Olivier MESSIAEN
(1908–1992)
Messiaen is the composer
of a work voted by television viewers
to be the "Piece of the Century". The
work concerned is the "Quartet for the
End of Time", created whilst Messiaen
was interned in a Nazi prison camp and
first performed on 15 January 1941 in
front of an audience of POWs. The choice
of instrumentation reflected the musicians
and instruments available amongst his
fellow inmates: violin, cello, piano
and clarinet. The music is heavily influenced
by the composer's profound Catholic
faith, and specifically inspired by
a passage from the Book of Revelation.
Its movements alternate in tempo between
urgency and serenity, with an eventual
resolution ringing a powerful sense
of transcendence.
This same quality of
transcendence is very characteristic
again in the slightly later and more
universalist Turangalila Symphony, composed
in 1946-48, which is inspired by Hindu
mythology. The word 'Turangalila' is
Sanskrit. It is also influenced by another
of this composer's recurrent themes:
birds and their songs. A further significant
factor in his creative work is the visit
made by the composer to the USA, bringing
extra-European inspirations from the
experience of the American landscape.
Unlike the intimately scored quartet,
the Turangalila Symphony is a monumental
work for full orchestra with the addition
of solo piano, gamelan and ondes martinot.
The piano part was written for the composer's
muse and eventual second wife, Yvonne
Loriod. The effect of their love also
leaves its imprint on the score.
These two works are
perhaps the best known and most widely
performed of Messiaen's oeuvre. However,
he has a very considerable output, spanning
chamber forces, orchestra, solo piano,
church music and particularly organ
works. There’s also an opera on the
life of St Francis of Assisi. Messiaen
was important as a performer and as
a teacher of music as well as a composer.
His pupils included Xenakis, Boulez
and Stockhausen; he created precedents
for the use of non-Western music as
source material and developed a whole
new sound-world for the organ.
Born in Avignon, France
in 1908, he was initially self-taught
as a musician and started composing
music at the age of seven. After the
First World War, he studied at the Paris
Conservatoire where he won every available
prize for the piano, but also became
interested in eastern musical approaches.
Appointed during this time as organist
at La Trinité in Paris - a post
he held for over five decades - he became
a very significant contributor to the
French organ tradition. His earliest
published work - Le Banquet Céleste
(1928) - was for this instrument.
His weekly improvisations at La Trinité
were distilled into two further published
works: La Nativité du Seigneur
(1936) and Livre du St Sacrement
(1984). Both his first and last
published compositions were of organ
music.
During the years 1936
to 1940 he also held the position of
Professor of Music at the Ecole Normale
in Paris. Here he involved himself in
the development and propagation of a
specifically French aesthetic to counter
the increasing German cultural influence.
In the course of the Second World War,
he was conscripted into the army, where
he served as a medical auxiliary until
his capture and internment. It was during
his subsequent imprisonment that he
composed of the "Quartet for the End
of Time" (q.v.), a work which has come
to capture and symbolise the triumph
of the human spirit over adversity and
which encapsulates the best and the
worst of the European 20th century history.
On his return to Paris
after the war, he became Professor at
the Paris Conservatoire where he had
himself studied earlier. In 1944, he
composed what is arguably his most significant
work for solo piano -- Vingt Regards
sur L'Enfant Jesus - a sequence
of twenty consecutive meditations on
the theme of the nativity (on which
he had also created an earlier piece
for organ - La Nativité du
Seigneur (q.v.) - lasting some two
hours in total. At the time, the composer
had recently met a talented pupil who
was to inspire him profoundly on both
professional and personal levels: Yvonne
Loriod. In the work the influences of
his compatriots Debussy and Ravel can
be heard clearly, particularly in the
slower sections, but so can the eastern
influences which were becoming increasingly
important in his work. This was followed
in 1948 by the Turangalila Symphony
(q.v.), after the composer's first visit
to the USA.
The experience of travel
and of other cultures is one of the
strands of inspiration recurring in
the composer's oeuvre; he made two journeys
to the USA - in the mid-1940s and subsequently
in the early 1970s. The first was associated
with the creation of the Turangalila
Symphony and the second with Des
Canyons aux Etoiles - a work for
piano and orchestra inspired by the
landscapes of Utah. He travelled to
Japan - an influence on Et Exspecto
Resurrectionem Mortuorem - for woodwind
and percussion, commissioned by the
French Ministry of Culture in 1964 by
way of commemoration of the world war
dead. He visited the Holy Land in the
last decade of his life.
During this last journey,
Messiaen devoted much of his time to
an earlier preoccupation - transcribing
the songs of wild birds, which he had
done from the 1950s onwards in visits
to the French countryside, resulting
in the Catalogue des Oiseaux. Although
Messiaen is well known for the effect
of his profound religious faith upon
his musical works, he also expresses
human as well as divine love and finds
inspiration in the natural world as
well as the spiritual one.
The centenary of Messiaen's
birth will be in 2008. This is being
marked by a major retrospective festival
at London's South Bank Centre, under
the direction of the pianist Pierre
Laurent Aimard, a pupil of Yvonne Loriod,
and a celebrated interpreter of his
piano works.
Julie Williams
MAJOR WORKS
Le Banquet Celeste
(for organ) 1928
La Nativité
du Seigneur (for organ)1936
Vingt Regards Sur L'enfant
Jésus (for solo piano)1944
Quartet for the End
of Time 1941
Turangalila Symphony
1948
Catalogue des Oiseaux
1958
Chronochromie 1960
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem
Mortuorum 1964
La Transfiguration
de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ
Méditations
sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité
(for organ)
Des Canyons aux Etoiles
(orchestral sequence) 1974
L'Ascension
St François
d'Assise (opera) 1983
Livre de Saint-Sacrement
(for organ) 1984
