Final Messiaen Filming Completed
To complete the documentary, we did one final day of filming in London at a very special location.
Felix Aprahamian’s writing will be well known to you. He was a noted critic and wrote the notes for many key concerts and recordings. He was also a concert promoter and arranged for the first English performance of Messiaen’s La Nativité in 1936, performed by Messiaen himself in London. From that time onwards Messiaen and Aprahamian were friends, and Messiaen often visited Aprahamian at his house in Muswell Hill, north London.
Amazingly, this house is still very much how it was when Aprahamian lived there, until his death in 2005. The house is now run by a charity for blind organists. It is a fine and spacious Victorian house filled with thousands of books and scores, as well as two organs, several grand pianos, a harmonium, a pedal clavichord, and a harpsichord. More importantly, the house is more or less exactly the same as it was when Messiaen visited it many times.
Thanks to the kindness of David Aprahamian Liddle, pictured above with Messiaen and Jennifer Bate, we were able to film for a day in this wonderful treasure trove. Many of you will know David's performances since his time as assisting organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge and through his many recitals,
Using what may well be the same piano that Yvonne Loriod gave a famous private performance of Boulez, our scholar Chris Dingle was able to demonstrate how Messiaen’s personal life influences his compositional life. Using one of the organs, formerly owned by André Marchal, himself a performer of Messiaen’s music, our performer and presenter Tom Bell was able to demonstrate many aspects of Messiaen’s use of rhythm as well as some of the modes or scales that he used in his music.
David Aprahamian Liddle spoke beautifully on camera about his first-hand recollections of Messiaen’s visits to Muswell Hill, and what it was like to meet him.
We were also able to film various presentations to camera that bind the sections of the film together. All in all, it was a highly successful day.
The documentary itself is taking its final form – it may change a little but it is currently a major piece of work – four 50-minute documentary films, plus of course more than three hours of awesome musical performances.
Please support this work. Please help us by buying one of the 200 DVDs we need to sell to raise the money we need!
Support from recognised subscribers, screeners and patrons is particularly appreciated – please support us here!
Fugue State Films is run by film-maker Will Fraser. Founded in 2007, for ten years it was a partnership between Will and Simon Still, during which time they established themselves as one of the leading makers of films about music such as The Genius of Cavaillé-Coll and Maximum Reger. Their goal is to make films of the highest quality about the best classical music, films that both summarise present attitudes while seeking new views and pushing new opinions. Central to this goal is the creation of an ongoing set of wonderful films to promote the organ and the beautiful music of its repertoire, the intricate details and magnificent totality of the instrument itself, and the work of the celebrated artists who play it.
We want to make a lot of films about the tremendous French tradition of organ music – we’ve made films about Cavaillé-Coll, Franck, Widor and Vierne, but there is much more to cover – particularly the classical school of the Ancien Regime – Couperin, de Grigny etc, and of course the organists, composers and/or improvisers who followed Widor in the 20th century – Dupré, Duruflé, Litaize, Langlais, Alain, Cochereau, Guillou, Grunenwald, Hakim, Florentz and many more. There’s also of course the 21st century!
But one name stands out, a composer of organ music who both dominates the instrument but also the general musical landscape of the 20th century: Olivier Messiaen.
Download new proposal here.
Please prebuy this multi-disc boxset from Fugue State Films. Tom Bell will perform several of Messiaen’s great cycles of organ music: La Nativité, Messe de la Pentecôte, as well as the magisterial Livre du Saint-Sacrement in its entirety, plus other movements. These will be filmed and recorded at Blackburn Cathedral, home of the best organ for playing Messiaen’s organ music in the UK. Thomas Lacôte will explore Messiaen’s improvisation, and Loïc Mallié and Carolyn Shuster-Fournier will discuss Messiaen’s music. The French organists will be filmed at Messiaen’s church, La Trinité in Paris, where the composer was organiste titulaire for 60 years. In an accompanying documentary biographer and scholar Christopher Dingle will explore Messiaen’s life and compositional styles and development in relation to his organ music.
We will record with Tom Bell. Tom is one of the directors of the Royal College of Organists and is known for his concerts and classes around the UK and in Singapore, Australia and the USA. He is an avid proponent of 20th and 21st century music, from Schoenberg’s Variations on a Recitative through the recent Orgelbuchlein Project to Jean Guillou’s nine-organ epic, La Révolte des Orgues.
An expert on Messiaen, not only will Tom perform, but he will also co-present a documentary with leading Messiaen-scholar Christopher Dingle.
Tom Bell is one of the regional directors of the Royal College of Organists, and has produced a set of 10 films for the RCO about Messiaen, as a sort of vlog - you can see Tom discussing Messiaen here
Tom Bell himself says:
‘Messiaen's Livre du Saint-Sacrement (LSS) is the ultimate and longest organ piece by one of greatest composers of the 20th century. It is an ideal way to discover the sound world of Messiaen, as it is an almost comprehensive account of the major styles he used within his compositions, such as innovative use of rhythm, birdsong, richly colourful harmony and the influence of world music.
‘We shall also include Le Banquet Céleste and the Messe de la Pentecôte in this DVD for as full an account as possible of Messiaen’s style.
‘Therefore this one boxset shall showcase Messiaen's full range as a composer of organ music. Also, the LSS incorporates ideas present for the first time that Messiaen would explore in the last decade of his life, for instance a more ethereal sense of harmony that we find in his late piano works.’
Tom's co-presenter is Professor Christopher Dingle, author of The Life of Messiaen and Messiaen’s Final Works. Chris is one of the most authoritative Messiaen scholars in the world. Together they will explore the history, style and language of the piece.
The DVD/CD boxset we produce shall be therefore be both a spotlight on a particular work and an overall summation of Messiaen’s work as a composer!
We need to crowdfund £40,000 to make this set of films.
Please prebuy this multi-disc boxset from Fugue State Films.
You can do this at various levels:
Gold Patron (£2000)
Patron (£950)
Educational (one course) (£600)
Screener or Library (£300)
Gold Recognised Subscriber (£195)
Recognised Subscriber (£99)
All options are available in our webshop, though if you want to support at one of the higher options, you can also email Will Fraser to arrange payment in a way that involves less expensive Paypal / transaction and exchange fees.
The UK is going through what is hopefully a short-term economic crisis, and if you live abroad now is a great time to pay for this project as the pound is so low against every other currency.
All supporters at these levels will be credited in the film and booklet.
Please note – we are now offering two levels of Recognised Subscriber. As well as the ‘gold’ one, more or less analogous to what we have offered up to this point, there’s now also a £99 option.
At the moment we are just accepting support at these levels, but soon we shall also offer the normal discounted prebuy:
Early-bird Discount: Subscribe to Messiaen DVD Boxset (£35) – Available Soon
All supporters will receive the multi-disc boxset when it is released in 2023. Your generosity will allow us to make this set of films. Please prebuy now!
For this set of DVDs we will explore the form, style and language of Messiaen’s organ music, showing the extraordinary range and expressive depth of this composer’s work. We shall ask many questions, but one of them will certainly be:
Is Messiaen the greatest organ composer since Bach?
