Olivier Messiaen (IPA: [mɛsjɑ̃];
December 10, 1908 – April
27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age
of 11, and numbered Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel,
Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré among his
teachers. He was appointed organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris in 1931, a
post he held until his death. On the fall of France in 1940 Messiaen was made a
prisoner of war, and while incarcerated he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du
temps ("Quartet for the end of time") for the four available instruments, piano,
violin, cello, and clarinet. The
piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners to an audience of inmates and prison guards. Messiaen was appointed
professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941, and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservatoire, positions he held until his retirement in 1978. His
many distinguished pupils included Pierre Boulez, Yvonne Loriod (who later became Messiaen's second
wife), Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis
Xenakis and George Benjamin.
Messiaen's music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources), and is harmonically and
melodically based on modes of
limited transposition, which were Messiaen's own innovation. Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the
marvellous aspects of the faith", drawing on his unshakeable Roman Catholicism. He
travelled widely, and he wrote works inspired by such diverse influences as Japanese music, the
landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah, and
the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Messiaen experienced a mild form of
synaesthesia manifested as a perception of colours when he heard certain harmonies,
particularly harmonies built from his modes, and he used combinations of these colours in his compositions. For a short period
Messiaen experimented with the parametrization associated with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many exotic musical
influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works), and he also championed the
ondes Martenot.
Messiaen found birdsong fascinating; he believed birds to be the greatest musicians and
considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer. He notated birdsongs worldwide, and he incorporated birdsong
transcriptions into a majority of his music. His innovative use of colour, his
personal conception of the relationship between time and music, his use of birdsong, and his intent to express profound religious
ideas, all combine to make it almost impossible to mistake a composition by Messiaen for the work of any other western
composer.
Life and career
Youth and studies
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen was born in Avignon into a literary family. He was
the elder of two sons of Cécile Sauvage, a poet, and Pierre
Messiaen, a teacher of English who translated the plays of William Shakespeare into French. Messiaen's mother
published a sequence of poems, L'âme en bourgeon ("The Budding Soul"), the last chapter of Tandis que la terre
tourne ("As the World Turns"), which address her unborn son. Messiaen later said this sequence of poems influenced him
deeply, and he cited it as prophetic of his future artistic career.[1]
On the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Pierre Messiaen became a soldier, and their mother
took the two boys to live with her brother in Grenoble. Here Messiaen became fascinated with
drama, reciting Shakespeare to his brother with the help of a home-made toy theatre with translucent backdrops made from old
Cellophane wrappers.[2]
At this time he also adopted the Roman Catholic faith. Later, Messiaen felt most at home in the Alps of the Dauphiné, where he had a house built south of Grenoble, and he composed most of his music there.[3]
He commenced piano lessons after having already taught himself to play. His interest embraced
the recent music of French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and he asked for opera vocal scores for Christmas
presents.[4] During this period he started to compose. In
1918 his father returned from the war, and the family moved to Nantes. He continued music
lessons; one of his teachers, Jehan de Gibon, gave him a score of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, which Messiaen described as "a thunderbolt" and "probably the
most decisive influence on me".[5] The following year
Pierre Messiaen gained a teaching post in Paris, and the family moved there. Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1919,
aged 11.
At the Conservatoire Messiaen made excellent academic progress, many times finding himself top of the class. In 1924, aged 15,
he was awarded second prize in harmony, in 1926 he gained first prize in counterpoint and
fugue, and in 1927 he won first prize in piano accompaniment. In 1928, after studying with Maurice Emmanuel, he
was awarded first prize for the history of music. Emmanuel's example engendered in Messiaen an interest in ancient Greek rhythms
and exotic modes. After showing improvisation skills on the piano Messiaen began to study
the organ with Marcel Dupré, and from him he
inherited the tradition of great French organists (Dupré had studied with Charles-Marie Widor and Louis Vierne; Vierne in turn was a pupil of César Franck). Messiaen
gained first prize in organ playing and improvisation in 1929. After a year studying composition with Charles-Marie Widor,[6] in the
autumn of 1927 he entered the class of the newly appointed Paul Dukas who instilled in
Messiaen mastery of orchestration, and in 1930 Messiaen won first prize in
composition.
