Messiaen's Centenary
I knew it but the day, 10 December, 2008, ended yesterday before I got around to mention that it was the centenary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen, the French composer like whom there is no other.
People who write or talk about Messiaen always look for unusual words to talk about him and his music, "mystical" or "spiritual" are popular–many might go with "peculiar". I adore Messiaen's music but I think of it as a very strongly flavored treat: a little goes a long way and it's not my choice for a steady diet. However, as a treat it is nonpareil.
Messiaen developed his own theories for how to deploy rhythm, melody, harmony, and pretty much all the other characteristic of music, in creating his own compositions. Bird song–I remember decades ago seeing a picture of Messiaen walking in the woods complete with beret on his cocked head, listening to the birds sing and transcribing their songs–contributes a lot to his musical language. So does religious mysticism: if his pieces aren't named for birds chances are they'll be named for biblical imagery. Messiaen's musical language got worked out at a time when musical language was in a lot of turmoil but he managed to find a compositional voice that avoided serialism and other forms of reactionary and/or revolutionary avant-garde-ism that made for a rather depressing period in the development of Western music. There are many things about Messiaen's music that, if they were described to me, I'm convinced I would find off putting, but the actual music always draws me in.
A great deal of Messiaen's output is either for organ or piano; as a performer he was primarily an organist. For more about Messiaen's life and music the Wikipedia article is fine, but a leisurely exploration of the Boston University Messiaen Project is more fun.
And then there's listening. Gosh but the 21st century is such a grand thing: there's all this stuff online that one can just listen to at any time!
My original idea for this article was merely to point out this article by composer and pianist Matthew Guerrieri, "The lads in their hundreds (1)". After talking briefly about the singular pronunciation of Messiaen's name, he offers a short sound recording of [presumably] himself playing Messiaen's "comparatively obscure 'Pièce pour le Tombeau de Paul Dukas,' from 1936." It only takes a minute or two and it will give you a lot of feeling for Messiaen in a very short time.
Of course, then there's YouTube. Searching for Messiaen as a tag gives you over 400 choices. But let's take our cue from the Messiaen Project and I'll point out two performances by Dutch organist Willem Tanke that might be of interest.
The first performance that drew my attention is "VI. Les Yeux dans les Roues" ("The Eyes in the Wheels"), the sixth movement from Livre d'Orgue ("Organ Book"). It's good-and-noisy organ music and also very characteristic of Messiaen's writing (in his good-and-noisy mood, rather than his quiet-and-mystical mood). It's very useful to see Mr. Tanke playing to get an idea of how the music is put together, since it can be a bit inscrutable otherwise.
Perhaps even more interesting from the didactic view is this performance of "Entrée", the first movement from "Messe de la Pentecôte" (1950), in which Mr. Tanke counts aloud as he plays, giving you the chance to sense how complicated the rhythmic notation is and how frequently the time signatures must be changing. Printed music by Messiaen is very intimidating stuff at first glance (even second or third).
Okay, just one more before we quit. This is a personal favorite of mine from the good-and-loud category, part I of "L'Ascension", performed by Olivier Latry at Royal Albert Hall.
Well, just one more. Here is Anna Myeong playing "Dieu Parmi Nous" ("God Among Us") from "La Nativité du Seigneur". You'll notice that I like the good-and-loud stuff. This one gives me goosebumps every time.
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on Friday, 12 December 2008 at 09.23
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I love his work. I remember singing "Sacrum Convivium" many (many) years ago. All those double sharps! How can such a thing be?
Elegant. Rich. Mystical.