Writings
and Articles
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!!!COMING SOON!!!
Frescoes and Legends:
the sources for Saint François d'Assise. Christopher Dingle and
Nigel Simeone, Olivier Messiaen - Music, Art and Literature (Ashgate,
Autumn 2005).
Forgotten Offerings: reappraising
Messiaen's early orchestral works in Messiaen Studies, Robert Scholl
(editor). (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
 |
Interview with Messiaen and Edith Walter.
First published in French magazine 'HARMONIE' 1970.
The interview focuses on La Transfiguration then only recently composed. |
Vincent Benitez: Simultaneous Contrast and Additive Designs in
Olivier Messiaen's opera St. François d'Assisie.
Music
Theory Online 8.2 (August 2002)
Vincent Benitez: A Creative Legacy: Messiaen as Teacher of Analysis.
College Music Symposium 40. 2000 117-39
Vincent Benitez: Aspects of Harmony in Messiaen's Later Music:
An Examination of the Chords of Transposed Inversions
on the Same Bass Note. Journal of Musicological Research 23 no.2 (April-June
2004): 187-226.
Vincent Benitez: Narrating Saint Francis's Spiritual Journey:
Referential Pitch Structures and Symbolic Images in Messiaen's
Saint François d'Assise. (In Poznan Studies on Opera Vol 4, Theories
of Opera, ed. Maciej Jablonski, 363-411. Poland; Publishing House of the Poznan
Soc. for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. Section of Music and Fine
Arts, Publication of the Committee for Musicology, Vol 16 2004.)
Jean Barraqué: 'Rythme et dévéloppement',
Polyphonie (1954)
Jonathan Bernard: 'Messiaen's Synaesthesia: the Correspondence
Between Color and Sound Structure in His Music'.
Music Perception, IV (1986)
Pierre Boulez: 'Olivier Messiaen' Anhaltspunkte (Stuttgart
and Zurich, Belser 1975)
Leonard Burkat: Turangalila Symphonie, Musical Quarterly,
xxxvi (1950)
Norman Demuth: 'Messiaen's Early Birds', Musical Times (1960)
David Drew: 'Messiaen, a Provisional Study', The Score (1954)
Adrian Evans:' Olivier Messiaen in the Surrealist Context: a
Bibliography'. Brio xi (1975)
Bennett Gardiner: 'Dialogues with Messiaen'. Musical Events
xxii (1967)
Hellmut Heiss: 'Struktur und Symbolik in 'Reprises par interversion"
und "Les mains de l'abîme" aus Olivier Messiaen's Livre d'Orgue'.
Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie (1970)
Trevor Hold: 'Messiaen's Birds'. Music and Letters. (1971)
Messiaen issue of Melos xxv/12 (1958)
Messiaen issue of Musik-Konzept, 28 (1982)
Roger Nichols: 'Boulez on Messiaen'. Organist's Review (August
1986)
Roger Nichols: 'Messiaen's "Le Merle noir": the Case
of a Blackbird in a Historical Pie'.
Claude Samuel: 'Discographie compléte', Diapason-Harmonie
(December 1988)
Roger Smalley: 'Debussy and Messiaen', Musical Times cix (1968)
Harriet Watts: 'Canyons, Colours and Birds: an Interview with
Olivier Messiaen', Tempo 128 (1979)
Siglind Bruhn:"Des encadrements musicaux qui élargissent
la vue. Implications herméneutiques dans deux des Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus
d'Olivier Messiaen," in Jacques Viret, ed., Herméneutique musicale:
vois de recherche et de reflexion (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg).
Siglind Bruhn:"Religious Symbolism in the Music of Olivier
Messiaen," Signs in Musical Hermeneutics [The American Journal of Semiotics
13/1-4: 269-301.
Allen Forte: “Messiaen’s Chords” in a collection
published by Ashgate.
Allen Forte: “Messiaen’s Birds” in a forthcoming
collection published by Cambridge University Press.
