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Please help us crowdfund new project: Messiaen 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!

Some examples of Messiaen recordings and performances. MultiMedia AUDIO and VIDEO FILES ALL OF THE BELOW AUDIO/VIDEO FILES ARE © copyright of the holder. NOTE: All audio and video files available on this site are for personal use only. NO REPOSTING OF ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IS PERMITTED WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER. My Morning with Messiaen - Les oiseaux et les sources (Messe de la Pentecôte) Organist Timothy Hagy has made a video recording of Les oiseaux et les sources (Messe de la Pentecôte) with an introduction describing meeting Messiaen on Easter of 1982, that contains several old photos. © Timothy Hagy © Timothy Hagy Messiaen's Pentecost Mass is celebrating its 75th Anniversary. It was premiered at High Mass at L'Église de la SainteTrinité in Paris on Pentecost Sunday 1950. The final movement depicts the Holy Spirit in the form of a violent wind descending from heaven. Tornadoes dip down, while a choir of larks chirps above an accompaniment of drones. Timothy Hagy performs The Wind of the Spirit - Le vent de l'esprit (Messe de la Pentecôte) Rich Kass interprets the song of the Skylark on the Drum Set. Rich Kass is a freelance drummer known for his highly individual and original approach to drumming and the drum set. He has developed a melodic sensibility coupled with rhythmic virtuosity and tonal colour creating great subtlety of expression on the drum set. Here is Messiaen : Petites esquisses d'oiseaux : VI L'alouette des champs The Skylark · Yvonne Loriod, piano. There is much rhythmic similarity here especially in the virtuosic two-part writing, and repeated short cells. ‘Skylark’ This piece is my attempt to pay homage to the Eurasian Skylark - a bird whose song has inspired me on many country walks in recent years. For this performance I have transcribed a field recording of a skylark singing and have tried to use my drumset as a kind of sonic mirror - reflecting and refracting some new colours whilst striving to maintain the integrity of the original song. I haven’t edited the skylark song at all, and am attempting to match its phrasing verbatim. I completed the piece in springtime this year(2024), and premiered it at Kings Place, London as part of a concert with Trio HLK and Evelyn Glennie. This is the 6th installment in a series of videos I have made under the name ‘Drum Interpretations’. In each I take musical works composed for or on other instruments, and perform them on the drumset. The complete series can be found here In the coming weeks I will release 3 more videos which relate to Skylark bird song. 1 is a drums-only version of the composition (without the bird accompanying) and there are also 2 improvisations based on the source material. All videos will be published on my YouTube channel : Thank you for reading and listening. Rich Eurasian Skylark RichKass Matthew Schellhorn's special film for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2021 For the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2021 (29 to 31 January), Matthew Schellhorn produced a special film in collaboration with young artists from across the country. Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) wrote numerous pieces inspired by birdsong. “Le Rouge-gorge ” (Robin) comes from a collection written in 1985 called “Petites esquisses d’oiseaux ” (Small Bird Sketches) and apart from the Robin features the Blackbird, the Song Thrush and the Skylark. The work was dedicated to the composer’s wife, Yvonne Loriod , with whom Matthew studied in Paris. Special thanks go to the talented pupils of Myatt Garden Primary School for taking part! ©Michel Gueritte Musicologist Jerzy Stankiewicz speaks at the inauguration of the rue Olivier Messiaen in the town of Toul, France. Rodrigo De la Prida introduces Messiaen's Modes for Electric Guitar Find out more here . There were a few instruments that Messiaen never included in his compositions (saxophone, harp, timpani after the 1930's and guitar are among these) - Rodrigo De la Prida 's work opens up the sound world of Messiaen's modes for guitarists with excellent and engaging examples that range from chord and scale work to improvisation. Rodrigo says: 'With already 4 years of intense work, the 7 volumes of the book series about the scales of Olivier Messiaen and their applications on any musical genre, are now available. Just digital for now. More than 500 pages with 351 licks, guitar studies, arpeggios, atonal chords, triads and tetrads, and examples. This material represents a deep dive into the rich musical universe of the french composer'. 'In this book series for guitar, Rodrigo tackles the exhaustive task of diving into the musical language of Olivier Messiaen, but from an unprejudiced view, where the different types of music coexist. Messiaen Modes for Electric Guitar aims to be a tool to expand the harmonic and melodic universe of the popular musician, but also a means to the study and deepening of modern language in the contemporary-classical music student as well'. M2BT-DEMO Rodrigo De la Prida 00:00 / 01:03 Here is a short demo of a backing track that comes with the book. © Rodrigo De la Prida During the 1973 English Bach Festival in London, Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod gave a recital at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Messiaen began by apologising for the way they were dressed. The taxi had gone off with all their luggage. He read the poetic preface to the piano work written three years earlier. Mme Messiaen then performed "La Fauvette des Jardins " @ 7' 40" Didier Didier Wampas and Bikini Machine Olivier Messiaen Il voyait des couleurs Que l'on ne voit pas Et croyait en un Dieu Auquel on ne croit plus Olivier Messiaen Il faisait des mélodies Que l'on n'entend pas Et chanter des oiseaux Que l'on ne connaît plus Olivier Messiaen Oui mais grâce à lui J'ai découvert des mondes Des regards plein d'amours Des canyons aux étoiles Et un Quatuor Pour la fin des temps Composé au stalag Éclairs sur l'au-delà Saint François d'Assise Un soir à l'opéra Olivier Messiaen Oui mais grâce à lui J'ai découvert des mondes Des regards plein d'amours Des canyons aux étoiles Oui mais grâce à lui J'ai découvert des mondes Des catalogues d'oiseaux Des canyons aux étoiles Oui mais grâce à lui J'ai découvert des mondes Et le Regard du père Des canyons aux étoiles ©Didier Wampas He saw colors That we don't see And believed in a God In which we no longer believe Olivier Messiaen He made melodies That we don't hear And sing of the birds That we no longer know Olivier Messiaen Yes but thanks to him I discovered worlds Gazes full of love Des canyons aux étoiles And a Quatuor Pour la fin des temps Composed in a Stalag Éclairs sur l'au-delà Saint François d’Assisi An evening at the opera Olivier Messiaen Yes but thanks to him I discovered worlds Gazes full of love Des canyons aux étoiles Yes but thanks to him I discovered worlds Catalogue d’oiseaux Des canyons aux étoiles Yes but thanks to him I discovered worlds And the Regard du père Des canyons aux étoiles Historic Recordings of Messiaen by Messiaen . Transfer from original 78rpm records recorded in 1949 of Visions de l'Amen with Yvonne Loriod and recording of OM playing his Quatre Etudes 1951. FMR Records FMRCD 120-L0403. Order via the Contact form . 00:00 / 00:26 00:00 / 00:54 00:00 / 00:54 VINGT REGARDS SUR L'ENFANT JESUS Louise Bessette Atma ACD22219/20 LE COURLIS CENDRE / LE MERLE NOIR / Mozart / Levinas / Gougeon / Mâche Louise Bessette RCI 650 Claude-Samuel Levine would like to share his playing of movements from the Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps : using VSTi Synful Orchestra and VSTi Pianoteq, humanly played in Cubase. Liturgie de Cristal Vocalise pour l'ange qui annonce la fin du temps Abyme des Oiseaux Intermède CD and downloads of the complete Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps now available direct from Claude-Samuel here . 00:00 / 02:38 After a period of two years work, Claude-Samuel Lévine has produced a version of TurangalilaSymphonie created entirely by computer software instruments and MIDI (except for 'live' Ondes Martenot played on the Ondea). This is a detailed interpretation that in no way proposes to 'replace' real musicians, but can provide an insight into Messiaen's microscopic detail in the work. Further commentaries can be found on Claude-Samuel's web site as well as audio and visual clips. The CD and DVD are also available to purchase here . Click here to see and hear Thomas Bloch and Jean-François Zygel perform 4th Feuillet Inedits. Click here to see and hear Willem Tanke perform Messiaen's organ works. ©Willem Tanke Nans Bart Variations sur un thème de Messiaen ((Thème du Final - 10ème Mvt. de la Turangalila-Symphonie)) for Percussion Ensemble here © Copyright protected ©Thomas Bloch

St François in Geneva All photos © Carole Parodi St.François in Stuttgart 2023 ©Martin Sigmund ©Martin Sigmund ©Martin Sigmund ©Martin Sigmund ©Martin Sigmund ©Malcolm Ball ©Martin Sigmund

The 'really' complete organ works by Messiaen. In 2014, Jon Gillock began releasing his recordings of Messiaen’s Complete Organ Works on the Raven label and the project is now finished with the addition of a recently discovered transcription entitled 'Vie pour Dieu des Ressuscités '. They have been recorded on the new organ by Pascal Quoirin (St. Didier, France) at The Church of the Ascension, NYC. He participated in the design of this French organ, which is ideal for Messiaen’s music. Although the acoustic in the church is excellent and warm, it is not terribly reverberant. This aspect provides an added dimension to this music because one can hear all the detail of the compositions, which are not hidden by an overly reverberant space. This acoustic is similar to that found in concert halls, where orchestras perform Messiaen’s music. These recordings show that this unusual body of music can function in more than one setting. On January 15, 1974, Jon Gillock gave the New York premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité at The Church of the Ascension, NYC. That single performance launched him into a career as a concert artist almost over night, giving premieres of this fabulous work from coast to coast. The following year, he gave the first New York performance of Messiaen’s then Complete Works for Organ — the Livre du Saint Sacrement had not yet been written — in a series of five concerts. Soon afterwards, he met Messiaen who invited Gillock to visit him in Paris. In 1977, Gillock went to Paris to study with his Maître at the Paris Conservatory. In 1986, Messiaen presented Gillock with a copy of his manuscript for the new Livre du Saint Sacrement , authorizing him to give performances of this epic masterpiece before its publication. Again, Gillock gave the New York premiere, which was again followed by a transcontinental tour premiering this piece around the country to wide critical and public acclaim. He has given several other special New York performances of this work — in 1988, to celebrate Messiaen’s 80th birthday; in 1992, as a memorial tribute to Messiaen at the time of his death; and in 1996, for the opening concert of the Convention of the American Guild of Organists that celebrated their 100th anniversary. The work, Vie pour Dieu des Ressuscités was recently discovered (while the Messiaen collection was being catalogued at the Bibliothèque de France) within the manuscript of Les Corps glorieux on the back of the first movement (Subtililté des Corps glorieux ) and seems to have been considered by Messiaen for the second movement of that work. The work itself is a transcription for organ of the fourth movement from Fête des belles Eaux entitled L'Eau, a transcription of which became the fifth movement of Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Praise to the Eternity of Jesus ). Because Messiaen gave the organ transcription a characteristic subtitle from the scriptures: "Alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord; charity never faileth." - St. Paul, letter to the Romans 6:11 and I Corinthians 13:8, and its substantial 13min duration, must have been seriously considered at the time. Jon Gillock provides extensive notes in the CD booklet on this and all the works recorded along with photographs and organ details that are sumptuously presented in all six jewel cases (there are six releases three of which are double CDs for the price of one). Nine CDs in all from Raven Compact Discs here . Jon Gollock gave all the New York premieres of every organ piece by Messiaen since 1974: 1974 NY Premiere of Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité 1975 First New York performance of Messiaen’s Complete Works for Organ 1987 NY Premiere of Livre du Saint Sacrement (from the manuscript) 1999 American and NY Premieres of three then-recently discovered pieces: Monodie Offrande au Saint Sacrement (from the manuscript) Prélude (from the manuscript) 2022 World premiere recording of Vie pour Dieu des Ressuscités (from the manuscript, unpublished)

A selection of books relating to Olivier Messiaen. This is not a definitive bibliography but rather a selection of key publications by scholars and authors from around the world. Proceedings of the International Symposium “Olivier Messiaen in Toul, 1940,” Published by the City of Toul, Toul 2025, p. 190, format 17 x 22 cm, edited by Prof. Jerzy Stankiewicz, initiator and organizer of the conference in Toul, from April 30 to May 2, 2022. The conference was attended by over 20 people, including musicologists, composers, and musicians from Poland and France. The volume opens with an Avant-Propos by the mayor of Toul, Mr. Alde Harmand, a great patron of the arts and of this conference, and a farewell to three outstanding personalities who were to participate in it: René de Obaldia (Académie de France), Joanna Bruzdowicz-Titel (a Polish composer who studied with Messiaen), and Claude Samuel (Radio France Musique). After the announcement of the gala concert held in Krakow on the occasion of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, a concert (Messiaen's Vingt regards, Polish pianist Dominika Peszko) announcing the conference in Toul, the preambles are presented - introductory statements by Alde Harmand, Senator Christian Cambon, a message from René de Obaldia, and a preamble by Jerzy Stankiewicz. This is followed by the full program of the three-day conference, concerts, film screenings, exhibitions, and a tribute paid by conference participants in Germiny, the place where Olivier Messiaen and his three companions were imprisoned (June 22, 1940). The text section of the book opens with Jerzy Stankiewicz's keynote paper « Olivier Messiaen prisonnier de guerre au camp de Toul, 1940 », a historical analysis of events from Messiaen's imprisonment in Germiny and his detention in two Frontstalag camps, 162 Toul and 161 Champs-le-Boeuf, as well as in Brabois-Villers before his transport to Görlitz (facts that are rarely mentioned in the world literature on Messiaen). In the second fundamental paper, « Sur la guerre et l’occupation allemande à Toul en 1939/1940 », Vincent Lamarque, a historian from the local Michel-Hachet Museum, presents the historical background of the war events in the city and hypotheses about the location of the hitherto undiscovered Frontstalag 162, with rich archival and illustrative material from the Museum in Toul. This part of the conference is complemented by a paper by Marie-Gabrielle Soret (curator of the Messiaen