While he was a student he composed his first published compositions, his eight Préludes for piano (the earlier Le
banquet céleste was published subsequently). These already exhibit Messiaen's use of his preferred modes of limited transposition and palindromic
rhythms (Messiaen called these non-retrogradable rhythms). His public debut came in 1931
with his orchestral suite Les offrandes oubliées. Also in that year he first heard a gamelan group, which sparked his interest in the use of tuned percussion.
La Trinité, La Jeune France, and Messiaen's war
Messiaen's special relationship with the organ began in autumn 1927, when he joined
Dupré's organ course. Dupré later reminisced that Messiaen, having never seen an organ console before, sat quietly for an hour
while Dupré explained and demonstrated the instrument, and then came back a week later to play Johann Sebastian Bach's Fantasia in C minor to an impressive standard.[7] From 1929 Messiaen regularly deputised for the organist at the
Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris, Charles
Quef, who was ill. When Quef died in 1931 and the post became vacant, Dupré, Charles
Tournemire and Widor among others supported Messiaen's candidacy to succeed him. With his formal application Messiaen
enclosed a letter of recommendation from Widor, and the appointment was confirmed in 1931.[8] Messiaen remained the organist at la Sainte-Trinité for more than sixty
years.
In 1932, Messiaen married the violinist and fellow composer Claire Delbos. Their
marriage inspired him to compose works for her to play (Thème et variations for violin and piano in the year they were
married), and pieces to celebrate their domestic happiness (including the song cycle
Poèmes pour Mi in 1936, which Messiaen orchestrated in 1937). Mi was Messiaen's affectionate nickname for his wife.
In 1937 their son Pascal was born. Messiaen's marriage turned to tragedy when his wife lost her memory after an operation, and
she spent the rest of her life in mental institutions.[9]
In 1936, Messiaen, André Jolivet, Daniel-Lesur and Yves Baudrier formed the group La Jeune
France ("Young France"). Their manifesto implicitly attacked the frivolity predominant in contemporary Parisian music,
rejecting Jean Cocteau's manifesto Le coq et l'arlequin of 1918 in favour of a
"living music, having the impetus of sincerity, generosity and artistic conscientiousness".[10] Messiaen's career soon departed from this public phase, however, as the music he
was composing at this time was not for public commissions or conventional concerts.
In 1937, in response to a commission for a piece to accompany light- and water-shows on the
Seine during the Paris
Exposition, Messiaen demonstrated his interest in using the ondes Martenot, an
electronic instrument, by composing the unpublished Fêtes des belles eaux for an ensemble of six.[11] He included a part for the instrument in many of his subsequent
compositions.
During this period Messiaen composed organ cycles, for himself to play. He arranged his orchestral suite L'Ascension
for organ, replacing the orchestral version's third movement with an entirely new movement, one of Messiaen's most popular,
Transports de joie d'une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne ("Ecstasies of a soul before the glory of
Christ, which is its own glory", usually just known as Transports de joie - 
listen?). He also wrote the extensive cycles La Nativité
du Seigneur and Les corps glorieux. The final toccata of La Nativité, Dieu
parmi nous ("God among us") has become another favourite recital piece, often played separately.
At the outbreak of World War II Messiaen was called up into the French army, as a
medical auxiliary rather than an active combatant due to his poor eyesight.[12] In May 1940 he was captured at Verdun, and was taken to Görlitz
where he was imprisoned at prison camp Stalag VIII-A. He soon encountered a violinist, a
cellist, and a clarinettist among his fellow prisoners. Initially he wrote a trio for them, but gradually incorporated this trio
into his Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the End of
Time"). This was first performed in the camp to an audience of prisoners and prison guards, the composer playing a poorly
maintained upright piano, in freezing conditions in January 1941. Thus the enforced introspection and reflection of camp life
bore fruit in one of 20th-century European classical music's acknowledged masterpieces. The "end of time" of the title is not
purely an allusion to the Apocalypse, the work's ostensible subject, but also refers to the
way in which Messiaen, through rhythm and harmony, used time in a way completely different from the music of his predecessors or
contemporaries.[13]
Tristan and serialism
Shortly after his release from Görlitz in May 1941, Messiaen was appointed a professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatoire,
where he taught until his retirement in 1978. He also compiled his Technique de mon langage musical ("Technique of my
musical language") published in 1944, in which he quotes many examples from his music, particularly the Quartet.