CHEONG Wai-Ling: 'Rediscovering Messiaen's Invented Chords',
Acta Musicologica, Vol. 75, No. 1 (2003), forthcoming.
CHEONG Wai-Ling: 'Messiaen's Triadic Colouration: Modes as Interversion',
Music Analysis, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2002), pp. 53-84.
Robert T. Kelley: Tradition, the Avant Garde, and Individuality
in the Music of Olivier Messiaen:
Musical Influences in Méditations sur la mystère de la Sainte-Trinité
Nigel Simeone: 'Messiaen and the Concerts de la Pléiade:
"A Kind of Clandestine Revenge on the Occupation" ' Music & Letters
(November 2000)
Nigel Simeone: 'Offrandes oubliées: Messiaen in the 1930s',
(Musical Times, Winter 2000)
Nigel Simeone: 'Offrandes oubliées 2: Messiaen, Boulanger
and José Bruyr', (Musical Times, Spring 2001)
Nigel Simeone: ‘Daniel-Lesur’, Musical Times (Winter
2002), pp.6–8 [obituary, including the first publication of a speech by
Messiaen about Daniel-Lesur]
Nigel Simeone: ‘An Exotic Tristan in Boston: The First Performance
of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie’, King Arthur in Music,
ed. R. Barber [Arthurian Studies, vol.52] (Boydell and Brewer, 2002), 106–125
[book chapter].
'Emotion in the Music of Messiaen'
Messiaen scholar and enthusiast Nicholas Armfelt wrote this article
in 1964 which was subsequently published in The Musical Times in November
1965.
Messiaen’s music demands an extraordinary intensity of response;
and each piece demands entire acceptance. It has the quality of a statement
rather than an argument or question. It is a statement expressed emphatically
and intensely. The critical listener is disturbed by this. He wants to question
the validity of the statement; he regards music as an argument. But Messiaen’s
music seems not to allow this: it demands all or nothing. Indeed it seems to
demand all. That is why it has often provoked such violent reactions. Many listeners,
while admitting the expression to be forceful, have found it hard to cope with
a music so extreme in its emotive demands.
One way of coping with the emotive demands is simply to ignore them.
At one extreme there are some intellectual up-to-date people for whom Messiaen
is significant only as the man behind Boulez and some other younger composers.
Above all they admire the piano study, Mode de valeurs et d’intensités
(1949), and judge his other works by the extent to which they anticipate or
fall away from that ideal. In it four series are used simultaneously: 36 pitches,
24 durations, 12 attacks, and 7 degrees of loudness and softness. These make
a complex mode, the coherence of which is aurally obvious (e.g. The lower notes
have the longer duration).
This is rightly acknowledged as the first European work of total serialism (in
which all elements are used serially). It lasts four minutes, and like all the
works of the composer, was completely imagined aurally. But it led on to complex
serial works by other composers in which the conjunction of the various elements
was too complex to be imagined in detail beforehand. So Messiaen’s piece
has historical importance in two related recent developments of music: total
serialism and music of chance. But for me its significance is its beauty: the
low notes like night, the notes above sparkling like fireworks.
At the other extreme are some organists who, perceiving the technical brilliance,
effectiveness, and workmanship of Messiaen as an organ composer, cull pieces
from L’Ascension (1933) or La Nativité (1935) to show
off their virtuosity in a recital. Fair enough I suppose. After all, it does
draw attention to the fact that Messiaen is so effective. And it also draws
attention to the traditional element in Messiaen’s pieces, their relationship
to the great tradition of French organ music, the tradition of Franck, Widor,
Dupré. Better to come to his music from the traditional past that from
the fashionable future.
But the trouble is that these recitals tend to obscure the originality and intense
sincerity of the works by referring back to old familiar forms and to old, familiar,
comfortable, worn-out emotions. So often one hears the fourth and final piece
of L'ascension tripped off at twice its proper speed as if it were some
pleasant little pastorale. In fact it is an intense, ecstatic piece, representing
with characteristic literalness the prayer of Christ as he ascends to His Father.