collection at the BnF), « Le Fonds d’Archives Olivier Messiaen – Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen à la Bibliothèque Nationale de France ». In the second part of the program, Polish composers who studied in Olivier Messiaen's class presented their reflections and memories: Marta Ptaszyńska (Chicago), Sławomir Czarnecki (Warsaw), Messiaen's last private student, and French composer Iradj Sahbai (Strasbourg), as well as Jerzy Mazaraki, a former Polish diplomat whose father, Mieczysław Mazaraki , was imprisoned alongside Messiaen in Görlitz. The conference will be complemented by remarks from Pascal Vigneron on recording organ works on the organ of Toul Cathedral (CD Forlane) and Michel Gueritte (Association Olivier Messiaen a Fuligny), a distant cousin of Messiaen, on the need to recover the Messiaen family home in Fuligny, and Jerzy Stankiewicz's Discours dans la Cathédrale Saint -Etienne, « Olivier Messiaen, un véritable artiste croyant », and a slide show ‘diaporama’ of archival photos of Olivier Messiaen's life and international career, including Messiaen's visit to Poland in 1989 ; as well as a note on Joseph Poussot, inventor of the monochord, kept at the Museum in Toul. The volume continues with biographical notes on all conference participants and the works performed: O. Messiaen (Mélodie dans le style de Mozart, Thème et variations, Quatuor pour la fin du Temps - First performance of the masterpiece in Toul), Polish composers: Jakub Polaczyk (Un mémorial dans le vent du Temps (a work commissioned for Toul), Joanna Bruzdowicz-Titel, Sławomir Czarnecki, Iraj Sahbai, Marta Ptaszyńska, and works by O. Messiaen for solo Martenot and with piano (premiere from the manuscript Monodie en ¼ tons pour une Onde Martenot seule) collected and performed by Thomas Bloch and Dimitri Vassilakis. Notes on the films shown: Messiaen et les oiseaux, dir. Denise Tual, 1971; Le Charme des impossibilités, dir. Nicolás Buenaventura Vidal, 2006; For the End of Times, dir. Paul Moon, 2019. Notes on two exhibitions: Olivier Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du Temps et la Pologne (curator Prof. Małgorzata Woźna-Stankiewicz ) and Les oiseaux de Messiaen en Mazurie en Pologne, photographs by Polish photographer Boleslaw Słomkowski (Olecko). This richly illustrated volume also includes two previously unpublished portraits of Messiaen after his return from captivity in Görlitz, taken by the renowned photographer IZIS (Manuel Bidermanas). The volume of post-conference proceedings concludes with a reprint of an article from « L'Est républicain » (September 19, 2022) about the inauguration ceremony for a new street in Toul, which will be named after Olivier Messiaen, held as a result of the conference in Toul described in this text. BibTop Vladimír ŠTĚPÁNEK, Francouzská moderní hudba [French Modern Music], Editio Supraphon, Prague-Bratislava 1967, pp. 354. The History of French Music by Vladimír Štěpánek (1921 – 1997), a Czech doctor of humanities, musicologist, critic, and journalist. It covers the period fromErik Satie to Boulez, Xenakis, and P. Schaeffer, with a vivid portrayal of the Young France group.Its co-founder, as we know, was Olivier Messiaen and three other composers. They opposed the dominance of the neoclassical style, advocating a return to emotions and vivid expression, to spirituality and the humanistic dimension of music. Czech and Slovak bibliography collected by Jerzy Stankiewicz Miloš NAVRÁTIL, Olivier Messiaen – osobnost nové hudby. Medailon ke 100 . výročí narozeni [Olivier Messiaen – a personality of new music. Medal for the 100th anniversary of his birth], Montanex Publishing House, Ostrava-Mariánské Hory 2008, pp. 72. A small monograph by Miloš Navrátil (1932-2019), a Czech musicologist and lecturer at Palacký University in Olomouc, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Messiaen's birth, includes a biography of the composer, a guide to his works, and a detailed analysis of selected pieces from the Catalogue d'oiseaux, as well as a selection of Czech bibliographies on Messiaen and a list of his scores and literature available at the National Library of the Czech Republic. Milan SLAVICKÝ, Rozhovory z Domu umělcům [Interviews from the House of Artists], Edition Supraphon, Prague 1990, pp. 88. Conversations with prominent figures from the world of music (with Olivier Messiaen, pp. 69-85) conducted at the "House of Artists" in Prague by Milan Slavický (1947-2009), a Czech composer and theorist. Analysing Messiaen's music, he sought keys to understanding contemporary musical expression. The meeting took place in connection with Messiaen's visit to Prague in 1987 for the concert performance of Trois petites liturgies and the recording of the work for Supraphon by Czech performers under the direction of Bohumil Kulinský, including Yvonne Loriod (piano) and Jeanne Loriod (ondes Martenot) and the "BambiniPraga" Choir. The drawing of O. Messiaen on page 69 was made by V. J. Žižka (1987). The composer added a dedication: "Merci à la Tchécoslovaquie et à la musique tchécoslovaque." Olivier Messiaen, December 4, 1987. OLIVIER MESSIAEN, Technika môjho hudobného jazyka (Technique de mon langage musical), translation into Slovak: Ivan Koska, Hudobné Centrum, Bratislava 2016, pp. 114. The translation of Messiaen's treatise was done by Ivan Koska, who specialises in theoretical and aesthetic texts, and is also a trained Slovak pianist and editor of scientific publications at Hudobné Centrum in Bratislava (Slovakia). Olivier Messiaen, man and artist in Stalag VIII A in Görlitz by Jerzy Stankiewicz. [in Polish]. Preface of Claude Samuel. Publishing House Musica Iagellonica, Kraków 2014. ISBN 978-83-7099-201-9. 192 pages, format 130 x 200. And [in Ukrainian]. Two Prefaces of Stefania Pawłyszyn and Claude Samuel . Scientific Society named after Shevchenko in Lviv, Posvit Publishing House, Drohobych 2019. ISBN 978-617-7624-97-3. 216 pages, hard cover format 135 x 210 mm. This book contains a chronicle of life and creativity and provides a detailed and insightful background to all aspects of Messiaen's life and work. Especially important is the chapter on Messiaen's captivity in Stalag VIIIA Görlitz, that contains new facts of historical research unknown in world musicology : two premieres of the Quartet at the End of Time (unfinished in December 1940) and the premiere of the entire piece (January 15, 1941). In addition, recommendations have been added on how to listen to Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps as well as a bibliography of works. The book is addressed to the scientific environment of musicologists, art historians, teachers and students. It is written in an accessible literary language and contains several unpublished photographs (from Messiaen's visit to Poland during the performance of three scenes from Saint Francis of Assisi in 1989). This book, translated into Ukrainian by musicologist Volodymyr Hrabowsky and provided with a second Preface by the outstanding professor of musicology Stephanie Pavlyshyn from Lviv, is the first book about Olivier Messiaen published in Ukraine. Messiaen in Context Edited by Robert Scholl. Cambridge University Press ISBN 1108487912 November 2023 This book provides fresh perspectives on the contexts within which Messiaen the composer worked, the intellectual currents that influenced him, and the influence he himself exerted on twentieth-century music. It enables a holistic understanding of Messiaen in relation to the wider world, including his engagement with and refiguration of theology through music, the performance and reception of his work, the ways in which his aesthetics and conceptual universe have been understood by his students, and how his legacy continues to evolve. Reappraising known facts and adding new interpretations from a variety of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary viewpoints. OLIVIER MESSIAEN A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY This groundbreaking biography offers fresh perspectives on the life, ideas and music of French twentieth-century composer, organist and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen. Drawing on previously unexplored sketches and archival material, Robert Sholl seamlessly combines elements of biography, musicology, theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and aesthetics to present a nuanced perspective on Messiaen’s work. This book examines the profound impact of Messiaen’s devout Catholicism, which found expression through his work as a church organist, his engagement with birdsong, his interaction with Surrealism and his influence on major musical figures of the latter twentieth century. Unlike previous biographies, this book also considers the perspectives of Messiaen’s contemporaries and students, providing a comprehensive understanding of his life and artistic legacy. REAKTION BOOKS 1 May 2024 - 9781789148657 234 mm x 156 mm | 208 pages Hardback | £25 World Rights: Reaktion Quartet for the End of Time -On Music, Grief & Birdsong Michael Symmons Roberts Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jonathan Cape Publication date ‏ : ‎ 17 April 2025 Language ‏ : ‎ English Print length ‏ : ‎ 304 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1787331857 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1787331853 A personal reckoning with grief, doubt, faith and poetry set to one of the most celebrated musical works of the twentieth century, from the award-winning poet and librettist. The story goes like this: on a freezing winter night in 1941, a new piece of chamber music was performed to a crowd of prisoners of war on a three-stringed cello, clarinet, violin and pub piano with sticky keys. It was the premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps. Listeners since then have been captivated by the ecstatic music and mythology of Messiaen’s masterpiece. Michael Symmons Roberts’ own lifelong fascination with the Quartet– having chanced upon it in a record shop in his late teens and fallen in love with its title - leads him on a quest to understand its enigmatic power. His fascination – at times frustration – with Messiaen’s vision opens into an exploration of grief, of personal faith and doubt, of the end of time and what may lie beyond it. Interwoven with poetry and wit, this book is an expansive evocation of music, loss, hope and time, seen through the lens of the Quartet's technicolour, apocalyptic vision. Olivier Messiaen's Opera, Saint Francois d'Assise by Vincent Perez Benitez Published by: Indiana University Press 9780253042880. In this comprehensive study of Olivier Messiaen's magnum opus, Saint François d'Assise , Vincent Perez Benitez examines the opera from both theological and musical-analytical perspectives to ask how Messiaen expresses his Catholic theology through his work. Benitez combines a close reading of the opera score with accounts from Messiaen's associates, studies of Messiaen's birdsong notebooks and other primary documents, and an examination of the religious, musical, poetic, and visual arts literature with which the composer was familiar to explore how the opera's harmonic language and sound-color relationships motivate its musical meaning and expression. Through his analysis of these diverse sources and comparisons of Saint François d'Assise with other works such as Berg's Wozzeck and Wagner's Parsifal, Benitez places Messiaen's compositional practice within larger musical perspectives and historical contexts As one of only a few pieces not primarily inspired by Messiaen's Catholic faith, but by human love as described in the romance of Tristan and Isolde and elsewhere, the Turangalîla-symphonie is contextualized in Messiaen's oeuvre and as a genre piece. Using previously untranslated information from Messiaen's own description of the work in his Traité, close analysis of the music seeks to demystify some of the complex innovations he made to his musical language, especially in the areas of rhythm and orchestration. This Element pays special attention to the fragmentary and elusive program which is explained with reference to Messiaen's fascination with surrealism at this time. Information is included on the commission and composition of the piece, its premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, its revision by Messiaen in 1990, and its reception history in both live and recorded performances. Series: Elements in Music since 1945 Online ISBN: 9781009165723 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Print publication: 05 October 2023 Messiaen's Musical Language on the Holy Child Cagdas Soylar provides a detailed analysis of two religiously motivated pieces from his Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (Twenty Gazes upon the Infant Jesus), one of the most remarkable solo piano works of the twentieth-century, to explore how he integrates the Christian theology into his musical language. Je dors, mais mon cœur veille is a dialogue that represents Messiaen’s mystic love of God, whereas Regard des Anges is a celebration symbolizing the angels beholding the birth of Jesus Christ. Soylar explains how the entirely different subjects of the two pieces are articulated in the change of pitch collections and rhythmic structures, as well as how the changes of musical language through the use of the different pitch collections generate the formal structure that is related to the biblical source. WIPF & STOCK ISBN: 978-1-5326-6416-8 ©2018 Gaëtan Puaud is a long-time champion of Messiaen and his music and has held the position of director of the Festival de la Meije dedicated to Olivier Messiaen for 20 years. This first biography for the ' horizons collection ' not only traces Messiaen's life in music and the arts but also reveals how Messiaen's work was received and promoted outside of Europe. In particular the efforts of Russian pianist Gregory Haimovsky who single handedly introduced the music of Messiaen to the Soviet Union, with great courage and in spite of several persecutions. He himself was spiritually transformed by the music of Messiaen and premiered several works in Russia and made a couple of recordings for Melodiya, Russia's national record label. Bleu nuit éditeur EAN : 9782358840989 Horizons N°77 Parution : 01/2021 176 pages Format : 140 x 200 mm Gregory Heimovsky: A Pianist's Odyssey to Freedom University of Rochester Press; Illustrated edition (25 Jun. 2018) Language ‏ : ‎ English Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 280 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1580469310 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1580469319 Interlacing material from previously unknown Russian archives, original recordings, photographs, and essays, Gregory Haimovsky: A Pianist's Odyssey to Freedom is the story of an extraordinary Russian concert pianist who, fighting the cultural prohibitions of the USSR, eventually succeeded in performing and recording major works by the prominent French composer Olivier Messiaen. At the lowest point of his life, expelled from Moscow and exiled to a small provincial city, Haimovsky discovered Messiaen's oeuvre uncatalogued and hidden in the library of the Union of Soviet Composers. Haimovsky's intense studies and Soviet premieres of these banned compositions healed and liberated his mind, spirit, and artistic imagination. Messiaen's music also deepened and fueled Haimovsky's fierce personal and musical opposition to Soviet political and cultural doctrines. Told partly in Haimovsky's own words and supplemented by interviews with several performers who worked with him between 1960 and 1972 as well as stories from his correspondence with major Russian artists, writers, and musicians of the time, Marissa Silverman's vivid narrative sheds new light on relationships between twentieth-century Russian music, Soviet politics, and the culture wars that raged during and after Stalin's barbaric rule. Here is a very moving letter from Messiaen to Haimovsky, thanking him with all his heart for having struggled to introduce his music in Russia. (from Gregory Heimovsky's personal archive) Boydell Press ISBN-10: 1783270136 ISBN-13: 978-1783270132 The music critic Felix Aprahamian (1914-2005) was a remarkable self-made man whose enormous influence in musical circles was deeply founded in his practical experience of promoting music in London, notably British and French composers. Early on he became interested in the organ and was soon corresponding with the leading French names of the day - André Marchal, Charles Tournemire, Maurice Duruflé and the young Olivier Messiaen. Et Exspecto... Festival Messiaen au pays de la Meije - 20 ans d'utopie Raphaëlle Blin with the photos of Colin Samuels Gaëtan Puaud , fondateur du Festival Olivier Messiaen au Pays de la Meije Raphaëlle Blin , auteure et élève musicologue du Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris Anne Roubet, responsable des Éditions du Conservatoire See Home page for Special Offer purchase details. Roderick Chadwick and Peter Hill give a detailed account of the evolution of Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux and illuminates the Catalogue from a variety of angles: its historical significance, as a study of how mimicry of nature can be transformed into music of mesmeric originality, and as a guide that offers a wealth of fresh insights to listeners and performers. