Messiaen, Olivier (1908-1992)
Ever since Messiaen was a small boy, birds called to him and he responded with a body of work intensely devoted to them—more so than any other composer. No sky is uninhabited in Messiaen’s music. His work is a tribute to the sheer abundance, virtuosity, and exuberance of the natural world. His birdsong is a flash of flame, a whirl of iridescence, a shattering of glass ...
“What he wrote was his imagination of birdsongs.” — Pierre Boulez
"I chose the birds. . . ." — Messiaen
“In my hours of gloom, when I am suddenly aware of my own futility . . . what is left to me, but to seek out the true, lost face of music somewhere off in the forest, in the fields, in the mountains or on the seashore, among the birds.” — Messiaen
“We’re surrounded by innumerable unexplainable events that reveal an invisible power, greater than ours,” Messiaen writes, “to which we must bow.” — Messiaen
"[An] unknown fragrance, an unsleeping bird, music of stained glass church windows, a whirl of complementary colours, a theological rainbow." — Messiaen describing his music
Messiaen had a life-long interest in birdsong: he was an expert amateur ornithologist and used this knowledge in his composition. Messiaen was not the first composer to try to represent birdsong in pianistic terms, and there are well-known examples that pre-date Messiaen by many years such as Liszt's second Legend - 'St Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds.' However, Messiaen's approach is different in that his quest for accuracy is far greater since he wants to produce a true recreation of nature rather than merely hinting at it. Messiaen's style of birdsong writing developed throughout his career, demonstrated by comparing an earlier use of birdsong in 'Regard des Hauteurs' - the eighth of Vingt regards sur l'Enfant- Jésus - with any of the pieces from Catalogue d'oiseaux (1956-8). — COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC, NO.1: OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908-1992). MusicTeachers.co.uk
The concept of personnages rythmiques is derived from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Each personnage is a short rhythmic cell that has certain constituent elements, which include mobility and immobility, and for which their juxtaposition is the basic idea. Although a mobile cell is one that can either increase or decrease in value, immobile cells always remain constant. Messiaen noticed how Stravinsky manipulates rhythmic cells in The Rite of Spring (particularly in the 'Sacrificial Dance', which is the most complex section), and compared the various cells to theatrical characters. In his analogy, Messiaen compares a cell which increases in value to a character who dominates the scene (the one who does the acting), the cell which decreases to a character who is acted upon, and the immobile cell to a motionless character who observes the scene. This led to Messiaen giving the technique the name personnages rythmiques. Although in Vingt regards there is no clear example of this technique, its influence can be seen throughout, in passages that contain at least two rhythmic cells, where one increases while the other decreases. One example occurs in 'Par Lui tout a été fait'. In Vingt regards, Messiaen employed Stravinsky's initial concept; however, later works, such as the Turangalîla-Symphonie, employ a more developed approach. For this reason alone, personnages rythmiques must be considered a vital part of Messiaen's musical language. — COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC, NO.1: OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908-1992). MusicTeachers.co.uk
A clearer understanding of exactly what Messiaen meant by his descriptions of color in music has eluded just about everyone who has tried to find out. Pierre Boulez, who remained close to Messiaen throughout his life and has conducted transcendent performances of his scores, once asked him if he actually, physically, saw colors. "No!" Messiaen replied. "They're only for me. I imagine color. It has no reality." — An Audubon in Sound. Messiaen's radiant birdsongs, the crown of his creation, belong as much to the artist as to nature. By Matthew Gurewitsch
So what is rhythm? In Messiaen's view, it arises from elaborate subdivisions of time, hypnotic in themselves but also implicated in cabalistic correspondences to the nature of eternity itself. Like many mathematicians, Messiaen felt the strange spell of prime numbers. He liked to manipulate his basic musical material according to all manner of arithmetical formulas. He particularly delighted in constructing rhythmic palindromes -- phrase units that play out (rhythmically, though not necessarily melodically) the same way forward and backward; they form, as it were, immobile arches within the cathedrals of his pieces. Messiaen accounted himself a "static" composer, and part of what he thought made him one was his symmetrical rhythms, which he called "nonretrogradable. — An Audubon in Sound. Messiaen's radiant birdsongs, the crown of his creation, belong as much to the artist as to nature. By Matthew Gurewitsch
The symphonic Réveil des oiseaux lists, in order of appearance, more than three dozen birds. Good luck picking them out -- and what exactly is gained if one does? And what on earth is one to make of the knowledge that a certain Messiaen "mode," or sequence of notes, consists of "horizontally layered stripes: from bottom to top, dark gray, mauve, light gray, and white with mauve and pale yellow highlights -- with flaming gold letters, of an unknown script, and a quantity of little red or blue arcs that are very thin, very fine, hardly visible"? — An Audubon in Sound.