At a good performance the sympathetic listener will find himself almost entranced.
The movement is very slow, the chords ascending with parallel harmonies. Indeed
it is so slow that one can forget the ‘melody’ as such and become
absorbed in each chord as a separate experience, tensing oneself in readiness
for the next chord, the next step upward.
The harmonies have a certain hardness to them, which should be brought out in
the registration. Some listeners find the harmonies ‘soupy’ or ‘honeyed’.
I think this is due to a failure to listen to the actual sounds. It is the tough
element in the harmonies that causes the slow upward motion to be almost unbearable,
till, at about two-thirds of the way through, the piece achieves its climax.
Heaven, one feels is in sight. Thereafter the ascension continues, but with
less strain – though even the long final chord is inconclusive, yearning
to go higher. It is only when the piece is over that one realises one has experienced
the beautifully phrased melody and form of the piece.
Both these types of approach, as I have described them, the trendspotting-historical
and the extrovert-workaday, fail to take proper account of the emotive demands
of the music. The trouble is not so much that these people fail to respond fully
to the particular pieces they admire; but more that they fail to admire Messiaen’s
boldest pieces. Even the most ardent admirers of Messiaen find their powers
of acceptance severely strained by some works. There are the more obvious failures,
such as parts of the early Diptyque for organ and the Fête des
belles eaux (1937) for six ondes Martenots. (It is fortunate that the beautiful
sections of each are preserved as the ‘louange’ movements of Quatour
pour la fin du temps 1941). But then there are parts of other works which
seem terrible bathos when the listener is all critical and emotionally below
par, but which at other times seem to come off.
David Drew, in his absorbing ‘Messiaen – a provisional
study’ in The Score (Dec 1954. Sept and Dec 1955), has cited L’Êchange
from Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus (1944) as an example
of an obvious failure. On paper it does indeed look mechanical, and the long
pause towards the end can seem ridiculous. But personally, when I am in a sympathetic
mood, I find the sustained crescendo and the amount of variation sufficient
to hold my interest – especially in the context of the whole cycle. More
frequent, though, than such dubious cases as L’Êchange are
the passages that do come off, but are wrongly accounted failures by unsympathetic
listeners – such daring effects as the notes of the chiffchaff at the climax
of the Le loriot and the 18-part birdsong polyphony for solo strings
in the Epode section of Chronochromie (1960).
Contrary to some critics’ opinion, Messiaen’s peculiar excellence
manifests itself in the form of his works. He uses a closed form, conceived
rhythmically as the relationship of the parts to the whole. The material is
often disparate and asymmetrical, involving unexpected phrase-lengths and lengthened
or shortened note-values. More and more he uses the ‘catalogue principle’,
where unrelated material is juxtaposed or superimposed. The success depends
on taste and dramatic sense, above all on proportion, with effective contrasts
and unexpected correlations.
His music is proportioned by a literalness and truth to nature. The piece from
L’Ascension was precisely symbolic in form. So are many other of
his religious pieces. Take, for example the final movement of Les Corps Glorieux
(1939), where the thrice-three form symbolises the Holy Trinity, the three Persons
registered so far apart yet integrated into the whole. Sometimes he uses the
palindromic form of the non-retrograde rhythm, with its constant central value,
to suggest the Star or the Cross. At other times he paraphrases plainsong for
its traditional associations.
The love-music is also unusually literal. One cannot naively distinguish it
from his religious music, since he views life as a whole. In Amen du désir
(Visions de l’Amen 1943) he chooses a mode of limited transposition
for the charm of its impossibilities – it works up to a frenzy, but the
desire remains as desire since the mode cannot rest on any modulation. True,
the frenzy subsides into the harmonies of the more ‘celestial’ theme.
But for the real resolution and sense of fulfilment one has to wait for the
final piece of the cycle, Amen de la consommation.