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781107000315. Messiaen: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts (1937-1948) t he late French literature scholar Richard Burton examines nine of Messiaen's works in the context of the broader French Catholic intellectual tradition. Burton creates a vivid picture of the previously unexamined spiritual and philosophical inspirations behind Messiaen's pivotal mid-century compositions. Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780190277949. Le Modèle et l'Invention. Olivier Messiaen et la technique de l'emprunt. Yves Balmer, Thomas Lacôte et Christopher Brent Murray - préface deGeorge Benjamin. This book shows that Olivier Messiaen built his unique compositions by transforming the music he loved. Messiaen drew compositional material from eclectic sources ranging from the melodic curves of Mozart and Rameau to the irrational rhythms of Debussy and Jolivet; Publisher : Symétrie ISBN 978-2-36485-045-3 Four Last SongsAging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen and Britten by Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon Though it exhausted him physically and emotionally, Messiaen at the age of seventy-five finished his only opera, Saint François d’Assise, which marked the pinnacle of his career. Britten, meanwhile, suffering from heart problems, refused surgery until he had completed his masterpiece, Death in Venice. For all four composers, age, far from sapping their creative power, provided impetus for some of their best accomplishments. University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226420684 Olivier Messiaen: A Research and Information Guide, Second Edition, presents researchers with the most significant and helpful resources on Olivier Messiaen, one of the twentieth century's greatest composers. With multiple indices, this annotated bibliography will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field. The second edition has been fully revised and updated. Routledge ISBN 9781138106505. The Doctoral dissertation “The Sounds of the Rainbow” i s a study on La Nativité du Seigneur for organ by Olivier Messiaen. The work inquires especially: History of La Nativité Analysis of the musical language Relation between the musical language and Messiaen’s theological mind.The dissertation inquires expecially in depth the relationship between Messiaen and the synaesthetic painter Charles Blanc-Gatti, who painted nine pastels on La Nativité. A theology of the organ is also remarked. In Italian by Dario Paolini Quartet for the End of Time by Johanna Skibsrud Windmill Books,Language: English ISBN-10: 0099558629 A mesmerising tale of love, justice and the connections that transcend the passage of time, from the Giller prize-winning author Johanna Skibsrud. Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Language: English ISBN-10: 0802807623 ISBN-13: 978-0802807625 This book explores the enormous web of influences in the early part of Messiaens long life. The first section of the book provides an intellectual biography of Messiaens early life in order to make his (difficult) music more accessible to the general listener. The second section offers an analysis of and thematic commentaries on Messiaens pivotal work for two pianos, Visions of Amen, composed in 1943. Schloessers analysis includes timing indications corresponding to a downloadable performance of the work by accomplished pianists Stéphane Lemelin and Hyesook Kim. IL SAINT FRANÇOIS D'ASSISE DI OLIVIER MESSIAEN Book by Carola Lambruschini - 450 pages, 90 musical examples, a wealth of synoptical tables - italian language ABEditore, Milano, 2013. Collana: Saggistica musicale. ISBN-10: 8865511389 ISBN-13: 978-8865511381 Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences. Ashgate ISBN: 978-1-4094-2695-0 Edited by Christopher Dingle , Birmingham Conservatoire, UK and Robert Fallon , Carnegie Mellon School of Music, USA Sources and Influences presents many new primary sources, including discussion of Messiaen’s birdsong cahiers, sketch and archival materials for his Prix de Rome entries and war-time Portique, along with performance practice insights and theological inspiration in works as diverse as Visions de l’Amen, Harawi, Timbres-durées and the organ Méditations. The volume places the composer within a broader historical and cultural framework than has previously been attempted, ranging from specific influences to more general contexts. As a centrepiece, the book includes an examination of the impact of one of the greatest influences upon Messiaen, Yvonne Loriod. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception Ashgate ISBN: 978-1-4094-2696-7 Techniques, Influence and Reception explores Messiaen’s imprint on recent musical life. The first part scrutinizes his compositional technique in terms of counterpoint, spectralism and later piano music, while the second charts ways in which Messiaen’s influence is manifest in the music and careers of Ohana, Xenakis, Murail and Quebecois composers. The third part includes case studies of Messiaen’s reception in Italy, Spain and the USA. The volume also includes an ornithological catalogue of Messiaen’s birds, collates information on the numerous ‘tombeaux’ pieces he inspired, and concludes with a Critical Catalogue of Messiaen’s Musical Works. Messiaen's Musical Techniques: The Composer's View and Beyond by Gareth Healey. April 2013. Ashgate ISBN: 978-1-4094-4825- 9 Despite Messiaen's position as one of the greatest technical innovators of the twentieth century, his musical language has not been comprehensively defined and investigated. The composer's 1944 theoretical study, The Technique of My Musical Language, expounds only its initial stages, and while his posthumously published Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d'ornithologie contains detailed explanations of selected techniques, in most cases the reader is left to define these more precisely by observing them in the context of Messiaen's analyses of his own works. Gareth Healey charts the development and interconnections, considers their relationship with formal structures, and applies them in refined and extended form to works for which Messiaen himself left no published analysis. The method of analysing Messiaen's harmonies outlined in this book has been implemented in software available for download at garethhealey.com Les Chants du silence Broché – Béatrice MARCHAL Delatour France; Édition : Collection Pensée Musicale dirigée par Jean-Michel Bardez Language : Français-ISBN-10: 2752100671 ISBN-13: 978-2752100672 On a souvent répété, à la suite d'Olivier Messiaen lui-même, que sa mère Cécile Sauvage avait, en écrivant L'Ame en bourgeon, déterminé sa vocation d'artiste et de musicien. Tout n'était pas dit pour autant et la découverte récente de manuscrits longtemps cachés a révélé quel drame intime avait précipité la mélancolie puis la mort de cette femme bien différente de l'image convenue qui nous en est restée. Devant le malheur de sa mère, l'enfant impuissant aurait alors exploité ses dons musicaux hors du commun comme l'opportunité d'instaurer une relation soustraite à l'inavouable, aussi intense que les mots. L'enfermement dans la douleur et le mutisme aurait ainsi trouvé remède dans une musique tissée de silence. Collection Pensée Musicale Birdsong in the music of Olivier Messiaen by David Kraft Arosa Press. ISBN 978-1477517796 In this book, Dr David Kraft surveys and evaluates Messiaen's use of birdsong and formulates a chronological and critical taxonomy of his music, covering the species involved and his evolving methods of manipulation, instrumentation and harmonic incorporation. He also explores issues relating to authenticity and modification with respect to the incorporation of birdsong in Messiaen's music. Further, he develops appropriate graphical and tabular methods in order to help the reader better to understand his music. MESSIAEN'S FINAL WORKS by CHRISTOPHER DINGLE (Ashgate, ISBN 9780754606338) Messiaen's Final Works examines the seven works which Messiaen completed after Saint François and argues that, following the crisis provoked by the opera, his music underwent a discernible change in style. In addition, the book uses the works in question to examine the characteristics of Messiaen's music, with a particular emphasis on an often overlooked aspect of his technique: harmony. In the process, many other questions are addressed, such as the ways in which Messiaen utilizes birdsong within a larger structure. Messiaen's Final Works is in three parts. Part I begins with a brief historical survey before discussing Saint François d'Assise as the work which defines everything that follows. Part II examines the series of miniatures whose significance belies their (relatively) modest proportions. Not only do they provide an indication of Messiaen's artistic self-confidence, but they also contain important links with his final masterpiece, Éclairs sur l'au-delà.. This sublime eleven movement work for large orchestra is the subject of Part III, and is the focus of the book. Each movement is analysed in turn, before the work is considered as an entity and its hidden structure and motivic cohesion is discussed. OLIVIER MESSIAEN-JOURNALIST: by Stephen Broad. Published Ashgate: (ISBN: 978-0-7546-0876-9) Contents: Preface; Introduction; The Journalism: Articles for la revue musicale; Articles for La Sirène (later La Syrinx); Articles for Le monde musical; Articles for La Page musicale; Articles for various other journals; A catalogue of Messiaen's journalism; Selected personalia; Bibliography; Index. RELIGION UND GLAUBE Religion and Faith as Essential Artistic Energies in the Works of Olivier Messiaen and Other Composers Herausgeber: Goetze, Albrecht U. Hiekel, Jörn P.; Goetze, Albrecht; Hiekel, Jörn P. Published by:Wolke Verlagsges. ISBN 10: 3936000263. Olivier Messiaen THE CENTENARY PAPERS Edited by Judith Crispin In 2008 musicians and scholars world-wide celebrated the centenary of Olivier Messiaen's birth. One of the most influential composers in living memory, Messiaen is remembered as a great nature poet - a mystic whose music had a profound effect on the Twentieth-century avant-garde. This volume of essays, marking the occasion of Messiaen's centenary, was authored by musicologists, performers, composers, ornithologists and researchers from Australia, Germany, France, North America, Japan, New Zealand, Serbia and England. The writers, internationally acclaimed experts as well as emerging scholars, span three generations - living testimony to the diverse and lasting sphere of Messiaen's legacy. ISBN: 9781443824989 - Cambridge Scholars Publishing The Miracle of Stalag 8A. Beauty Beyond the Horror by John William McMullen BIRD BRAIN PUBLISHING ASIN: B0040GJI6C - ISBN 978-0-9826255-2-151995 The Miracle of Stalag 8A is a retelling of the fascinating story of Olivier Messiaen's composition of his Quartet for the End of Time. The enigmatic Messiaen, an avant-garde composer and also a devout Catholic, along with Etienne Pasquier, an agnostic cellist, Henri Akoka, a Jewish Trotskyite Clarinetist, and Jean le Boulaire, an atheistic violinist, become the famous quartet of Stalag 8A. These four very different men collaborated to create musical history in the most unlikely of places. Messiaen's Quartet, composed in a Stalag, transforms man's inhumanity to man with hope. Olivier Messiaen - Dai canyons alle stelle by Peter Hill Pub: Il Saggiatore (Italian) EAN9788842814856 A century after his birth, Messiaen's work was missing in Italy. This gap is now filled by this book edited by the English pianist and musicologist Peter Hill, a former pupil of Messiaon and Yvonne Loriod. Here, broken down by gender, the vast production of the French master is addressed by scholars such as Wilfred Mellers, Jane Manning. Richard Steinitz, Paul Griffith and Hill himself. The work is completed by two introductory articles that emphasize the breadth of the cultural life and work of Messiaen: music of the Greeks, that of India and Japan, the song of birds, and structuralism Darmstadtium and more. Messiaen the Theologian. Edited by Andrew Shenton, Boston University, USA Ashgate. ISBN: 978-0-7546-66400 An international array of Messiaen scholars cover a wide variety of topics including Messiaen's personal spirituality, the context of Catholicism in France in the twentieth century, and comparisons between Messiaen and other artists such as Dante and T.S. Eliot. Interdisciplinary methodologies such as exegesis, theological studies and analysis are used to contribute to the understanding of several major works including Éclairs sur l'au-delá..., Sept Haïkaï and Saint François d'Assise. La Maison Dieu Olivier Messiaen, les couleurs del Parole. Publisher: Cerf (2 July 2009) Articles by: Heller - Toury - Guiberteau - Fort - Girault - Sakharov Language: French ASIN: B001VFNXUC Messiaen: Transcending Time (ISBN: 363909574X / 3-639-09574-X ) Mareli Stolp. Publisher: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Olivier Messiaen, one of the most prolific composers of the 20th Century, was a devout Catholic whose compositions were very often inspired by the ideals of his faith. A theme that recurrs often in his works is music's relationship to time, and the linear nature of the passage of time as human beings comprehend it. It is Messiaen's ideal to write music that aspires to reach a divine level, free from human constraints. The most important of these constraints is time, music being dependant on the linear passage of time. By using a variety of techniques, Messiaen tries to alter the linear nature of time, thus reaching Divinity on a symbolic level. This book discusses the reasons for Messiaen's attitude towards time in music. It also gives a thorough analyses of two major works, the Visions de l'Amen and the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus, as examples of Messiaen's techniques for approaching time in music. Performing