Messiaen's radiant birdsongs, the crown of his creation, belong as much to the artist as to nature. — By Matthew Gurewitsch
For Messiaen the desire was there long before he had worked out the requisite technique. In his early prelude La Colombe (1929) he was already making the piano coo and gurgle, but still operating well within the sphere of impressionist precedent. In the years following, Messiaen -- music's Audubon -- devoted a scholar's zeal to transcribing whole choirs of birds, always in traditional notation, always in the field. Often his second wife, the pianist Yvonne Loriod (whose performances of Messiaen's piano works, dedicated to her, remain unsurpassed), would tag along with a tape recorder, capturing backup material that proved invaluable later on. Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux (for piano), depicting birds of France, eventually grew to seven books plus the half-hour coda and summation La Fauvette des jardins (The Garden Warbler). — An Audubon in Sound. Messiaen's radiant birdsongs, the crown of his creation, belong as much to the artist as to nature. By Matthew Gurewitsch
The bird...sings in extremely quick tempi which are absolutely impossible for our instruments; I am therefore obliged to transcribe the song at a slower tempo. In addition, this rapidity is allied to an extreme acuteness, the bird being able to sing in excessively high registers which are inaccessible to our instruments; I transcribe the song, therefore, one, two, three, even four octaves lower. And that is not all: for the same reasons, I am obliged to suppress the very small intervals which our instruments cannot play. — Claud Samuel: Entretiens avec Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Belfond, 1967, S.113-14
LINKS
oliviermessiaen.org
:: Messiaen Midi.webloc
oliviermessiaen.org
:: Birdsong in Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques
Réveil
des Oiseaux has the songs of all the birds featured in Messiaen's composition,
and additional information about bird songs in classical music
ircam.fr
:: Olivier Messiaen
Links
to Birdsong and Birding Site [world map]
Species
Audio Library of the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas features high-quality MP3
recordings (made by John Feith)
Works
Orchestral
- L'Ascension (for orchestra, later for organ) (1933)
- Turangalila-Symphonie (1948)
- Reveil des oiseaux
- Oiseaux exotiques (1955)
- Chronochromie
- Sept haikai
- Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum
Vocal
- O sacrum convivum! (1937)
- La transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ
- Trois petites liturgies de la Presence Divine
Organ
- Le banquet céleste (1928)
- Diptyque (1930)
- Apparition de l'eglise &eactue;ternelle (1932)
- L'Ascension (1933-34)
- La nativite de Seigneur (1935)
- Les corps glorieux (1939)
- Messe de la Pentecote (1950)
- Livre d'orgue(1951)
- Meditations sur le mystere de la Sainte Trinité (1969)
- Livre du saint sacrement (1984)
- Instrumental
- Quatour pour la fin du temps (1941)
- Catalogue d'oiseaux for piano (1958)
- "Vingt Regards sur l'enfant Jésus"
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Resources
John Cage
Joseph Beuys
Pierre Boulez
Luc Ferrari
Egberto Gismonti
Charles Edward Ives: Central Park in the Dark
Gyorgy Ligeti
Olivier Messiaen
Steve Reich
Ad Reinhardt
Terry Riley
Jean-Claude Risset
David Tudor
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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[11] · Piano drone #1 [04:40]
[10] · Piano minimal #2 inspired by quaggy [13:06]
[09] · Piano minimal #1 [04:46]
[08] · Train Sonor: Piano NYC Subway #4 [10:17]
[07] · Cluster medicine [pianodrone #2] [18:54]
[06] · Flute stream [09:54]
[05] · Supernatural drone [guitardrone reverse] [17:02]
[04] · Piano minimal #3 [simultaneous] [08:50]
[03] · For Marjan K. [excerpt three] [05:44]
[02] · For Marjan K. [excerpt two] [05:40]
[01] · For Marjan K. [excerpt one] [06:21]
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