Jean François-Hyacinthe Langlais III (15 February 1907 – 8 May 1991) was a French composer of modern classical music, organist, and improviser. He described himself as "" ("Breton, of Catholic faith"). Biography Langlais was born in La Fontenelle (Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany), a small village near Mont Saint-Michel, France to Jean-Marie-Joseph Langlais II, a blacksmith and Flavie Canto, a seamstress. Langlais became blind due to glaucoma when he was only two years old and was sent to the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Children) in Paris, where he began to study the organ, with André Marchal. From there he progressed to the Paris Conservatoire, obtaining prizes in organ and studying composition with Marcel Dupré and Paul Dukas. He also studied improvisation with Charles Tournemire. After graduating, Langlais returned to the National Institute for Blind Children to teach, and also taught at the Schola Cantorum in Paris from 1961 to 1976. Many of his students went on to become important musicians, including organists and composers; among them was the American Kathleen Thomerson, who later published a bio-bibliography about him. Another one was Margreeth Chr. de Jong, a dutch organist , composer and music educator. His first wife Jeanette asked his former student, personal recital liaison and friend Ann Labounsky in 1972 to write Langlais' biography Jean Langlais the Man and His Music, though it was not published until 2000; nine years after Langlais' death. Labounsky did her doctoral paper in 1991 on the life and works of Langlais and fortunately she was able to share some of it with Langlais before he died. However Langlais was displeased as Labounsky was truthful in what she saw as Langlais wanted to be painted as the way he saw his truth. Labounsky admitted that at times Langlais could be a complex person but Langlais did not see himself this way. This was partly due to the region of Brittany in which he grew up as the Bretons considered themselves to be a proud people who loved to tell folklore. It was as an organist that Langlais made his name, following in the footsteps of César Franck and Charles Tournemire as organiste titulaire at the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris in 1945, a post in which he remained until 1988. He was much in demand as a concert organist, and widely toured across Europe and the United States. His 3rd North American tour