Messiaen's Organ Music: 66 Masterclasses by Jon Gillock. Publisher: Indiana University Press English ISBN-10: 0253353734 - ISBN-13: 978-0253353733 Messiaen was the most influential composer for the organ in the 20th century. Shaped by French tradition as well as the innovations of Debussy, Stravinsky, and Bartók, Messiaen developed a unique style that would become his signature. Using Messiaen's own analytical and aesthetic notes as a point of departure, Jon Gillock offers detailed commentary on the performance of Messiaen's 66 organ works. Gillock provides background information on the composition and premiere of each piece, a translation of Messiaen's related writings, and a systematic explanation of performance considerations. Gillock also supplies details about the organ at La Trinité in Paris, the instrument for which most of Messiaen's pieces were imagined. The Reinvention of Religious Music: Olivier Messiaen's Breakthrough Toward the Beyond by Sander van Maas. Fordham University Press ISBN-13: 9780823230587 On the basis of a careful analysis of Olivier Messiaen's work, this book argues for a renewal of our thinking about religious music. Addressing his notion of a “hyper-religious” music of sounds and colors, it aims to show that Messiaen has broken new ground. The work of Olivier Messiaen is well known for its inclusion of religious themes and gestures. These alone, however, do not seem enough to account for the religious status of the work. Arguing for a “breakthrough toward the beyond” on the basis of the synaesthetic experience of music, Messiaen invites a confrontation with contemporary theologians and post-secular thinkers. Starting from an analysis of his 1960s oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, this book arranges a moderated dialogue between Messiaen and the music theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the phenomenology of revelation of Jean-Luc Marion, the rethinking of religion and technics in Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, and the Augustinian ruminations of Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-François Lyotard. Ultimately, this confrontation underscores the challenging yet deeply affirmative nature of Messiaen's music. Italian musician and musicologist Chiara Bertoglio's book, "Per Sorella Musica" deals with the most important musical versions of St. Francis' "Canticle of the Creatures" in 20th century classical music. Sizeable chunks of the book are devoted to Messiaen's St. François d'Assise. ISBN: 8874025157. Publisher: Effatà, Italy. Olivier Messiaen: a bibliographical catalogue of Messiaen's works : first editions and first performances : with illustrations of the title pages, programmes and documents. by Nigel Simeone. Schneider, 1998. ISBN 3795209471, 9783795209476 Olivier Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise. Cammino verso la joie parfaite: With musical examples pp. 146 - cm. 17x24 - Euro 25,00 - www.zecchini.com - ISBN 13: 978-88-87203-76-9 IN ITALIAN LES VISIONS D'OLIVIER MESSIAEN by SIGLIND BRUHN. Publisher: HARMATTAN ISBN: 9782296056657 in French Ce livre examine l'influence profonde de la religion sur le langage musical d'Olivier Messiaen. Dans la première partie, il décrit la relation pratiquement invariable entre certains motifs, accords et autres composants musicaux et leur signification théologique. Dans les seconde et troisième parties, les intuitions développées autour de ce "vocabulaire musico-théologique" sont appliquées à une analyse détaillée et approfondie de deux cycles fondamentaux de ce compositeur, Visions de l'Amen pour deux pianos (1943) et Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus pour piano seul (1944). Messiaen's Contemplations of Covenant and Incarnation: Musical Symbols of Faith in the Two Great Piano Cycles of the 1940s by Siglind Bruhn Pendragon Press ISBN-10: 1576471292 ISBN-13: 978-1576471296 Messiaen characterized himself as a rhythmician, ornithologist, and theologian. All interpreters concur that his life and work are grounded in a profound faith. This book examines the translation of his faith into his musical language. It centers on a hermeutic analysis of two spiritually motiviated instrumental compositions, Visions de l'amen for two pianos (1943) and Vingt Regards sur l enfant-Jésus for piano solo (1944). Part I introduces the main aspects of the composer s religious environment (the catholic literary revival, his father Pierre and his mentor Charles Tournemire) as well as the components of his idiosyncratic musico-symbolic vocabulary. Parts II and III examine the twenty-seven movements comprised in the Visions< and the Regards, whose thematic material, structure, and musical as well as spiritual function within the whole cycle are interpreted in light of the literary source and imagery that inspired Messiaen. Messiaen's Explorations of Love and Death: Musico-poetic Signification in the Tristan Trilogy and Three Related Song Cycles (Dimension and Diversity: Studies in 20th-Century Music) Pendragon Press ISBN-10: 1576471365 - ISBN-13: 978-1576471364 Messiaen's lifelong quest centered on the colors and rhythms of a music that would serve as a vehicle for his thoughts about time, his love of God, and his enthusiasm for birdsong. An additional topic about which he felt deeply is that of passionate, fated human love and its relationship to death on the one hand, the love of God on the other. During the years 1936-1948, he composed five cycles of vocal music to his own texts as well as the Turangalîla Symphony, the monumental centerpiece of his Tristan Trilogy. The focus of this study is the in-depth analysis and interpretation of these six works on love, with particular regard for their unusual wealth of poetic, sonic, and visual colors and imagery. The wonder of rainbows, the magic of exotic sounds, the fantastic attractiveness of surrealist representations, and the majestic inexorability of fate in myths of various times and cultures define Messiaen s lyrics as much as his idiosyncratic, highly symbolic musical language, which never fails to build bridges between this and another world. Messiaen's Interpretations of Holiness and Trinity: Echoes of Medieval Theology in the Oratorio, Organ Meditations, and Opera by Siglind Bruhn ISBN-10: 157647139X - ISBN-13: 978-1576471395 Three of Messiaen's later works, La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Méditations sur le mystére de la Sainte Trinité, and Saint François d Assise, are linked by the fact that the composer refers to and quotes from Thomas Aquinas. The composer s reception of Thomistic texts is one of the principles guiding the interpretations in this study. On the one hand, Messiaen had been pondering Thomas s thoughts on the role of music in the life of a Christian and on music s possible spiritual content all through his professional life; on the other hand, the oratorio, the organ meditations, and the opera are the only works in which Messiaen quotes extensive Thomistic sentences addressing purely theological subject matter. The first aspect, Messiaen s appropriation of or felicitous congruence with the medieval theologian s views on music underlies all analyses as a kind of background fabric. The second aspect, Messiaen s quotations from the Summa theologica and their musical translation, determines segments of a larger discussion that, in the book s three main chapters, attempts to do justice to the compositions as a whole. While Thomas theological aesthetics appears as a thread woven through a texture in a way that brings it only periodically to the foreground, the statements from Thomas s writings provide essential foundations determining the works content and its musical rendering. Olivier Messiaen, Troubadour by Siglind Bruhn Liebesverständnis und musikalische Symbolik in Poèmes pour Mi, Chants de terre et de ciel, Trois petites Liturgies de la présence divine, Harawi, Turangalîla-Sinfonie und Cinq Rechants EDITION GORZ. ISBN 978-3-938095-07-2 in German Messiaens ‘Summa theologica’ by Siglind Bruhn Musikalische Spurensuche mit Thomas von Aquin in La Transfiguration, Méditations und Saint François d’Assise EDITION GORZ. ISBN 978-3-938095-09-6 in German Messiaen, l'empreinte d'un géant by Catherine Lechner-Reydellet ISBN-10: 2840495112 - ISBN-13: 978-2840495116 Pub. Editions Seguier in French Présentation de l'éditeur Il fut celui par qui tout arriva pour que demeure notre passion, celui pour qui le chant du rossignol en lisière des forêts, de la linotte dans les vignobles de Charente et de la fauvette à lunettes dans les garrigues du Roussillon, redonna le droit d'être musicien Catherine Lechner-Reydellet, écrivain et pianiste, professeur au Conservatoire de Musique et d'Art dramatique de Grenoble, nous présente Olivier Messiaen, revisité par ses anciens élèves, ses illustres interprètes, ses amis, journalistes, chefs d'orchestre et poètes, sous un éclairage inhabituel jamais dévoilé à ce jour. Messiaen ou la lumière by Philippe Olivier Pub.Hermann in French ISBN-10: 2705667253 - ISBN-13: 978-2705667252 THE LIFE OF MESSIAEN by CHRISTOPHER DINGLE (Cambridge University Press, ISBN 052163220X / 0521635470) The Life of Messiaen paints a more nuanced picture of the man and the musician, peering behind Messiaen's public persona to examine the private difficulties and creative struggles that were the true backdrop to many of his greatest achievements. Based upon the latest research, including previously overlooked sources, this book provides an excellent introduction to Messiaen's life and work, presenting a fascinating new perspective of a man whose story is more remarkable than the myths surrounding it. Olivier Messiaen's System of Signs Notes Towards Understanding His Music Andrew Shenton Andrew Shenton's groundbreaking cross-disciplinary approach to Messiaen's music presents a systematic and detailed examination of the compositional techniques of one of the most significant musicians of the twentieth century as they relate to his desire to express profound truths about Catholicism.It is widely accepted that music can have mystical and transformative powers, but because 'pure' music has no programme, Messiaen sought to refine his compositions to speak more clearly about the truths of the Catholic faith by developing a sophisticated semiotic system in which aspects of music become direct signs for words and concepts. Using interdisciplinary methodologies drawing on linguistics, cognition studies, theological studies and semiotics, Shenton traces the development of Messiaen's sign system using examples from many of Messiaen's works and concentrating in particular on the "Meditations sur le mystere de la Sainte Trinite" for organ, a suite which contains the most sophisticated and developed use of a sign system and represents a profound exegesis of Messiaen's understanding of the Catholic triune God.By working on issues of interpretation, Shenton endeavours to bridge the traditional gap between scholars and performers and to help people listen to Messiaen's music with spirit and understanding. Messiaen, a major biography by Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, published by Yale University Press This book includes extracts from the private diaries and papers of Olivier Messiaen for the first time, along with several hundred photographs. This project has been awarded very significant Research Grant funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. see reviews The French edition of the book (Paris, Fayard, 2008) includes "Sigle" - a short little piece for unaccompanied flute which has been published for the first time as an illustration here. There is also a detailed catalogue of works and an additional chapter on Messiaen's musical language that are not in the English version. OLIVIER MESSIAEN- Christopher Dingle & Nigel Simeone (editors) Music, Art and Literature (Ashgate, ISBN 0754606333). When Olivier Messiaen died in 1992, the prevailing image was of a man apart; a deeply religious man whose only sources of inspiration were God and Nature and a composer whose music progressed along an entirely individual path, artistically impervious to contemporaneous events and the whims both of his contemporaries and the critics. Whilst such a view contains a large element of truth, the past ten years has seen an explosion of interest in the composer, and the work of a diverse range of scholars has painted a much richer, more complex picture of Messiaen. This volume presents some of the fruits of this research for the first time, concentrating on three broad, interrelated areas: Messiaen's relationship with fellow artists; key developments in the composer's musical language and technique; and his influences, both sacred and secular. Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jesus: Messiaen's means of conveying extra-musical subtext (Olivier Messiaen, France) by Christopher S. Bowlby ProQuest / UMI (March 22, 2006) ISBN: 0542177072 The purpose of this study is to answer the question: How does Messiaen's approach to musical architecture convey symbolic or programmatic meaning in his mammoth work for solo piano, Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus ? Not every movement is described in detail. Each example is only discussed insomuch as is necessary to determine how applicable musical elements or compositional processes underline the intended message. Much of the conclusions identify the ways in which a basic technique, such as a melody and the mode with which it is constructed, implies a meaning, perhaps through Messiaen's own notes or indications in the score or through original or previously published analysis. Furthermore, the examination deals with these basic means and how they are combined and superimposed to produce proportions of interest or how they might serve to exemplify a numerological or theological significance. Olivier Messiaen\'s composition techniques in Reveil des Oiseaux (France) -- Dissertation ProQuest / UMI (December 18, 2006) Language: English ISBN-10: 0542015919ISBN-13: 978-0542015915 In his first major composition in the so-called “le style oiseaux”, Olivier Messiaen uses thirty-eight bird calls as his main musical material. Despite Messiaen's claim that the piece is ‘merely a truthful translation’ of nature, this dissertation focuses on how the composition is organically produced; in terms of its form, its pitch material and its timbral treatment. It was especially exciting to follow his very personal and literal form of ‘com-po-sing’ (in the sense of ‘putting together’ or ‘combining’); a technique in which small units of previously heard music reappear later, meticulously re-shuffled or combined with seemingly different music. It was particularly thrilling to delve into his innovative ways of treating the original bird calls. MESSIAEN STUDIES. Edited by Robert Sholl This collection of scholarly essays offers new cultural, historical, biographical and analytical perspectives on Messiaen's musical oeuvre from 1941 to 1992. The volume includes: a fascinating snapshot of Messiaen's life in occupied France; a study of the Surrealist poetics of Messiaen's song cycle Harawi; a chapter on Messiaen's iconoclastic path to the avant-garde heritage that he bequeathed to his pupils; discussion on Messiaen's place in twentieth-century music; and detailed analysis of specific works, including his opera St François d'Assise. MusArtLit OH MY GOD: Messiaen in the Ear of the Unbeliever is based on Paul Festa's award-winning and critically acclaimed film Apparition of the Eternal Church. The book and movie capture the explosive responses of 31 mostly nonreligious artists to the apocalyptic music of the Christian visionary Olivier Messiaen. Published by Bar Nothing Books OLIVIER MESSIAEN: Oiseaux exotiques Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone Series: Landmarks in Music Since 1950 Ashgate ISBN: 0 7546 5630 6 see review OLIVIER MESSIAEN: Benitez, Vincent P. Olivier Messiaen: A Research and Information Guide. New York: Routledge Publishing, 2008. Music for the End of Time by Jen Bryant (Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Co)ISBN: 0802852297 This work is Jen Bryant's poetic biography of French composer Olivier Messiaen, coupled with Beth Peck's evocative pastel illustrations, captures both the desolation of a World War II prison camp and the transforming power of music. This book will stir readers of all ages to seek hope in the things that inspire them, and is a great introduction to Messiaen for children from 8 years upward. Saint Francois D'Assise Premieres Loges Avant Scene Opera Arts Et Spectacle Revues 21/10/2004 ISBN:2843852021 French Masters of the Organ Saint-Saëns, Franck, Widor, Vierne, Dupré, Langlais, Messiaen Michael Murray. Yale University Press 2005 For the End of Time The Story of the Messiaen Quartet Rebecca Rischin see reviews After his death Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen compiled all of Messiaens' writings which are now published in 7 volumes entitled 'Traité de Rythme, de Couleur, et d'Ornithologie' (Paris, Leduc) MessCompanion LE GROUPE JEUNE FRANCE by SERGE GUT Yves Baudrier - Daniel Lesur - André Jolivet - Olivier Messiaen Editions Honoré Champion, Collection Musique - Musicologie, 1977 MESSIAEN ON MESSIAEN The composer writes about his works. Text by Messiaen translated by Irene Feddern Frangipani Press. 