Among Messiaen's early students at the Conservatoire were the composer Pierre Boulez
and the pianist Yvonne Loriod. Other pupils later included Karlheinz
Stockhausen in 1952, and George Benjamin in the second half of the 1970s. The Greek Iannis Xenakis was briefly referred to him in 1951; Messiaen provided encouragement and exhorted Xenakis
to take advantage of his background in mathematics and architecture, and use them in his music. Although Messiaen was only in his
mid-thirties his students of the period later reported that he was already an outstanding teacher,[14] encouraging each of them to find their own voice rather than imposing his own
ideas.
In 1943, Messiaen wrote Visions de l'Amen ("Visions of the Amen") for two pianos for Loriod and himself to perform, and
shortly afterwards composed the enormous solo piano cycle Vingt regards sur
l'enfant-Jésus ("Twenty gazes on the child Jesus") for her. He also wrote Trois petites liturgies de la Présence
Divine ("Three small liturgies of the Divine Presence") for female chorus and orchestra which includes a difficult solo piano
part, again for Loriod. Messiaen thus continued to bring liturgical subjects into the piano recital and the concert hall.
Olivier Messiaen pictured in 1946
Two years after Visions de l'Amen, in 1945, Messiaen composed the first of three works on the theme of human (as
opposed to divine) love, particularly inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde. This was the song cycle Harawi. The second of the Tristan works was the result of a
commission from Serge Koussevitsky for a piece (Messiaen stated that the commission
did not specify the length of the work or the size of the orchestra); this was the ten-movement Turangalîla-Symphonie. This is not a conventional symphony,
but rather an extended meditation on the joy of human love and union. It lacks the sexual guilt inherent in, say,
Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde,
because Messiaen's attitude was that sexual love is a divine gift.[15] ( listen?) The third piece inspired by the Tristan
myth was Cinq rechants for twelve unaccompanied singers, which Messiaen said was influenced by the alba of the troubadours.[16]
Messiaen visited the United States in 1947, his music being conducted there by
Koussevitsky and Leopold Stokowski, and his Turangalîla-Symphonie was first
performed there in 1949 conducted by Leonard Bernstein. During this period, as well as
giving an analysis class at the Paris Conservatoire, he also taught in Budapest in 1947 and Tanglewood in 1949; in the summers of 1949 and
1950 he taught in the new music summer school classes at Darmstadt. Though he never employed twelve-tone technique
himself, after three years teaching analysis of scores using it, such as works by Arnold
Schoenberg, he did experiment with ways of making scales of other elements (including duration, articulation, and
dynamics) analogous to the chromatic pitch scale. The results of these innovations was the piece "Mode de valeurs et
d'intensités" for piano (from the Quatre Études de Rhythme) which has been incorrectly described as the first work of
total serialism, though it had a large influence on the earliest European serial composers,
including Pierre Boulez, Karel Goeyvaerts, and
Karlheinz Stockhausen. During this period he also experimented with
musique concrète, music for recorded sounds.
Birdsong and the 1960s
In 1952, Messiaen was asked to provide a test piece for flautists wishing to enter the Paris
Conservatoire, and for this he composed the piece Le merle noir for flute and piano. While Messiaen had long been
fascinated by birdsong, and birds had made appearances in several of his earlier works (for example La Nativité,
Quatuor and Vingt regards), the flute piece is based entirely on the song of the blackbird. He took this development to a new level with his 1953 orchestral work Réveil des oiseaux
— the work is composed almost entirely of birdsong, taking as its material the birds one might hear between midnight and
noon in the Jura. From this period onwards Messiaen incorporated birdsong into all of his
compositions, and indeed he composed several works for which birds provide the title and subject matter (for example the
collection of thirteen pieces for piano Catalogue d'oiseaux completed in 1958, and La fauvette des jardins of
1971). Far from being simple transcriptions of birdsong, these works are sophisticated tone poems evoking the place and its
atmosphere. Paul Griffiths comments that Messiaen was a more conscientious ornithologist than any previous composer, and a more
musical observer of birdsong than any previous ornithologist.[17]
Messiaen's first wife died in 1959 following her long illness, and in 1961 he married Yvonne Loriod. He began to travel
widely, both to attend musical events and to seek out and transcribe the songs of more exotic birds. Loriod frequently assisted
her husband's detailed studies of birdsongs, which he notated in the wild, by walking with him and making a tape recording for checking later. In 1962 his travels took him to Japan, where Gagaku music and Noh theatre inspired
him to compose the orchestral "Japanese sketches", Sept haïkaï, which contain stylised imitations of traditional Japanese
instruments.