In the third of the Cinq Rechants (1949) the sexual act is presented
with a literalness that equals Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It is all there:
the male and female elements, the varying moods, the working up to a climax,
the primitive universal shout at the moment of climax. Time seeming to halt
at the moment of Love. One is reminded of certain Polynesian action-songs where
the women sing in languorous harmony while the men shout and dance with urgent
primitive gestures. This Rechant is extraordinarily compressed, its length
corresponding to the act it represents. The earlier Turangalila Symphonie
(1946-48) presents some of the same emotions in grander, more extended form.
The fifth movement, for example, Joie du sang des étoiles, presents
what takes only a few instants in the Rechant – frenzied joy, joy of the
blood, joy of the blood universalised and linked with Death, joy of the blood
of the stars.
Messiaen uses big general words such as ‘joy’ to describe emotion.
But in the music the emotions are more precise and complex. Each theme, as placed
in context, has a precise emotional force. This can be realised in the music
based on birdsong, notably Catalogue d’oiseaux (1958). Each song
is associated for Messiaen with a particular place and time, and consequently
with a dramatic emotion. He recollects them in tranquillity, moulds them into
musical form, always tending to organize and compress, and allows the sequence
of events and birdsongs to guide the form of the compositions. The material
may or may not be musically related, but dramatically it represents a true sequence
of the composer’s emotions. Messiaen says he ‘takes his lessons from
nature’. He trusts nature and the coherence of its larger rhythms.
As for the more detailed rhythms, the birdsongs have inspired Messiaen to compose
for piano a work unsurpassed in meaningful variety of rhythms, melodic contours,
and sonorities. The most obvious of the larger rhythms determining the form
of his pieces is the combination of symmetrical and asymmetrical elements in
the passage of each day. An illustration of this is La Rousserolle effarvatte
where various events of the first half are repeated irregularly in reverse order
in the second half. Yet how irregular it is, and how complex and satisfying
the form! This basic rhythm is also a clue to the overall form of some of the
larger cycles of Messiaen’s middle period – for example, Vingt
Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus.
If in this article I emphasize the serene and joyful emotions
in the music, it is because I feel that optimism predominates. I must mention,
though, that this optimism would be comparatively meaningless were it not for
the strong contrasting presence of disturbing emotions. Messiaen’s life
has often been hard. The wonder is that his faith in life and human nature has
so triumphantly survived. These disturbing emotions are as deep as anything
in his music and are never cancelled out by the optimism: they remain as an
integral part of the complex total vision. One thinks of the Abyss music in
the third movement of Quatour pour la fin du temps and Livre d’Orgue,
and of the frightening presence of death in certain of the Cinq Rechants.
One of the most frightening effects is obtained in the mysterious death-cries
and night-music of La Chouette Hulotte (The Tawny Owl) in Catalogue
d’Oiseaux.
One of the most striking features of some of Messiaen’s music is that it
makes one conscious that everything in it is within the context of something
bigger. There is the sound behind the sound, the longer duration behind the
shorter one, the slower rhythm behind the quicker one. And behind all movement
there is an awareness of stillness, behind all sound an awareness of silence,
and behind all measured time an awareness of eternity.
The silence is not mere silence. It is composed of various colours. The composer
of Chronochromie (1960) and Couleurs de la Cité Céleste
(1963) sees music in terms of colour and visa versa. At the end of the piano
piece Je dors mais mon Coeur veille the sounds are progressively converted
into silence. One knows exactly what the ‘missing’ sounds are. In
Regard du silence special sonorities, some of them quite violent, are
used to suggest the potential sounds that are within all silence.
Some people dislike the static quality of a music that hearkens to the End of
Time. They wish that it could be lighter, more critical, less absolute. It is
true that many techniques are used to break down one’s sense of the temporal,
among them extremely slow tempos, pedal-rhythms or ostinati, the disruptive
effect of irregular note-values, and the combination of modes of limited transposition
and non-retrograde rhythms. But to call the music plainly static seems to me
altogether too simplified an interpretation. The characteristic effect of Messiaen’s
music is to induce in the listener a trance-like state of heightened response
to every instant, a state where he experiences simultaneously several different
rates of time-flow. This is sometimes achieved, of course, by superimposing
several rhythms. More amazingly, it is also often achieved by juxtaposition
of contrasting rhythms, where one’s sense of the first rhythm continues
to be effective long after it has been succeeded by another. Paradoxically,
the result of all this is to make the listener feel outside time, so that all
the movement seems but a complex decoration of an eternal stillness behind all
things.