1986 The 22 Piano Concertos by Mozart. Introduced and analyzed by Messiaen Paris. Librairie Seguier. 1990. in-12° (11,5x18,5 cm). 121 p. The Messiaen Companion: edited by Peter Hill (London, Faber and Faber 1995) Les Oiseaux de Messiaen: Nicole Malinconi, Melanie Berger (Esperluete Eds 2005) ISBN:2930223561 Olivier Messiaen: L'homme et son oeuvre. Pierrette Mari (Paris, Segheres, 1965) Das orgelwerk Messiaens:Sieglinde Ahrens ,Hans-Dieter Möller, and Almut Rössler, (Duisburg, Gilles and Francke, 1976) Olivier Messiaen: Claude Rostand (Ed. Ventadour,1952/57) Contributions to the Spiritual World of Olivier Messiaen: Almut Rössler (Gilles & Francke 1986) Recontres avec Olivier Messiaen: Antoine Goléa (Paris, Julliard 1960-reprinted Slatkine Genéve-Paris 1984) Olivier Messiaen: Harry Halbreich (Paris, Fayard/SACEM 1980) Extensively revised in 2008 Olivier Messiaen: Leben und Werk: Theo Hirsbrunner (Laaber-Verlag 1988) Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time: Paul Griffiths (London/Boston, Faber and Faber 1985) Thomas Daniel Schlee / Dietrich Kämper (Hg.): Olivier Messiaen. La Cite celeste - das himmlische Jerusalem. Über das Leben und Werk des französischen Komponisten. Köln Wienand Verlag 1998. Olivier Messiaen: une poetique de merveilleux: Brigitte Massin (Aix-en-Provence, Alinéa, 1989) Messiaen: Robert Sherlaw Johnson (London. Dent 1976. R/1989) Portrait(s) d'Olivier Messiaen: Catherine Massip (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) Messiaen: Roger Nichols (London Oxford University Press 1975 2/1986) Bien Cher Félix..Letters from Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod to Felix Aprahamian (Cambridge, Mirage 1998) Messiaen: Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps: Anthony Pople (Cambridge University Press 1998 ISBN 0521585384) Entretiens avec Olivier Messiaen: Claude Samuel (Paris, Belfond 1967 Eng. translation 1976) The Organ Music of Olivier Messiaen: Stuart Waumsley (Paris, Leduc 1968) Music and Colour: New Interviews: Claude Samuel (Paris, Belfond 1986) Olivier Messiaen, the Musical Mediator. A study of the influence of Liszt, Debussy and Bartok: Madeleine Hsu (Fairleigh Dickinson UP1996) Technique de non langage musical: Messiaen (Paris, Leduc 1944 Eng. translation 1956) Vingt lecons d'harmonie: Messiaen (Paris, Leduc 1944 Eng. translation 1956) Conférence de Bruxelles: Messiaen (Paris, Leduc 1958) Conférence de Kyoto: (Paris, Leduc 1985) Conférence de Notre Dame: Messiaen (Paris, Leduc 1978) Olivier Messiaen: Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn. text + kritic (Munich 1982) Messiaens"Saint Francois d'Assise" von Aloyse Michaely, Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Rainer Riehn (2006) ISBN 10: 3878779763-ISBN 13: 9783878779766, Querstand, Musikalische Konzepte Bd.1+2. Stroemfeld - Kartoniert/Broschie Siglind Bruhn, Images and Ideas in Modern French Piano Music: The Extra Musical Subtext in Piano Works by Ravel, Debussy and Messiaen (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon, 1997) Olivier Messiaen and the Tristan Myth by Audrey Ekdahl Davidson (Praeger Pub Text; ISBN: 0275973409) Siglind Bruhn (ed.), Messiaen’s Language of Mystical Love. Volume 1 in the series “Twentieth-Century Studies in Music” (New York: Garland, 1998). Jean Boivin: La classe de Messiaen. Paris, Christian Bourgois éditeur, collection " Musique/Passé/Présent 1995. Meisterwerke der Musik:Olivier Messiaen Turangalîla Symphonie by Klaus Schweizer (Wilhem Fink Verlag) Messiaen Les sons impalpables du rêve Pascal Arnault, Nicolas Darbon. Editeur : Millenaire III Collection : Compositeurs De Notre Temps ISBN : 2911906055 STEFAN KEYM: Farbe und Zeit - Untersuchungen zur musiktheatralen Struktur und Semantik von Olivier Messiaens Saint Francois d'Assise. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag 2002. - X/557 S. mit zahlreichen Notenbeispielen und Register. ISBN: 3-487-11661-8 Messiaen by Alain Périer (Paris, Seuil 1979) Olivier Messiaen homme de foi (Trinite Media Communication 1995) I have included this VHS SECAM video here (now available on DVD) as I believe it to be an invaluable archive to those of us who were not lucky enough to experience first hand lectures by the Maitre during his lifetime. Olivier Milles' film covers a masterclass/lecture given by Messiaen during the 1987 Festival d'Avignon at the Chartreuse de Villeneuve lés-Avignon. "Les couleurs du temps: Trente ans d'entretiens avec Claude Samuel". INA/Radio France 211848, 2CDs Claude Samuel met Messiaen in the late fifties and from then grew a most fertile professional relationship that produced many landmark interviews and discussion throughout the composer's life. Thirty years of interviews are represented here on 2CDs in French. L'œuvre pour piano d'Olivier Messiaen: Michéle Reverdy (Paris, Leduc 1978) L'œuvre pour orchestre d'Olivier Messiaen: Michéle Reverdy (Paris, Leduc 1988) Rosemary Walker, Modes and Pitch Class Sets In Messiaen. (Music Analysis 8:1/2 Basil Blackwell 1989) David Morris, A Semiotic Investigation of Messiaen's 'Abîme des Oiseaux'. (Music Analysis 8:1/2 Basil Blackwell 1989) Messiaen, Gooeyvaerts, Fano, Stockhausen, Boulez. Perspectives of New Music XIII 1974 pp141-16 An in-depth (29 A5 pages) analysis of the musical ideas of the 1940's and 50's. Many technical terms, graphs, note charts etc make this indispensable for all students of composition and interest in Messiaen. Olivier Messiaen:Eclairs Sur L'Au-Dela: Die Christlich-Eschatologische Dimension Des Opus Ultimum ISBN: 3631348460 Author: Tolle, Julian Christopher Publisher: Lang, Peter Publishing, Incorporated Edition/Year: 1999 Olivier Messiaen's Orchesterwerk: Des Canyons aux Etoile. Studen, zu Struktur und Konnex. Diss Kassel Carl Beate Bärenreiter 1994 Olivier Messiaen a Bibliographical Catalogue: Nigel Simeone (Hans Schneider Verlag) Back to top

Personal audio and visual archive of Messiaen recordings. Resources A selection of my personal audio & visual Resource Archive Unlike several years ago, Messiaens' music is now well represented in the commercial audio market. Listed below is my own personal collection some of which may be of interest and could be made available on a strictly private basis for study or research. A comprehensive discography can be found in 'The Messiaen Companion ' edited by Peter Hill and compiled by Dr. Christopher Dingle. Res1 View More Back to top

This webpage enables detailed comparison of five of Messiaen's birdsongs with the actual birdsongs he used as models. The spectrograms, the 78 rpm records from which he derived the North American birdsongs in Oiseaux exotiques, and Messiaen's aesethetic of imitation are discussed by Robert Fallon Birdsong in Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques compared with the ornithological recordings he transcribed. This webpage enables detailed comparison of five of Messiaen's birdsongs with the actual birdsongs he used as models. The spectrograms, the 78 rpm records from which he derived the North American birdsongs in Oiseaux exotiques, and Messiaen's aesethetic of imitation are discussed in Robert Fallon, "The Record of Realism in Messiaen's Bird Style," in OLIVIER MESSIAEN: Music, Art and Literature . ed. Christopher Dingle & Nigel Simeone (Ashgate, 2007). Prairie chicken [Tétras cupidon des prairies] Wood thrush [Grive des bois] Lazuli bunting [Pape indigo ou Ministre] Baltimore oriole [Troupiale de Baltimore] Cardinal [Cardinal rouge de Virginie] Click on the left play button to listen to the actual bird and the right play button to hear Messiaen's bird. a) Prairie chicken Download Prairie chicken as pdf 00:00 / 00:09 b) Wood thrush Download Wood thrush as pdf 00:00 / 00:06 c) Lazuli bunting Download Lazuli bunting as pdf 00:00 / 00:06 d) Baltimore oriole Download Baltimore oriole as pdf 00:00 / 00:06 e) Cardinal Download Cardinal as pdf 00:00 / 00:13 KEY • The spectograms are plotted with frequency (Hz) over time (sec.). • The numbers below the spectograms indicate the frequencies where the arrows point. • Arrows align the spectogram with the transcription; they do not indicate matching pitches. • The frequencies were determined with care for the signal’s audibility, a combination of duration and intensity. • The frequencies are accompanied by their corresponding letter names of musical pitches. • A “+” after the letter name indicates the frequency is microtonally higher than the indicated pitch: “D#+” means a sharp D#. • A “–” after the letter name indicates the frequency is microtonally lower than the indicated pitch: “G#–” means a flat G#. • The indicated frequencies depend on the turntable speed used in the digital transfer, which may not precisely duplicate the speed at which Messiaen heard the recordings. The preponderance of matched tones suggests the two speeds are very similar. Bird images by John James Audubon. Recorded excerpts from Olivier Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques are taken from a live performance by the San Francisco Conservatory's New Music Ensemble, conducted by Nicole Paiement, with Jacqueline Chew as piano soloist. The author thanks the performers and the Conservatory for their kind permission to use the excerpts. ©Robert Fallon More examples of Messiaen's birds. Click to download pdfs (in French) Alouette des champs. pdf Fauvette à tête noire. pdf Grive musicienne pdf Merle noir. pdf Mésange charbonnière. pdf Pic épeiche. pdf Pinson des arbres. pdf Rossignol philomèle. pdf Rouge-gorge. pdf Troglodyte mignon. pdf

Messiaen related articles, archive material and contributions from visitors. Writings, Articles and Archive Material WritingsTop Jean-Rodolphe Kars ~ Wartime Letter ~ Nicholas Armfelt ~ Ruth Cole ~ Miriam Carpinetti ~ Jeffery Wilson ~ Thomas Lacôte ~ Lerie Dellosa ~ Cardinal Lustiger ~ Jennifer Bate ~ Robert Grenier ©Robert Grenier personal collection Robert Grenier (bass) rehearses with Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod Robert Grenier was understudy for the part of Frère Bernard in St.François d'Assise premier run in 1983. He made two appearances in place of Jean-Philippe Courtis on the 3rd and 18th December 1983 at the Palais Garnier. All the vocal soloists were coached by Messiaen himself and Robert recorded his session on cassette tape. He had all but forgotten about the 40 odd year old cassette until recently and was surprised that it still played for 16 mins before the sound disintegrates. Robert has very kindly shared this precious document with us. The quality is rather Lo-Fi but it gives us great insight into how Messiaen (and Loriod) worked with the soloists in preparation for performance. RGrenier/Messiaen 00:00 / 16:15 © Robert Grenier. Reproduction of audio is strictly forbidden without permission of the owner. Later in 2002 Robert produced an essay for Opera Quarterly entitled: Recollections on Singing Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise. Download the pdf below. RecollectionsStFranRG2002.pdf ©2002 Oxford University Press RGrenier Concert Programme of Trois Tala performed in Spain 22 February 1949 Père Jean-Rodolphe Kars maintained a close relationship with Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod and shares these documents from his personal archive. A Prayer composed by Olivier Messiaen Père Kars wrote the following about this rare and personal document: ''Some words of this prayer announce the poem of the third “petite liturgie”, and are very much influenced by some writings of St Thomas of Aquinas. This prayer is remarkable, with a real mystical ending which announce very precisely the last prayer of St Francis in the opera. It’s a testimony of how much Messiaen kept things in his memory and would use them in due time, sometimes decades later, after having matured them''. Prière inédite rédigée par Olivier Messiaen en septembre 1943, alors qu’il s’apprêtait à composer ses « Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine » (1943-1944). On reconnaît, sous une forme différente, beaucoup d’éléments du poème de la troisième « petite liturgie » (poème dont il est aussi l’auteur). Unpublished prayer written by Olivier Messiaen in September 1943, when he was preparing to compose his " Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine " (1943-1944). We recognize, in a different form, many elements of the poem of the third "little liturgy" (poem of which he is also the author). English translation here. OMPrayer.pdf Jean-Rodolphe Kars These are two extracts of Messiaen’s diary, which Yvonne sent to me many years ago. On the right part, dated 29-11-86, Messiaen mentions the event of my priestly ordination on that very day (see on the top). Of course he was not present (he was in Paris and the ordination took place in the little French town of Paray-le-Monial), but he did assure me that he would very much pray for me (“ de tout mon coeur”) on that occasion. And so he noted that in his diary. The left part dated 21-12-86, concerns the very first mass I celebrated in the église de la Sainte Trinité, three weeks after my ordination. Messiaen was at the organ. I did publicly pay homage to him, thanking him for the immense impact his works had on my spiritual journey. On the left part in the middle, one can read that I shall celebrate the 11h45 mass. And on the right part of the same date, nearly above, he did note that I “publicly thanked him”. You find that just under the indication “51e sem. 355:10”. And on the same side, but below, there is a mention of Jennifer Bate, probably in relation with the project of her playing the first Paris performance at the Trinité of the “Livre du Saint Sacrement” in May or June 1987. P. Jean-Rodolphe Kars Here is Père Kars description: These two letters were written to me by Messiaen in 1986, after I informed him about my conversion (which he didn’t know about up to that time) and about my future ordination, first as deacon (February 1986), then as priest (November 1986). In the first letter (January 1986), one can read his joy to hear about that; he