Messiaen's music was at this time championed by, among others, Pierre Boulez, who programmed first performances at his
Domaine musical concerts and the Donaueschingen
festival. Works performed here included Réveil des oiseaux, Chronochromie (commissioned for the 1960 festival) and
Couleurs de la cité céleste. The latter piece was the result of a commission for a composition for three trombones and three xylophones; Messiaen added to this more brass, wind,
percussion and piano, and specified a xylophone, xylorimba and marimba rather than three xylophones. Another work of this period, Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorem,
was commissioned as a commemoration of the dead of the two World Wars, and was performed first semi-privately in the
Sainte-Chapelle, then publicly in Chartres
Cathedral with Charles de Gaulle in the audience.
His reputation as a composer continued to grow. In 1959 Messiaen was nominated as an Officier of the
Légion d'honneur,[18] and in 1966 he was officially appointed professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire
(although he had in effect been teaching composition for years). Further honours bestowed on Messiaen later included election to
the Institut de France in 1967, the Erasmus
Prize in 1971, the award of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal
in 1975, the Sonning Award (Denmark's highest musical honour) in 1977, and
the presentation of the Croix de Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown in 1980.[19]
Transfiguration, Canyons, St. Francis, and the Beyond
Messiaen's next work was the enormous La
Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ. This composition occupied Messiaen from 1965 to 1969 and the forces
employed include a 100-voice ten-part choir, seven solo instruments and a large orchestra. Its fourteen movements are a
meditation on the story of Christ's Transfiguration. Shortly afterwards
Messiaen received a commission from the American Alice Tully for a work to celebrate the
bicentenary of the United States Declaration of Independence.
He arranged a visit to the USA in spring 1972, and was inspired by Bryce
Canyon in Utah, where he noted the canyon's distinctive colours and
birdsongs.[20] The ten-movement orchestral piece Des
Canyons aux étoiles… was the result, which was first performed in 1974 in New York.
Messiaen had been asked as early as 1971 for a piece for the Paris Opéra. Initially
reluctant to undertake such a major project, in 1975 Messiaen was finally persuaded to accept the commission and began work on
his Saint-François d'Assise. Composition of this work was an intensive
task (he also wrote his own libretto), occupying him during the period 1975–79, and then the
orchestration was carried out from 1979 until 1983.[21]
The work (which Messiaen preferred to call a "spectacle" rather than an opera) was first performed
in 1983. Some commentators at the time of its first production thought that Messiaen's opera would be his valediction (indeed, at
times Messiaen himself believed so[22]), but he continued
composing, bringing out a major collection of organ pieces, Livre du Saint Sacrement, in 1984, as well as further bird
pieces for solo piano and pieces for piano with orchestra.
Messiaen had retired from teaching at the Conservatoire in the summer of 1978. In 1987 he was promoted to the highest rank,
Grand-Croix, of the Légion d'honneur.[23]
An operation prevented his participating in events to celebrate his 70th birthday, but in 1988 tributes for Messiaen's 80th
birthday around the globe included a complete performance in London's
Royal Festival Hall of St. François, which the composer attended, and Erato's
publication of a seventeen-CD collection of Messiaen's music including recordings by Loriod and a disc of the composer in
conversation with Claude Samuel.
Messiaen's last composition resulted from a commission from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra; although he was in
considerable pain near the end of his life (requiring repeated surgery on his back[24]) he was able to complete Eclairs sur l'au delà, which premiered six months after the
composer's death. Messiaen had also been composing a concerto for four musicians he felt particularly grateful to, namely Loriod,
the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the
oboist Heinz Holliger and the flautist Catherine Cantin. This was substantially complete when Messiaen died, and Yvonne Loriod undertook the final
movement's orchestration with advice from George Benjamin.
Music
Example 1. A page from
Oiseaux exotiques. It illustrates Messiaen's use of ancient and exotic rhythms (in the
percussion near the bottom of the score "Asclepiad" and "Sapphic" are ancient Greek rhythms, and Nibçankalîla is a decî-tâla from
Śārṅgadeva). It also illustrates Messiaen's precision in notating birdsong: the birds identified here are the
white-crested laughing thrush (
garralaxe à huppe blanche) in the
brass and
wind instruments, and the
orchard oriole (
troupiale des vergers) played on the xylophone.
