Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen (; 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 Conservertoire, 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, 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. For a short period Messiaen experimented 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.

An example of Oliver Messiaen's piano work, Vingt Regards - No. 6, Par lui tout a ete fait can be seen and heard here.

Biography

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 cited it as prophetic of his future artistic careerMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 15.

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 wrappersMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 41. 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 thereHill (1995), pp. 300–1.

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 presentsMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 109. 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"Messiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 110. 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 WidorHill & Simeone (2005), p. 20, 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 standardHill & Simeone (2005), p. 22. 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 1931Hill & Simeone (2005), pp. 34ff. 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 institutionsYvonne Loriod, in Hill (1995), p. 294.

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"from the programme for the opening concert of La Jeune France, quoted in Griffiths (1985), p. 72. 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 sixHill & Simeone (2005), pp. 73f. 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 - ). 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 eyesightGriffiths (1985), p. 139. In May 1940 he was captured at Verdun, and was taken to Görlitz where he was imprisoned at prison camp Stalag VIIIA. 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 contemporariesSee extended discussion in Griffiths (1985), Chapter 6: A Technique for the End of Time, particularly pp. 104-106.

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, Tristan Murail from 1967–1972, 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 teacherPierre Boulez in Hill (1995), pp. 266ff, 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.

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 giftGriffiths (1985), p. 139. () 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 troubadoursGriffiths (1985), p. 142.

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. After many years teaching analysis of 12-tone scores, such as works by Arnold Schoenberg, he experimented with ways in which 12-tone techniques could be used to serialize elements other than pitch (including duration, articulation, and dynamics). The results of these innovations were pieces such as Modes de valeurs et d'intensités for piano which have been described as the first works of total serialism. 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 ornithologistGriffiths (1985), p. 168.

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'honneurHill & Simeone (2005), p. 245, 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, and the presentation of the Croix de Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown in 1980Hill & Simeone (2005), p. 333.

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 birdsongsGriffiths (1985), p. 225. 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 1983programme for Opéra de la Bastille production of St. François d'Assise, p. 18. 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 soThe composer in conversation with Jean-Cristophe Marti in 1992, see p. 29 of booklet accompanying the recording of Saint-François d'Assise conducted by Kent Nagano on Deutsche Grammophon 445176-2; see also Hill & Simeone (2005), pp. 340 and 342), 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'honneurHill & Simeone (2005), p. 357. 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 backYvonne Loriod, in Hill (1995), p. 302) 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

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 itGriffiths (1985) p. 15. 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 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 sinMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 213; 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-tâlasMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 77) 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 listenerMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 47.

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."Messiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 114

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"Messiaen, Technique de mon langage musical) 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 AlbénizMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 114. 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 musicMessiaen, Technique de mon langage musical, 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 conveniencesMessiaen & Samuel (1994), pp. 49–50, and that for him there were no modal, tonal or serial compositions, only music with colour and music without colourMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 63. For Messiaen the composers Claudio Monteverdi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Chopin, Richard Wagner, Mussorgsky and Stravinsky all wrote strongly coloured musicMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 62. 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, showed that colour could be a structural, a fundamental element, […" target="_blank" >^* the fundamental material of the music itself."George Benjamin, speaking in interview with Tommy Pearson, broadcast on BBC4 in the interval of Prom concert in 2004 at which Benjamin conducted a performance of Des canyons aux étoiles… Asked what made Messiaen so influential he said, "I think the sheer—the word he loved—colour has been so influential. People, composers, have found that colour, rather than being a decorative element, could be a structural, a fundamental element. And not colour just in a surface way, not just in the way you orchestrate it—no—the fundamental material of the music itself. More than that I can't say except that for my own small world he was incredibly important, and an exceptionally special and indeed wonderful person. I met him when I was very young (I was 16) and stayed closely in touch with him until he died in 1992, and was immensely fond of him…"

Symmetry

Many of Messiaen's composition techniques made use of symmetries of time and pitch.

Symmetry in time

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 worksHill (1995), p. 17. 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 containGriffiths (1985) p. 32. For Messiaen the modes also possessed colours.

Time and rhythm

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 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 Quatour 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, () which assigns a distinct duration to 64 pitches ranging from long to short and low to high, respectively.

Harmony

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 musicMessiaen & Samuel (1994), pp. 241–2. 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 EGriffiths (1985) p. 34.

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. ()

Serialism

Some music historians credit Messiaen with the invention of "total serialism", in which serialism is extended to include not only pitch, but also duration, attack and timbre. Messiaen expressed annoyanceMessiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 47 that his work Mode de valeurs et d'intensités, seen by some as the first work of total serialism, was given such importance in his output.

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

Olivier Messiaen is the composer of over 100 individual musical works.

For a full list, see List of compositions by Olivier Messiaen.

Publications

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.

References and further reading

General references

Conversations with the composer

Other references

External links

BBC Messiaen Profile
Online Messiaen resource by Malcolm Ball
Recording Theme and Variations - Helen Kim, violin; Adam Bowles, piano Luna Nova New Music Ensemble
Recording Le Merle Noir - John McMurtery, flute; Adam Bowles, piano Luna Nova New Music Ensemble
Recording Quatuor pour la fin du Temps Luna Nova New Music Ensemble
David Schiff, Music for the End of Time, The Nation, posted January 25, 2006 (February 13, 2006 issue). Formally a review of Messiaen by Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, but provides an overview of Messiaen's life and works.

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