also writes that “being priest is the most “great” thing on this earth”; and also a recommendation for me to care in my future ministry about the quality of the liturgy, giving preference to Gregorian Plain-Song (in fact, I never had any influence later in those matters). The second letter (August 1986) was written to me between the two ordinations. After interesting details about his activities during those months, (and also his expression of thanksgiving for the spiritual impact of his works in my life and in my vocation), the subject is primarily about a theological comment (very personal comment) I wrote about the Trinitarian dimension I discovered in the second half of his magnificent “Combat de la mort et de la vie” (Corps Glorieux IV). In this article I also wrote a paragraph about the theological dimensions of the sound of the organ. So Messiaen writes first about all this matter, and then he comes back to my priestly ordination, a few months later. A letter of thanks from Messiaen to Harry Halbreich for his book 'Messiaen' that remains one of the seminal and revealing tomes in print. Père Kars points out that interestingly the date on the letter is the same day and month as Messiaen's death 12 years later. A Wartime Letter An important wartime autograph letter signed by Olivier Messiaen ("Messiaen"), February 15, 1940, to his friend and musical supporter Virginie Schildge-Bianchini, thanking her for a care package, advising her on her musical pursuits, and shedding light on his own devotion to music even in the midst of a war. Translated from the French, in part: "Thank you for your very kind letter and magnificent package. It will all be appreciated: from the good jam to the Lu Petit-Beurres, by way of the cheese, wafers, gingerbread, [.] honey (my passion!), the good salted butter, the chocolate and the cognac. Many, many thanks again. I am very touched! It's a very good idea to learn Bach by heart. It is also very good to take harmony and counterpoint lessons with J. P. Hennebains: you won't find a wiser and more devoted teacher. and that will allow you to resume composition again more fruitfully and easily. I am so happy to see you cultivating music with such zeal. My wife and my little son are freezing in glacial Auvergne. For my part, I must forget our physical ailments and return gradually to my rainbow of modes, of rhythms, and of resonance, living two lives simultaneously: that of 'my brother the body' and 'that of the spirit." Written just four months before the composer's capture by German forces, and his two-year stay in a prisoner of war camp where he composed his Quartet for the End of Time, the letter demonstrates Messiaen's strength of purpose -- sustained, no doubt, by his strong religious faith -- in the worst of circumstances. Virginie Schildge-Bianchini (later Zinke-Bianchini) had been a regular supporter of Messiaen's work since the 1930's. After his return from the war, she took lessons from him in Paris and also hosted several concerts of his music at her house. Wartime Letter A postcard to boulez Nicholas Armfelt A letter of thanks Nicholas Armfelt kindly contributed this letter that he received from Olivier Messiaen thanking him for sending recordings of birdsongs indigenous to New Zealand. Nicholas met sound recordist Kenneth Bigwood while teaching in New Zealand in 1963 where they recorded the songs of the Bellbird, Grey Warbler and others, but most importantly the Tui that made a great impression on Messiaen who subsequently included its song in Couleurs de la Cité Céleste . More recentlty the Tui is featured in Un oiseau des arbres de Vie famously orchestrated by Christopher Dingle and premiered at the BBC Proms in 2015. Nicholas Armfelt 'Three Little Parcels'. Since his introduction to the music of Olivier Messiaen in the 1940s, Nicholas Armfelt has remained an ardent enthusiast of his music and through this has become a keen ornithologist in his own right. Over a period of time Nicholas made several recordings of birds native to New Zealand and sent three little parcels of such recordings to Messiaen to which the composer responded in the following three letters kindly submitted by Nicholas. Nicholas sent the first parcel to Messiaen in early 1963 and Messiaen's reply was as follows: 17 juin 1963 Cher Monsieur, J'ai bien reçu votre disque d'oiseaux de Nouvelle-Zélande. C'est merveilleux! J'ai apprécié particulièrement les chants extraordinaires de l'oiseau-Tui, de l'oiseau-cloche (bellbird), du Riroriro (grey warbler), du Kiwi, du Kéa, de l'ocydrome Weka, du Takahé (notornis) -etc, etc.. Ce cadeau me fait un immense plaisir. Merci de tout mon coeur! Avec une très grande reconnaissance. Olivier Messiaen. 17th June 1963 Dear sir, I have safely received the recording of the "Birds of New Zealand". It is marvellous! I particularly appreciated the exraordinary songs of the Tui, the Bellbird, the Riroriro (grey warbler), the Kiwi, the Kea, the wood-rail Weka, the Takahe (notornis) etc. etc. This present gives me immense pleasure. Thank you with all my heart! With very great gratitude. Olivier Messiaen Nicholas sent the second parcel in late 1976 and was delighted to receive the following reply: le 6 février 1977 Cher Monsieur, Je suis couvert de confusion à la pensée que vous avez attendu si longtemps ma réponse. J'etais absent pour tournées de concerts, et à mon retour, j'ai trouvé plusieurs centaines de lettres, et je n'ai pas encore pu répondre à tout. Un immense merci pour cette bande magnétique extraordinaire! Quelle variété, quelle beauté! J'ai déjà commencé une première notation de ce que vous m'avez envoyé. Effectivement c'est l'enregistrement (C) qui est le plus extaordinaire. L'Oiseau-Tui surtout est prodigieux, comme rythme, comme ligne mélodique, et comme variété de timbres. J'ai été absolument renversé par le KOKAKO (Blue-wattled Crow, Callaeas cinerea). Je ne connais pas cet oiseau. Est-il de la meme famille que les corbeaux fluteurs (Gymnorhina)? En tout cas, cet oiseau prodigieux fait ce que les flutistes et les clarinettistes ont découvert depuis peu, c'est-à-dire des double-sons! Si vous pouviez m'en donner une description, cela me rendrait grand service. Je connaissais déjà l'Oiseau-Tui, l'Oiseau-Cloche, et le Mohoua à tete jaune. Mais beacoup d'autres oiseaux que vous m'avez envoyés sont pour moi une révélation. Spécualement l'Oiseau-Tui que je connaissais mal, et le Kokako que je ne connaissais pas du tout. Avec encore tous mes remerciements, je vous prie de croire, cher Monsieur, à ma profonde reconnaissance. Olivier Messiaen. 6th February 1977 Dear sir, I am embarrassed by the thought that you have had to wait so long for my reply. I was away on concert tours, and on my return I found several hundred letters, and I haven't been able yet to reply to them all. A huge thank-you for this amazing tape! What variety! What beauty! I have already begun my first notations of what you have sent me. indeed it is section C of the tape which is the most extraordinary. The Tui especially is prodigious - for rhythm, melodic line, and variety of timbres. I was absolutely bowled over by the KOKAKO (Blue-wattled Crow). I don't this bird. Is it in the same family as the Australian bell-magpies? At any rate, this prodigious bird does what flautists and clarinetists have discovered only recently, namely double-sounds! If you could give me a description of it that would be of great service to me. I was already acquainted with the Tui, the Bellbird, and the Yellowhead; but many of the other birds you have sent are for me a revelation. Specially the Tui, which I didn't know well, and the Kokako, which I didn't know at all. With all my thanks. I beg you to believe, dear Sir, in my profound gratitude. Olivier Messiaen. Nicholas says of the third letter that 'it moved me the most, for the composer was very old and frail - and his hand writing is a delight!' 18 mars 1991 Cher Nicholas Armfelt, Merci de tout coeur pour votre cassette de chants d'oiseaux de Nouvelle-Zélande. Je l'ai déjà écoutée plusieurs fois, avec joie. Le Kokako est très original, avec ses sons lourés descendants, et la note grave enflée crescendo vers un suraigu grinçant. J'aime le glissando tremblé en cascade descendante, le bruit d'eau du Kea. L'Oiseau-Tui a des sons tantot flutés, tantot grinçants, absolument extraordinaires. J'ame encore l'Oiseau-cloche, le Notornis, le Riroriro, les sons étranges et primitifs du Kiwi du Nord a tete jaune, la trompe grave du Kakapo. Les cris des oiseaux de mer sont aussi tres interessants. Merci encore pour ce troisiéme envoi, qui m'a fait un immense plaisir. Croyez, je vous prie, a tous mes sentiments bien amicaux et tres reconnaissants. Olivier Messiaen. 18th March 1991 Dear Nicholas Armfelt Thank you with all my heart for your cassette of New Zealand birdsongs. I have listened to it several times, with joy. The Kokako is very original, with its sliding descending notes, and its deep note that swells in a crescendo up to a high shrill sound. I like the glissando trembling in a cascade, like cascading water, of the Kea. The Tui utters sounds that are sometimes flutelike, at other times grating, absolutely extraordinary. I also like the Bellbird, the Nototnis, the Riroriro, the strange and primitive calls of the North Island Kiwi, the cretic rhythms and cooings of the Yellowhead, the deep boom of the Kakapo. The cries of the seabirds are also very interesting. Thank you again for this third present, which has given me great pleasure. I assure you of my warm and grateful best wishes. Olivier Messiaen. It is thanks to Nicholas that Messiaen went on to transcribe and use these birdsongs in three of his works: Couleurs de la cité céleste (indeed the first few bars are the song of the Tui), Éclairs sur l'au-dela and Concert à quatre . '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 A letter of encouragement Ruth Cole This a short letter written by Olivier Messiaen in 1947 to Ruth Ellen Cole, (pictured at the time) kindly contributed by her daughter Sue Ellen (Matthews) Fealko. Ruth Cole Matthews (maiden name, Ruth Ellen Cole) was the first of her family to go to college, graduating from the University of Connecticut with a Bachelor of Arts in 1946. She was then accepted into the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where she majored in music theory. She completed her Master of Arts in 1949, and her thesis was titled "An Analysis of Three Piano Preludes of Olivier Messiaen ." Sibley Music Library at Eastman has a copy of it (under Ruth C. Matthews). Ruth went on to live a life filled with music. For years, she taught piano, organ, and music theory at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. She performed as a pianist in countless concerts and recitals, and she also was a church organist for over fifty years. Her true love really was organ music and she even went on several tours to see famous organs of Europe. Ruth died last October aged 89. Among her things, Sue Ellen's sister was surprised to find this letter from Olivier Messiaen written to her while she was at Eastman. Evidently she wrote to him first with questions concerning her thesis. His reply is just a simple, short letter, but it certainly shows what a kind and considerate man he was that he would take the time to write to a young American music student. My sincere thanks go to Sue Ellen (Matthews) Fealko for sharing this. Miriam Carpinetti Universidade Estadual de Campinas, INSTITUTO DE ARTES, Department Member Advisors:Denise Hortência Lopes Garcia PAPERS - ARTIGOS 15 Considerações sobre materiais compositivos utilizados em Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité de Olivier Messiaen see details and pdf An article for our Norwegian readers! "Olivier Messiaen. – music, time, and eternity ." Thanks to Jon Mostad Miriam Carpinetti From Bloomsbury to Paris British Musician and composer Jeffery Wilson reminisces with Malcolm Ball on his time spent with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. My first encounter with Jeffery Wilson was on a hot summer’s day in central London at a rather ‘tired’ meeting of fellow music examiners having to moderate several graded music exams on video for standardisation purposes. It was near the end of the day after discussing a particularly poor performance by a grade 4 violin that the chief examiner asked if we should watch this video again at which point Jeffery commented that he would rather have his eyes pierced with hot needles than to be subjected to a further hearing! I soon discovered that Jeffery’s spontaneous wit and dry humour was well known and a source of often needed light relief at such occasions. Our path’s had crossed briefly at other meetings and events but it wasn’t until the examiner’s conference in 2009 where Jeffery was awarded the much coveted service award when I discovered that he had studied with Olivier Messiaen. Having got to know Jeffery more over time I was particularly keen to meet up and discuss not only his time with Messiaen but also the fact that he was a like minded musician having an apprenticeship in Jazz and going on to more classical study. Not quite as most Messiaen scholars the more traditional musically established Conservatoire and University route. He revealed that, like myself during college days of the 70’s and 80’s, it didn’t seem right to be attracted to the music of Messiaen (and other contemporary ‘serious’ composers) while at the same time enjoy listening (and in our case) performing charts by Charlie Parker, Ellington, Basie etc. As far as I was concerned I never mentioned my ‘altered state’ as a jazz musician (and particularly a drummer) when speaking with Messiaen scholars and aficionados at college. A large broom came in handy to sweep such things under the proverbial carpet! Times have of course changed and views nowadays are not nearly as pedantic or ostentatiously learned as they were back then. It is well known that Messiaen abhorred jazz for a variety of reasons but it is encouraging that this did not deter Jeffery and that other jazz luminary Quincy Jones from making the trip to Paris. Jeffery Wilson studied composition with John Lambert and Herbert Howells, and later with Aladar Majorossy, Gordon Jacob and Olivier Messiaen, and while at the Royal College of Music he also studied clarinet, saxophone, piano and percussion. It was while studying with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music that Jeffery was encouraged to attend a concert at the Bloomsbury theatre, London in 1979 where Messiaen was to be present. John Lambert himself could be thought of as a ‘British Messiaen’. He had studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and held a composition class at the RCM for over 20 years beginning in 1970 where a plethora of British composers as diverse as Javier Alvarez, Simon Bainbridge, Gary Carpenter, David Fanshawe, Oliver Knussen, Jonathan Lloyd, Carlos Miranda, Barrington Pheloung, Mark-Anthony Turnage and of course Jeffery Wilson passed through his class. The diversity of these composers was reflected in those that attended Messiaen’s classes in Paris. Under the auspices of John Lambert Jeffery was introduced to Messiaen at the Bloomsbury and after asking Messiaen twice if he could study with him, twice Messiaen said ‘non’. However, after some persistence on Jeffery’s part, Messiaen finally said yes – he may visit him. Indeed Jeffery was to make two visits to Paris first in 1979/80 and again in1983. The ‘back door’ element for Jeffery was as Saxophonist and after some frantic swatting up of the solfege system, to pass the entrance exam, Jeffery was enrolled as a saxophonist and upon invitation attended the so called harmony