Messiaen, humble before the vast diversity of Nature, has embraced
this diversity in all its rhythms and colours to express his Faith in its Creator.
Whether or not we share his Faith, we can welcome the richness and sincerity
of its expression.
© Nicholas Armfelt
Jennifer Bate and Olivier Messiaen
 |
Jennifer is famous for her
interpretation of both modern and romantic music. In particular, she enjoys
a unique reputation as the world authority on the French composer Olivier
Messiaen, and was his organist of choice. Indeed, she “may claim
honors as THE Messiaen player of this generation” .
In 1975, when Jennifer was
due to broadcast a programme of Messiaen’s music, the BBC invited
the composer to hear her preparing it. She played to him and Mme Messiaen
at St James’s Church, Muswell Hill. Messiaen immediately made a dedication
on the scores she played and also gave her the following written recommendation:
“Jennifer Bate is an excellent organist, not only for her virtuosity,
but also for her musicianship and sensitivity in choosing her timbres.
She is a really accomplished musician who loves what she plays and knows
how to make others love it too”. This visit marked the beginning
of a close artistic association and friendship with both Olivier Messiaen
and his wife, Yvonne Loriod.
|
The press reviews of her début
recording (the three great works of Liszt) were so outstanding that the Gramophone
magazine arranged an interview when her second record (Elgar and Schumann) was
released. The Gramophone quoted Messiaen’s opinion of her artistry and
John Goldsmith, of Unicorn records, immediately offered to record with her the
complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen on the instrument of her choice. Having
by now played many times in France, she chose the recently-built organ at Beauvais
Cathedral. The recording took place between 1980 and 1982, appearing first on
LP and cassette in six volumes, and subsequently on CD. Each volume was heard
by Messiaen prior to release; he endorsed them all with enormous enthusiasm.
All won international acclaim. The success of these recordings led to a number
of Messiaen recitals, many attended by the composer.
In 1983, Messiaen took her to his Paris agent and asked him to re-allocate to
Jennifer all organ recitals scheduled for him. At this stage, he also started
annotating all her scores with his personal nuances of interpretation. The high
point came when he sent her the manuscript of his last masterpiece for organ,
Livre du Saint Sacrement. She gave the British première at Westminster
Cathedral in 1986, to a capacity audience with the composer present, receiving
a 20-minute standing ovation and unanimous critical acclaim. The concert was
filmed and shown on Channel 4 later that year.
One week after this performance, she opened the Radio France complete Messiaen
cycle, broadcast live in his presence and, while working together, he invited
her to make the world première recording of Livre du Saint Sacrement
on his own instrument in Paris, arranging his schedule to attend all rehearsals
and recording sessions. This recording had exceptional international success,
including the award of a Grand Prix du Disque. Jennifer gave 25 performances
of Livre du Saint Sacrement round the world before the score was published.
Jennifer was the Artistic Advisor to, and performed in, the LWT South Bank Show
television programme about Messiaen in 1985. This programme has been shown all
over the world. There were three screenings at the Barbican in 1999 as part
of Visions – The Music of Olivier Messiaen.
Jennifer gave the second London performance of Messiaen’s Livre du Saint
Sacrement at the Royal Festival Hall in 1988. A full house, again with the
composer present, gave her another prolonged standing ovation and her playing
attracted more magnificent press notices.
Following the great success of the filming of the première of Livre
du Saint Sacrement”, Channel 4 commissioned a further programme. La
Nativité du Seigneur was filmed in concert at the 1989 Norwich and Norfolk
International Festival and shown on Christmas Day. La Nativité du Seigneur
is distributed worldwide and is currently being promoted for 2002 to commemorate
the 10th anniversary of Messiaen’s death.