It is almost impossible to mistake a Messiaen composition for the work of any other Western classical composer. His music has been described as outside the western musical tradition,
although growing out of that tradition and influenced by it.[25] Much of Messiaen's output denies the western conventions of forward motion, development and diatonic harmonic resolution. This is partly
due to the symmetries of his technique — for instance the modes of limited transposition
do not admit the conventional cadences found in western classical music.
Messiaen's youthful love for the fairy-tale element in Shakespeare prefigured his later expressions of what he called "the
marvellous aspects of the [Roman Catholic] Faith" — among which may be numbered Christ's Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension,
Transfiguration, the Apocalypse and the
hereafter. Messiaen was not interested in depicting aspects of theology such as sin;[26] rather he concentrated on the theology of joy, divine love, and human
redemption.
Although Messiaen continually evolved new composition techniques, he integrated them into his musical style; so, for instance,
his final work still retains the use of modes of limited transposition. For many commentators this continual development of
Messiaen's musical language made every major work from the Quatuor onwards a conscious summation of all that
Messiaen had composed up to that time. However, very few of these major works contain no new technical ideas — simple
examples being the introduction of communicable language in Meditations, the invention of a new percussion instrument (the
geophone) for Des canyons aux etoiles…, and the freedom from any
synchronisation with the main pulse of individual parts in certain birdsong episodes of St. François d'Assise.
As well as discovering new techniques for himself, Messiaen found and absorbed exotic music into his compositional style,
including Ancient Greek rhythms, Hindu rhythms (he encountered Śārṅgadeva's list of 120 rhythmic
units, the deçî-tâlas[27]) Balinese and Javanese Gamelan,
birdsong, and Japanese music (see Example 1 for an instance of his use of ancient Greek and Hindu rhythms).
While he was instrumental in the academic exploration of his techniques (he published two treatises, the later one in five volumes which was substantially complete when he died), and was himself a
master of music analysis, he considered the development and study of techniques to be a means to intellectual, aesthetic and emotional ends. In this connection, Messiaen maintained that a
musical composition must be measured against three separate criteria: to be successful it must be interesting, beautiful to
listen to, and it must touch the listener.[28]
Messiaen wrote a large body of music for the piano. Although a considerable pianist himself, he was undoubtedly assisted by
Yvonne Loriod's formidable piano technique and ability to convey complex rhythms and rhythmic combinations; in his piano writing
from Visions de l'Amen onwards he had her in mind. Messiaen said, "I am able to allow myself the greatest eccentricities
because to her anything is possible."[29]
Western artistic influences
Developments in modern French music were a major influence on Messiaen, particularly the music of Claude Debussy and his use of the whole tone scale (which
Messiaen called Mode 1 in his modes of limited transposition). Although Messiaen very rarely used the whole tone scale in
his compositions (because, he said, after Debussy and Dukas there was "nothing to add"[30]) he did use similarly symmetric modes.
Messiaen also had a great admiration for the music of Igor Stravinsky, particularly
his use of rhythm in earlier works such as The Rite of Spring, and also his
use of colour. He was also influenced by the orchestral brilliance of Heitor
Villa-Lobos, who lived in Paris in the 1920s and gave acclaimed concerts there. Among composers for the keyboard Messiaen
singled out Jean-Philippe Rameau, Domenico
Scarlatti, Frédéric Chopin, Debussy and Isaac
Albéniz.[31] He also loved the music of
Modest Mussorgsky, and Messiaen incorporated varied modifications of what he called
the "M-shaped" melodic motif from Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov into his
music,[32] although Messiaen characteristically modified
the final interval in this motif from a perfect fourth to a tritone (Example 3).
Messiaen was also influenced by Surrealism, as may be seen from the titles of some of the
piano Préludes (Un reflet dans le vent…, "A reflection in the wind") and in some of the imagery of his poetry (he
published poems as prefaces to certain works, for example Les offrandes oubliées).