and analysis classes of Messiaen. Commenting on the impression that Messiaen made, Jeffery says, “one of the most underestimated elements of Messiaen’s personality is breadth of understanding in a broad sense. For example his knowledge of German music. He often commented on the music of Hindemith and quartal harmony (which – by the way is very much a modern jazz harmonic language) citing and playing examples. But by far the deepest impression that Messiaen made was a religious one”. He says meeting Messiaen was “truly a personal and deep religious experience because he knew so much; understanding Aramaic and Hebrew for example and sharing the narrative of the entry into the Temple – the generous translation of that from the original text: ‘my stomach bile turns over at the very thought of you’ was what Jesus said not ‘woe unto you’ (King James) – that sort of thing matters to me enormously”. Jeffery was often moved by Messiaen’s “incredible textual skill”- “because he is able to look at Greek mythology and say what he says about that and yet paraphrase it in terms of Roman Catholicism – a sort of intellectual inclusivity” Messiaen had a great regard for the music of Roussel and indeed in the 1930’s said that Roussel’s was the finest example of French music at that time. Jeffery goes on to say that “Messiaen analyzed Roussel’s Pan for flute and he spoke of the myth in the same breadth as it were, as the assimilation of colour, light and God…. It was part of his speech”. Perhaps the highlight on his first visit its conclusion - Messiaen’s comments on Jeffery’s composition Three English Songs. The middle song is set to words by Shakespeare and after dismissing some attendants in the church at La Trinité Messiaen proceeded to improvise on the opening theme of the song and as he was doing so, Jeffery “could hear his improvisational devices working and you could hear him ‘smile’ as the improvisation progressed”. Curiously enough or perhaps typically, Messiaen finished the improvisation, locked the organ loft and left by the rear door and Jeffery never saw him again until his second visit in 1983. From 1983 Messiaen was in a state of considerable exhaustion after the composition of Saint-François d’Assise but after Jeffery Wilson’s second visit to Messiaen he came away with that valuable ‘knowledge base’ that students today are able to tap into and access which allows them to engage, research, question and deal with the art-form that is so rich in the oeuvre of Messiaen. Unlike many composers for example, “Scriabin, where once you can play, say, one of the Sonatas you’ve got a hook, so to speak, on to the language -base of the composer and you use this as a tool for understanding much of his music. Although this may be true of Messiaen to some extent where one can perceive a language base, he reveals more. Not in his mathematics so much as his words. So his rhythms that are derived less from symbiotic relationships with mathematics as the deep relationship with Holy texts, and that for me, is the heart and soul of the rhythmical ambient nature of his music. I hear performances (for example in Vingt Regards) that calculate the compositional devices rather than more subtle rhythmic interest. I believe that performers would benefit from this more intimate approach and perhaps gain more of the vision”. Jeffery got to know the church officials at La Trinité much better than he did any musician at the classes - a testimony to the religious impact made from meeting Messiaen. We spoke as two Englishmen often bewildered at the mentality of the French conservatoire hierarchy. For example the way Messiaen was treated on his last day at the establishment where nothing was said or celebrated after such long service at the conservatoire seems unthinkable to us. To all intents and purposes it was just another day. Jeffery Wilson sums it up superbly by saying that; “The light he shone was far greater than the shadows cast by other people”. No amount of thanks is ever enough to Jeffery for sharing his very personal thoughts about his time with Olivier Messiaen. ©Malcolm Ball. May 2009 Jeffery Wilson Reviving Messiaen's improvisations: An encounter with Thomas Lacôte around the Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Church of the Trinity,Paris. Rarely recorded, the improvisations of Messiaen constitute the least known part of the creative activity of the French composer and pedagogue, also titular organist at the Church of the Trinity from 1931 to his death. Based on improvisation notes recently deposited at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Thomas Lacôte pays tribute to his illustrious predecessor on the Cavaillé-Coll organ on April 23, in an approach that combines research, experimentation and musical virtuosity. Meeting around the mythical instrument and figure of the French musical heritage. What is the place of improvisation in Messiaen's creative approach? The organist training that Messiaen received was essentially focused on improvisation, and his duties in the Trinity led him to improvise regularly throughout the course of his life, but also, rarely, in concert. Messiaen claimed that several of his organ works were directly related to his improvisations: the Messe de la Pentecote, the Meditations sur le Mystere de la Saint Trinite, for example. However, it seems to me quite likely that his most famous works, such as the Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus or the Turangalila-Symphonie, could also have been marked by this practice. The main challenge seems to be to understand how Messiaen was able to have a very organized theory of composition interact with his intimate, intuitive, keyboard and creative relationship "in the moment". His earliest improvisations recorded today and accessible, date from the late 1960s; For the preceding decades, we were reduced to conjectures. That is why I wanted to advance research on these issues. Can you describe the preparatory notes for the improvisation of Messiaen kept at the BnF? What were you able to achieve with a view to a "replenishment"? The personal archives of Olivier Messiaen and his wife, deposited recently at the BnF, constitute an immense mine, one of the most extraordinary testimonies on artistic creation in the last century. During the very first stages of identification and ranking in which I participated, I stopped on a few very old handwritten manuscripts, dating from the years 1940-1950: these were lists of "registrations" for verses (That is to say, brief improvisations between the sung parts) during the Sunday afternoon vespers, about thirty in total. Messiaen notes very precisely the registration (organ sounds) to be used, associated with a very brief reminder corresponding to musical ideas: « chant suraigu », « bouger un doigt puis l’autre à chaque main », « trois cors dans le medium en louré », etc. To truly "speak" this document, the only solution is to "put it into action" on its place of origin, the organ of the Trinity: to pull the stops requested by Messiaen, to be guided by its brief indications, and thus make it possible to hear a buried musical idea that this single instrument allows to "decode", with obviously a very good knowledge of its techniques of composition at that time. It is as much research as creation, reconstruction or invention, because the blanks left are enormous, but it is the only way to make this document anything but a piece of paper ... What are the peculiarities of the Cavaillé-Coll church of the Trinity? How did they influence the technique of writing the Messe de la Pentecote, a work specifically composed from the sounds of this instrument? Before Messiaen, the way of associating organ tones (what is called registration) is more a matter of convention than of invention. He reverses this fact: for him, to compose a play, it is, most often, to invent a registration or several registrations unpublished. Of course, this can only be done during experiments on the instrument itself, again by a special relation to improvisation which my research has enabled me to clarify and which has changed my way of interpreting this work. The incredible quality of each set of this organ of the Trinity leads him to work not in large masses but essentially in "pure colours". A stop, two stops only to create mixtures and crossings unpublished, sometimes even a single note! It is thus that he represents in his Mass the horrible "beast of the Apocalypse": a peculiar pipe, with a terrifying sonority, happily preserved as such up to us. Not one visitor to the organ of the Trinity who does not want to hear this sound become almost mythical! Besides the important musical corpus, what is the legacy of Messiaen in aesthetic terms, of roads of research? Is it still a model for the young generation of composers? It seems to me that for the young composers of today, Messiaen is an ancestor already very distant. But, paradoxically, his very voluminous Treatise in 7 volumes appeared gradually after his death is still a recent work and relatively unread. It is this paradox that, together with my colleagues Yves Balmer and Christopher Brent Murray, we have sought to address, and have been working since 2010 on an in-depth re-examination of his compositional techniques. The results of this research, which will appear in the form of a book at Editions Symétrie in October 2017, seem to me to go beyond a work of history or musical analysis. By showing how Messiaen really collects musical materials in all the music he loves to transform and build his own, I believe that we can bring (thanks to him) some elements of reflection at a time tormented by the conflict between inheritance, system and creation. Like Messiaen, you are organist, composer, improviser but also professor of analysis at the Conservatoire de Paris and musicologist. Do you claim this complementarity in your musical approach as a form of engagement? I must especially say that I do not imagine doing otherwise! From then on, I had to think about what seemed to me to be an obvious fact, and to realize that it was not for everyone. Today, it is important for me to defend these necessary conjunctions, to understand why the gaps have widened between these practices, and to build musical projects impossible to classify! It is not a matter of returning to the former "master of music" but rather of the conviction that to think and create through categories is a permanent necessity for musical invention to remain alive. Nicolas Schotter, 11 April 2017 Thomas Lacôte at the organ of La Trinité. Thomas Lacôte Messiaen's Musical Language: Technique and Theological Symbolism in Les Corps Glorieux, "Combat de la mort et de la vie" Lerie Dellosa would like to contribute a copy of her DMA dissertation (158 pp.) entitled: Messiaen's Musical Language: Technique and Theological Symbolism in Les Corps Glorieux, "Combat de la mort et de la vie." It was her research for her DMA in organ performance degree from the University of North Texas in 2015; it focuses on Messiaen's melodic and harmonic techniques, which are less studied than his rhythms. Download full pdf document here . Lerie Dellosa The remarkable talk of the late Cardinal Lustiger, (former Archbishop of Paris), given in Notre Dame de Paris, for the Paul VI Prize received by Messiaen in 1989 and other texts of Lustiger. LE CARDINAL LUSTIGER ET OLIVIER MESSIAEN (Trois Documents Précieux) I- REMISE DU PRIX PAUL VI A OLIVIER MESSIAEN Allocution du Cardinal Jean-Marie LUSTIGER NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS, MARDI 28 MARS 1989 Maître, En vous décernant son grand prix, l'Institut Paul VI rend hommage à votre œuvre. Elle a ce mérite de toucher une âme religieuse d'aujourd'hui avec peut-être plus de force encore que les œuvres du passé : précisément parce qu'elle est à la fois religieuse et d'aujourd'hui. Plus que religieuse, chrétienne. Ce faisant, elle touche tout homme, chrétien ou non. Comment comprendre ce paradoxe ? Paul VI avait clairement formulé le fondement dans la foi de cette intime corrélation de l'humanisme et du christianisme : « Est-ce la tâche de l'Eglise de travailler à l'extension de la culture ? A cette question continue le Pape, on ne peut répondre qu'affirmativement. II y a là une sorte d'œcuménisme de la culture et l'Eglise en a ouvert les portes toutes grandes... Tout ce qui est humain, tout ce que l'homme divulgue, imprime et diffuse, l'Eglise l'accueille. Cela témoigne combien elle est mère, combien son âme est universelle. Rien ne lui semble étranger, rien ne peut lui être indifférent, ses yeux sont ouverts sur tous les phénomènes humains... Que tout se transforme en hymne, en louange de Dieu - même si cette louange est d'abord confuse et inconsciente -, en reconnaissance au Verbe qui fait pleuvoir sur les choses humaines son intelligence et sa cognoscibilité ». Master, By awarding you its grand prize, the Paul VI Institute pays tribute to your work. It has the merit of touching a religious soul of today with perhaps even more force than the works of the past: precisely because it is both religious and of today. More than religious, Christian. In doing so, it affects every man, Christian or not. How to understand this paradox? Paul VI had clearly formulated the foundation in faith of this intimate correlation between humanism and Christianity: “Is it the task of the Church to work for the extension of culture? To this question the Pope continues, we can only answer in the affirmative. There is here a kind of ecumenism of culture and the Church has opened its doors wide ... Everything that is human, everything that man discloses, prints and disseminates, the Church welcomes. . It testifies how much she is a mother, how universal her soul is. Nothing seems foreign to him, nothing can be indifferent to him, his eyes are open to all human phenomena ... May everything turn into a hymn, into praise of God - even if this praise is at first confused and unconscious -, in gratitude to the Word which makes rain on human things its intelligence and its cognoscibility ”. Et, en 1967, dans Populorum Progressio (§ 42), reprenant l'expression de Maritain d'un « humanisme plénier qu'il faut promouvoir », Paul VI écrivait : « Qu'est-ce à dire sinon le développement intégral de tout l'homme et de tous les hommes ? Un humanisme clos, fermé aux valeurs de l'esprit et à Dieu qui en est la source, pourrait apparemment triompher. Certes, l'homme peut organiser la terre sans Dieu, mais - et le pape Paul VI cite ici le Père de Lubac - ‘sans Dieu il ne peut en fin de compte que l'organiser contre l'homme. L'humanisme exclusif est un humanisme inhumain’ ». II n'est donc d'humanisme vrai qu'ouvert à l'Absolu, dans la reconnaissance d'une vocation, qui donne l'idée vraie de la vie humaine. Loin d'être la norme dernière des valeurs, l'homme ne se réalise lui-même qu'en se dépassant. Selon le mot si juste de Pascal : « L'homme passe infiniment l'homme ». A mon tour, je dois remercier l'Institut Paul VI de vous avoir conféré ce prix international. Jamais, en effet, je n'avais imaginé qu'il me serait accordé de vous dire, en cette cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, ma fervente admiration et ma reconnaissante amitié. Que ces derniers mots ne vous surprennent pas. And, in 1967, in Populorum Progressio (§ 42), taking up Maritain's expression of a “plenary humanism that must be promoted”, Paul VI wrote: “What does that mean if not the integral development of everything? man and all men? A closed humanism, closed to the values of the spirit and to God who is their source, could apparently triumph. Of course, man can organize the earth without God, but - and Pope Paul VI quotes Father