemillier (computer scientist, ethnomathematician and ethnomusicologist at the EHESS), Guerino Mazzola (mathematician and music theorist at the University of Zürich and University of Minnesota), Jean Petitot (directeur d'Etudes at the Centre d'Analyse et de Mathématique Sociales (CAMS) of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and former Director of the Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie appliquée (CREA) at the Ecole Polytechnique), Alain Poirier (musicologist and former Director of the CNSMDP) and John Rahn (music theorist of the University of Washington at Seattle).
Since 1999 I am coordinating the Maths/Music activities within the Music Representation Team at IRCAM. In particular, I'm organizing since 2001 with Carlos Agon the MaMuX Seminar (Mathematics/Music and their relations with other fields) at IRCAM and since 2005 with François Nicolas and Charles Alunni the mamuphi Seminar (Mathematics, music and philosophy) at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.
Since 2006 I am editor (with Jean-Michel Bardez) of the "Musique/Sciences" Series (Ircam/Delatour France).
Founding member of the Journal of Mathematics and Music, the official Journal of the Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music (SMCM), I am also Editor (with Guerino Mazzola) of Springer Computational Music Science.
Since September 2009 I am responsable, with Mikhail Malt, of the two teaching units "Music and Science after 1945 (MSV)" and "Applications of Acoustics, Signal Processing and Computer Science to contemporary music creation (CMC)" within ATIAM, a Master Program which I am coordinating at Ircam.
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