Colour
Colour lies at the heart of Messiaen's music. Messiaen said that the terms "tonal",
"modal" and "serial" (and other such terms) are
misleading analytical conveniences,[33] and that for him
there were no modal, tonal or serial compositions, only music with colour and music without colour.[34] For Messiaen the composers Claudio
Monteverdi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Chopin, Richard Wagner, Mussorgsky and Stravinsky all wrote
strongly coloured music.[35] In addition, Messiaen
experienced mild synaesthesia, manifested as the experience of colours when he heard or
imagined music (he said that he did not perceive the colours visually). In certain of Messiaen's scores, he notated the colours
in the music (notably in Couleurs de la Cité Céleste and Des canyons aux étoiles…) — Messiaen's purpose being
to aid the conductor in interpretation rather than to specify which colours the listener
should experience.
George Benjamin said, when asked what Messiaen's main influence had been on composers, "I think the sheer […] colour has been
so influential, […] rather than being a decorative element, [Messiaen showed that colour] could be a structural, a fundamental
element, […] the fundamental material of the music itself."[36]
Symmetry
Many of Messiaen's composition techniques made use of symmetries of time and pitch.
Symmetry in time
Example 2. The first bar of the piano
Prélude,
Instants défunts. An early example of Messiaen's use of
palindromic rhythms (which he called
non-retrogradable rhythms).
From his earliest works Messiaen often used non-retrogradable (palindromic) rhythms
(Example 2).
Messiaen sometimes combined rhythms with harmonic sequences in such a way that if the process were allowed to proceed
indefinitely the music would eventually run through all the possible permutations and return to its starting point. For Messiaen,
this represented what he termed the "charm of impossibilities" of these processes. In practice, of course, Messiaen only ever
presented a portion of any such process, as if allowing the informed listener a glimpse of something eternal. In the first
movement of Quatuor pour la fin du temps the piano and cello together provide an early example.
Symmetry of pitch
Messiaen used modes which he referred to as his modes of limited
transposition, which are distinguished as groups of notes which can only be transposed by a semitone a limited number of times. For example the whole tone scale (Messiaen's
Mode 1) only exists in two transpositions: namely C–D–E–F♯–G♯–A♯ and D♭–E♭–F–G–A–B. Messiaen abstracted these modes from the
harmony of his improvisations and early works.[37] Music
written using the modes avoids conventional diatonic harmonic progressions, since for example Messiaen's Mode 2 (identical to the
octatonic scale used also by other composers) permits precisely the
dominant seventh chords whose tonic the mode does not contain.[38] For Messiaen the modes also possessed colours.
Time and rhythm
Example 3. An excerpt from
Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes from the
Quatuor pour la fin du
temps. It illustrates Messiaen's use of
additive rhythms - in this example the addition of unpaired semiquavers
(
sixteenth notes) to an underlying quaver (
eighth
note) pulse, and the lengthening of the final quaver by addition of a
dot. It also
illustrates the use of what Messiaen called the
Boris M-shaped motif (the last five notes of the excerpt).
Messiaen considered his rhythmic contribution to music to be his distinguishing mark among modern composers. As well as making
use of non-retrogradable rhythms, and the Hindu decî-tâlas, Messiaen also made use of "additive" rhythms. This involves
lengthening individual notes slightly or interpolating a short note into an otherwise regular rhythm (see Example 3 or
listen? to Danse de fureur from the
Quatuor), or shortening or lengthening every note of a rhythm by the same duration (adding a semiquaver to every note in a
rhythm on its repeat, for example). This led Messiaen to use rhythmic cells alternating between two and three units, a process
which also occurs in Stravinsky's The Rite of
Spring which Messiaen admired.
A factor that contributes to Messiaen's suspension of the conventional perception of time in his music is the extremely slow
tempos he often specifies (the 5th movement Louange à l'Eternité de Jésus of Quatuor is actually given the tempo
marking infiniment lent); and even in his quick music he often uses repeated phrases and harmonies to make the speed seem
static.
Messiaen also used the concept of "chromatic durations", for example in his Soixante-quatre durées from Livre
d'orgue, ( listen?) which assigns a distinct
duration to 64 pitches ranging from long to short and low to high, respectively.
Harmony
Example 4. The song of the golden oriole from
Le loriot, part of
Catalogue d'oiseaux. The birdsong played by
the pianist's left hand (notated on the lower staff) provide the fundamental notes, and the quieter harmonies played by the right
hand (on the upper staff) alter their timbre.