In 1990, Jennifer’s outstanding
ability and contribution to music received international recognition with the
award of Personnalité de l’Année by the French-based jury.
She was the first British woman to win the award and only the third British
artist to do so after Sir Georg Solti and Sir Yehudi (later Lord) Menuhin; Sir
Simon Rattle has since won it.
In 1992, Jennifer opened a special festival at l’Eglise de la Sainte Trinité,
Paris where Messiaen’s complete organ works were performed. The cycle was
recorded by Jade Records; the boxed set of six CD’s received great acclaim,
and Jennifer’s recording was also released as a separate CD winning, among
other awards, the Diapason d’Or (France), Prix de Répertoire
(France) and the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (Germany).
In 2001, she opened the new season of concerts at the Royal Festival Hall with
a programme that included the UK première of a newly-discovered piece
by Messiaen, Offrande au Saint Sacrement. In November, she was invited
to Avignon by the Association Orgue hommage à Messiaen to give
a recital and participate in the dedication of a plaque at the church where
the composer was baptised. This was such a success that she was immediately
re-engaged to repeat her programme in the 2002 Acanthes Festival. This is one
of her many concerts around the world commemorating both the 10th anniversary
of Messiaen’s death and the centenary of Maurice Duruflé’s
birth.
 |
Regis Records has
re-released all Jennifer's Messiaen recordings, made by Unicorn-Kanchana,
as a boxed set of six CDs (RRC6001). These are also available as two single
and two double CDs. All are at budget price and carry the Penguin CD Guide
Top Recommendation, a judgement endorsed by The Gramophone (May 2002). |
Dame
Gillian Weir and Olivier Messiaen
GILLIAN WEIR
THE LEGENDARY MESSIAEN RECORDINGS REISSUED
 |
"Our generation is the fortunate recipient of this
remarkable testament to Gillian Weir's intellectual, spiritual and musical
affinity with Messiaen's music. Messiaen's own recordings inspire us,
but Gillian Weir's transport us to a seemingly ideal plane, where music,
technique and organ sound blend into something greater than their parts."
[Organists' Review, February 1995]
In the year which marks the 10th Anniversary of the composer's
death, Priory Records announces the reissue on its own label
of Gillian Weir's legendary recordings of the complete organ works of
Olivier Messiaen. When the set was originally issued by Collins
Classics, critics all over the world were unanimous not only in
their praise of the performances, but also in their respect for the
fundamental musical affinity between performer and composer. "This
corpus of organ music - incontrovertibly the most profound and significant
of the twentieth century - has here found a recording which in itself
is a landmark in the history of recorded sound" wrote one critic.
"There is no doubt that Gillian Weir's recording of the complete
Messiaen is the reference by which all other performances will now be
judged", wrote another. BBC Music Magazine chose the set as one
of its "Best CD's of 1994".
|
The complete cycle - which Messiaen personally urged Gillian Weir to commit
to CD - was recorded on the famous organ of Aarhus Cathedral in Denmark
during January and February 1994: the original recordings were made in association
with BBC Radio 3.
Priory is remastering the recordings and will make the series available separately
for the first time: there will be four single CD's, and one double CD, the latter
including the Livre du Saint Sacrement. Dame Gillian herself has written booklet
notes for the series, reflecting many decades of association with the composer
and his organ music. The first CD [PRCD 921 - La Nativite du Seigneur, Le Banquet
Celeste, L'Apparition de l'Eglise Eternelle] was issued on 29 October 2002 when
Dame Gillian opened the 2002/3 Organ Recital series at London's Royal Festival
Hall. The second CD [PRCD 922 - Meditations sur le Mystere de la Saint Trinite]
will be available early in 2003. The complete series will be issued by the end
of 2003.
Visit Gillian
Weir's Homepage
Buy Messiaen CDs at 
maldrummer1@netscape.net