Messiaen, in addition to making harmonic use of the modes of limited transposition, also cited the harmonic series as a physical phenomenon which provides chords with a context which he felt to
be missing in purely serial music.[39] An example of
Messiaen's harmonic use of this phenomenon, which he called "resonance", is the last two bars of Messiaen's first piano
Prélude, La colombe ("The dove"); the chord is built from harmonics of the fundamental base note E.[40]
Related to this use of resonance, Messiaen also composed music where the lowest, or fundamental, note is combined with higher
notes or chords played much more quietly. These higher notes, far from being perceived as conventional harmony, function as
harmonics that alter the timbre of the fundamental note like mixture stops on a
pipe organ. An example is the song of the golden
oriole in Le loriot of the Catalogue d'oiseaux for solo piano (Example 4).
In his use of conventional diatonic chords, Messiaen often transcended their historically banal connotations (for example, his
frequent use of the added sixth chord as a resolution).
Birdsong
Birdsong fascinated Messiaen from an early age, and in this he found encouragement from his teacher Dukas who reportedly urged
his pupils to "listen to the birds". Messiaen included stylised birdsong in some of his early compositions (for example
L'abîme d'oiseaux from the Quatuor), integrating it into his sound-world by techniques like the modes of limited
transposition and chord colouration. The birdsong episodes in his work became increasingly sophisticated, and with Le Réveil
des Oiseaux this process reached maturity, the whole piece being built from birdsong: in effect it is a dawn chorus for orchestra. Messiaen even notated the bird species with the music in the score
(Examples 1 and 4). The pieces are not simple transcriptions, however: even the works with purely bird-inspired titles,
such as Catalogue d'oiseaux and Fauvette des jardins, are tone poems evoking the landscape, its colour and its
atmosphere. ( listen?)
Serialism
For some of his compositions, Messiaen created scales for duration, attack, and timbre which are analogous to the chromatic
pitch scale. He expressed annoyance at the historical importance given to one of these works, Mode de valeurs et
d'intensités, by musicologists intent on crediting him with the invention of "total serialism".[41]
In a related development, Messiaen introduced what he called a "communicable language", in which he used a "musical alphabet"
to encode sentences. This technique was first introduced in his Meditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité for organ;
in this work the "alphabet" also includes motifs for the concepts to have, to be, and God, and the sentences
encoded include sections from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Works
Compositions
Published
- Le banquet céleste, organ (1928, a recomposition of a section from his unpublished orchestral piece Le banquet
eucharistique[42])
- Préludes, piano (1928–29)
- Dyptique, organ (1930)
- La mort du nombre ("The death of numbers"), soprano, tenor, violin and piano (1930)
- Les offrandes oubliées ("The forgotten offerings"), orchestra (1930)
- Trois mélodies, song cycle (1930)
- Apparition de l'église éternelle ("Apparition of the eternal church"), organ (1932)
- Fantaisie burlesque, piano (1932)
- Hymne au Saint Sacrement ("Hymn to the Holy Sacrament"), orchestra (1932, lost 1943, reconstructed from memory
1946[43])
- Thème et variations, (Theme and Variations) violin and piano (1932)
- L'Ascension ("The Ascension"), orchestra (1932–33; organ version including
replacement movement, 1933–34)
- La Nativité du Seigneur ("The Lord's nativity"), organ (1935)
- Pièce pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas, piano, (1935)
- Vocalise, voice and piano (1935)
- Poèmes pour Mi, song cycle (1936, orchestral version 1937)
- O sacrum convivium!, choral motet (1937)
- Chants de terre et de ciel ("Songs of earth and heaven"), song cycle (1938)
- Les corps glorieux ("Glorious bodies"), organ (1939)
- Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the end of time"),
violin, cello, clarinet, piano (1940–41)
- Rondeau, piano (1943)
- Visions de l'Amen ("Visions of the Amen"), two pianos (1943)
- Trois Petites liturgies de la Présence Divine ("Three small liturgies of the Divine Presence"), women's voices, piano
solo, ondes Martenot solo, orchestra (1943–44)
- Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus ("Twenty gazes on the
Christ-child"), piano (1944)
- Harawi: Chants d'amour et de mort, ("Harawi: Songs of love and death") song cycle
(1944)
- Turangalîla-Symphonie, piano solo,
ondes Martenot solo, orchestra (1946–48)
- Cinq réchants, 12 singers (1948)
- Cantéyodjayâ, piano (1949)
- Messe de la Pentecôte ("Pentecost mass"), organ (1949–50)
- Quatre études de rythme ("Four studies in rhythm"), piano (1949–50)
- Île de feu 1
- Mode de valeurs et d'intensités
- Neumes rhythmiques
- Île de feu 2
- Le merle noir ("Blackbird"), flute and piano (1952[44])
- Livre d'orgue, organ (1951–2)
- Réveil des oiseaux ("Dawn chorus"), solo piano and orchestra (1953)
- Oiseaux exotiques ("Exotic birds"), solo piano and orchestra (1955–56)
- Catalogue d'oiseaux ("Bird catalogue"), piano (1956–58)
- Book 1
- Book 2
- Book 3
- Book 4
- Book 5
- Book 6
- Book 7
- Chronochromie ("Time-colour"), orchestra (1959–60)
- Verset pour la fête de la dédicace, organ (1960)
- Sept haïkaï ("Seven haikus"), solo piano and orchestra (1962)
- Couleurs de la cité céleste ("Colours of the Celestial City"), solo piano and ensemble (1963)
- Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum ("And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead"), wind, brass and
percussion (1964)
- La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur
Jésus-Christ ("The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ"), large 10-part chorus, piano solo, cello solo, flute
solo, clarinet solo, xylorimba solo, vibraphone solo, large orchestra (1965–69)
- Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité ("Meditations on the mystery of the Holy Trinity"), organ (1969)
- La fauvette des jardins ("Garden warbler"), piano (1970)
- Des Canyons aux étoiles… ("From the canyons to the stars…"), solo piano, solo horn, solo glockenspiel, solo xylorimba,
small orchestra with 13 string players (1971–74)
- Saint-François d'Assise ("St Francis of Assisi"), opera
(1975–1983)
- Livre du Saint Sacrament ("Book of the Holy Sacrament"), organ (1984)
- Petites esquisses d'oiseaux ("Small sketches of birds"), piano (1985)
- Un vitrail et des oiseaux ("Stained-glass window and birds"), piano solo, brass, wind and percussion (1986)
- La ville d'En-haut ("The city on high"), piano solo, brass, wind and percussion (1987)
- Un sourire ("A smile"), orchestra (1989)
- Concert à quatre ("Quadruple concerto"), piano, flute, oboe, cello and orchestra (1990–91, completed Loriod and
Benjamin)
- Pièce pour piano et quatuor à cordes ("Piece for piano and string quartet") (1991)
- Éclairs sur l'au-delà… ("Illuminations on the beyond..."), orchestra
(1988–92)
Unpublished, posthumously published, or lost
A number of Messiaen's compositions were not sanctioned by the composer for publication. They include the following, some of
which have been published posthumously, and some of which are lost.
- La dame de Shallott, for piano (1917)
- La banquet eucharistique, for orchestra (1928)
- Variations écossaises, for organ (1928)
- Mass, 8 sopranos and 4 violins (1933)
- Fantaisie, for violin and piano (1933; published 2007)
- Fêtes des belles eaux, for six ondes Martenots (1937)
- Musique de scène pour un Œdipe, electronic (1942)
- Chant des déportés, chorus and orchestra (1945, then lost, rediscovered 1991)
- Timbres-durées, musique concrète (1952), realised by Pierre Henry in the radiophonic workshop of French radio, an experiment which Messiaen later deemed a failure[45]
- Feuillets inedits for piano and
ondes martenot (2001)
Treatises
- Technique de mon language musical ("The technique of my musical language"), Leduc, Paris, 1944.
- Vingt leçons d'harmonie ("20 harmony lessons"), Leduc, Paris, 1944.
- Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie (1949–1992) ("Treatise of rhythm, colour and ornithology"), completed
Loriod, Leduc, Paris, 1994–2002; 7 parts bound in 8 volumes.
- Analyses of the Piano Works of Maurice Ravel (edited by Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, published posthumously), Durand
(original in French; no English translator or publication date available).
References and further reading
- General references
- Dingle, Christopher (2007). The Life of Messiaen. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge & New York. ISBN 0-521-63547-0 (paperback), ISBN 0-521-63220-X (hardback).