de Lubac here - ‘without God he can ultimately only organize it against man. Exclusive humanism is inhuman humanism ". There is therefore no true humanism except open to the Absolute, in the recognition of a vocation, which gives the true idea of human life. Far from being the ultimate standard of values, man only realizes himself by surpassing himself. According to Pascal's apt word: "Man infinitely passes man". In my turn, I must thank the Paul VI Institute for conferring this international prize on you. In fact, I never imagined that I would be allowed to tell you, in this Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, my fervent admiration and my grateful friendship. Don't let these last words surprise you. Dans cette assistance, ce soir, sont présents quelques-uns des musiciens - vos cadets - avec qui j'ai souvent discuté et « célébré »; c'est le mot qu'il faut employer puisque c'est la liturgie qui nous réunissait, eux à leur tribune d'orgues et moi à l'autel. Ils savent quelle joie et quelle communion spirituelle nous étaient données lorsque l'une de vos œuvres retentissait dans la célébration liturgique. In this audience this evening are present some of the musicians - your cadets - with whom I have often discussed and "celebrated"; this is the word that must be used since it is the liturgy that brought us together, them to their organ gallery and me to the altar. They know what joy and what spiritual communion we were given when one of your works resounded in the liturgical celebration. Pourquoi une œuvre musicale comme la vôtre, Maître, aussi originale et novatrice, savante et, pour certains, provocante, est-elle accueillie et aimée d'un si grand nombre de nos contemporains ? Why is a musical work like yours, Master, so original and innovative, scholarly and, for some, provocative, received and loved by so many of our contemporaries? On se figure assez naïvement, du moins dans la jeunesse, que l'expérience esthétique est essentiellement la projection de la subjectivité poussée à son plus haut point, et, finalement, le refus de toute autre contrainte que celle d'obéir au jaillissement obscur du cœur de l'homme. We imagine fairly naively, at least in youth, that the aesthetic experience is essentially the projection of subjectivity pushed to its highest point, and, finally, the refusal of any constraint other than that of obeying the obscure outpouring of the human heart. Depuis au moins un siècle, ce subjectivisme que le romantisme pensait inspiré, a fait porter tout son effort contre l'académisme. Je nomme ainsi les contraintes d'un apprentissage répétitif des formes et des règles dont les fruits, souvent élégants et raffinés, offrent au public la sécurité et la joliesse du déjà connu, au lieu de la grandeur toujours déconcertante du Beau et de son inépuisable nouveauté. Or, ne faisiez-vous pas remarquer que cette œuvre des années 30 que nous venons d'entendre paraissait peut-être aujourd'hui classique ? Et, nous le savons bien, tout au long de ces années de création où vous avez accumulé des œuvres si singulières et novatrices, votre musique, bien que sonnant moderne et déconcertante pour l'académisme de certains est apparue, dès le départ, comme entrant dans le classicisme. Qu'est-ce à dire ? For at least a century, this subjectivism that romanticism thought inspired, has focused all its efforts against academicism. I thus name the constraints of a repetitive learning of forms and rules whose fruits, often elegant and refined, offer the public the security and the prettiness of the already known, instead of the always disconcerting grandeur of Beauty and its inexhaustible novelty. . However, did you not point out that this work of the 1930s that we have just heard perhaps seems classic today? And, we know it well, throughout these years of creation in which you have accumulated such singular and innovative works, your music, although sounding modern and disconcerting for the academicism of some, appeared, from the start, as entering. in classicism. What to say? D'abord, contrairement à ce qu'imagine l'illusion subjective, l'art véritable sait se donner des règles et y obéir. Car l'art est une langue; même lorsque - comme souvent aujourd'hui - chacun doit se créer son vocabulaire et sa grammaire. La vraie question esthétique de notre temps, après les ruptures opérées depuis plus d'un siècle, est d'éprouver si la langue que se crée chaque artiste, n'est qu'un cri solitaire, si elle ne fait qu'exprimer la déconcertante énigme de chacun, enfermé en lui-même, ou bien si elle permet le langage entre les humains, si adaptée, elle est entendue par le peuple qu'elle entraîne au-delà de lui-même. Cette épreuve fait comprendre comment le créateur dans le domaine esthétique rejoint l'expérience du prophète - le vrai et le faux - et la reconnaissance sociale de l'art a pour paradigme le miracle des langues de la Pentecôte. L'écriture musicale exige un travail d'élaboration que certains imaginent vainement inutile et contraire à l'inspiration spontanée et irrépressible. En réalité, le compositeur, comme tout créateur, doit se consacrer à un travail savant, pénible, réfléchi - ô combien ! - qui articule l'indicible pour en faire un discours dont la cohérence est à rechercher non dans sa seule rigueur, mais aussi dans sa beauté et son intuition. First, contrary to what the subjective illusion imagines, real art knows how to give itself rules and obey them. Because art is a language; even when - as is often the case today - everyone has to create their own vocabulary and grammar. The real aesthetic question of our time, after the ruptures operated for more than a century, is to test whether the language that each artist creates for himself is only a solitary cry, if it only expresses the disconcerting enigma of each, locked in himself, or if it allows language between humans, if adapted, it is understood by the people that it leads beyond itself. This test makes us understand how the creator in the aesthetic domain joins the experience of the prophet - the true and the false - and the social recognition of art has as a paradigm the miracle of the tongues of Pentecost. Musical writing requires a work of elaboration that some people vainly imagine useless and contrary to spontaneous and irrepressible inspiration. In reality, the composer, like any creator, must devote himself to scholarly, painful, thoughtful work - oh how much! - which articulates the unspeakable to make of it a discourse whose coherence is to be sought not in its only rigor, but also in its beauty and its intuition. Ensuite, qui dit classicisme dit rapport au réel. Non plus seulement lorsque l'artiste dans son jeu narcissique ne fait que se dire et se contempler soi-même au miroir de son apparence. Mais surtout lorsque l'homme en quête du vrai reçoit le réel et sa diversité comme un autre langage. Le croyant, lui, y reconnaît Celui qui parle dans la création Dieu qui est son auteur. Alors, les balbutiements de l'artiste ne sont qu'une obéissance au langage de Dieu qui se dit dans sa création, même s'il lui faut l'accueillir en recueillant précieusement les chants d'oiseaux ! Ce rapport au réel rend l'artiste le plus novateur et apparemment le plus iconoclaste infiniment respectueux des cultures surgies des cœurs et des mains des hommes. Dès lors, il n'y a plus d'exotisme dans la symphonie des cultures humaines. Les débris des cultures passées, les apports des cultures lointaines sont comme revivifiés par celui qui sait y entendre le Créateur de l'homme chanter par la bouche de l'homme, sa créature. Then, who says classicism says relation to reality. Not only when the artist in his narcissistic game does nothing but talk about and contemplate himself in the mirror of his appearance. But above all when the man in search of truth receives reality and its diversity as another language. The believer recognizes the One who speaks in creation, God who is its author. So, the artist's beginnings are only obedience to the language of God which is said in his creation, even if he must welcome it by carefully collecting the songs of birds! This relationship to reality makes the most innovative artist and apparently the most iconoclastic, infinitely respectful of cultures that emerge from the hearts and hands of men. Consequently, there is no longer any exoticism in the symphony of human cultures. The remains of past cultures, the contributions of distant cultures are as if revived by those who know how to hear the Creator of man singing through the mouth of man, his creature. Enfin, dans la culture contemporaine, dans l'expérience esthétique de notre pays, le vrai danger qui menace les créateurs est d'être coupés du peuple. De s'adonner à un art de « chapelle », un art d'esthète, un art sans public, sinon de mode et d'humeur. Or, vous êtes un musicien d'église. Et vous êtes parmi les seuls musiciens contemporains dont l'œuvre, au gré des organistes et des assemblées, est, de dimanche en dimanche, jouée, donnée, livrée à l'oreille et au cœur de foules non triées de croyants. Et cette œuvre contemporaine - ô combien !- fût-elle parfois surprenante pour certains - est accueillie, acceptée, aimée, reconnue. L'art d'église a cette chance inouïe, qui n'existe en aucun autre domaine de l'art contemporain, de ne pas dépendre des publics choisis par les cooptations fugitives des modes ou des snobismes, des commandes ou de l'argent, mais d'être au service d'un peuple que réunit l'acte du culte, la forme la plus fondamentale et la plus désintéressée de la culture. L'œuvre musicale y est un langage; et l'artiste est appelé à accomplir une fonction médiatrice face à l'invisible réalité de Dieu. II se fait entendre à un peuple à l'écoute de cette Parole divine qui lui est adressée dans chaque célébration. Finally, in contemporary culture, in the aesthetic experience of our country, the real danger that threatens creators is to be cut off from the people. To indulge in an art of "chapel", an art of esthete, an art without public, if not of fashion and humor. Now, you're a church musician. And you are among the only contemporary musicians whose work, according to the organists and the assemblies, is, from Sunday to Sunday, played, given, delivered to the ears and the hearts of unsorted crowds of believers. And this contemporary work - oh so much! - even though it was sometimes surprising to some - is welcomed, accepted, loved, recognized. Church art has this incredible chance, which does not exist in any other field of contemporary art, of not depending on the audiences chosen by the fleeting co-options of fashions or snobbery, commissions or money, but to be at the service of a people united by the act of worship, the most fundamental and disinterested form of culture. The musical work is a language there; and the artist is called to perform a mediating function in the face of the invisible reality of God. It makes itself heard by a people listening to this divine Word which is addressed to it in each celebration. Dès lors, ne nous étonnons pas si l'artiste doit dans son œuvre de création pratiquer toutes les disciplines spirituelles qui sont celles de l'expérience chrétienne à proprement parler. Platon notait déjà à propos de la musique qu'il y a des bons et des mauvais génies; et que, quoi qu'il en soit de la soumission. aux règles et du talent déployé, l'inspiration intérieure compte et qualifie d'une certaine façon l'œuvre. Et l'œuvre juge l'auteur. J'aurais vivement désiré pouvoir ici recueillir votre sentiment au sujet du jugement de Socrate que Platon nous rapporte dans La République. Y a-t-il ainsi des « harmonies » bénéfiques ou maléfiques ? Plus précisément en accord avec la dignité morale et spirituelle de l'homme, ou bien qui lui seraient contraires ? Laissons de côté cette identification objective entre la manifestation du Beau et l'expression du Bien. Therefore, let us not be surprised if the artist must in his work of creation practice all the spiritual disciplines which are those of the Christian experience properly speaking. Plato already noted with regard to music that there are good and bad geniuses; and that, regardless of the submission. with the rules and talent displayed, interior inspiration counts and qualifies in a certain way the work. And the work judges the author. I would have greatly wished to be able here to collect your feelings on the subject of the judgment of Socrates that Plato relates to us in The Republic. Are there thus beneficial or evil "harmonies"? More precisely in accordance with the moral and spiritual dignity of man, or who would be contrary to him? Let us leave aside this objective identification between the manifestation of Beauty and the expression of Good. Nous pouvons dire, en tout cas, qu'il existe une intime connexion, nécessaire mais non suffisante, entre la recherche de Dieu et l'expression du beau. Je dis bien : non suffisante, sans doute. Car hélas ! dans notre monde cassé entre la recherche de la vérité et l'expression de la beauté, écartelé entre la sainteté et l'esthétique, les discordances ne sont pas rares. Mais, il faut travailler à la réconciliation de ces deux expériences. Et, vous le savez mieux que quiconque, la quête obstinée et patiente de l'artiste véritable, son humble obéissance à la recherche de l'insaisissable et de l'indivisible, l'usure indéfinie des forces et l'incertitude du résultat trouvent comme analogie la montée du mystique qui veut obéir à l'obscure lumière que lui donne le Seigneur et Rédempteur de tous. L'obstination de cet artiste-là n'a de comparable que la patience de celui qui prie, contemple et médite. We can say, in any case, that there is an intimate connection, necessary but not sufficient, between the search for God and the expression of the beautiful. I say: not sufficient, no doubt. Because alas! in our world broken between the search for truth and the expression of beauty, torn between holiness and aesthetics, discrepancies are not rare. But, we must work to reconcile these two experiences. And, you know it better than anyone, the stubborn and patient quest for the true artist, his humble obedience in the search for the elusive and the indivisible, the indefinite wear and tear of forces and the uncertainty of the result are found as analogy the rise of the mystic who wants to obey the obscure light given to him by the Lord and Redeemer of all. The stubbornness of this artist can only be compared with the patience of one who prays, contemplates and meditates. C'est pourquoi je me permets de remercier ici, en cette occasion, tous ceux et celles qui ont voulu contribuer à créer un comité dont j'attends beaucoup. Son nom est un programme : Art, Culture et Foi. II voudrait faire se rejoindre les chemins de la recherche de Dieu et ceux du service du beau. De la sorte, puisse la vraie liberté de l'artiste qui grandit à l'école de la purification, puisse le vrai désintéressement d'un peuple qui reconnaît un don de Dieu dans les grâces données aux serviteurs de l'art et du beau, se rencontrer et contribuer à ce que notre terre exprime cette Beauté invisible et secrète que nos yeux, un jour, contempleront et que nos oreilles, un jour, entendront. Déjà, les chants célestes plus beaux que tout autre chant en ce monde, associent à leur union dans l'Eucharistie tous les chants du monde par nos voix : « una voce dicentes... » This is why I take the liberty of thanking here, on this occasion, all those who wanted to help create a committee from which I have great expectations. Its name is a program: Art, Culture and Faith. He would like to bring together the paths of the search for God and those of the service of beauty. In this way, may the true freedom of the artist who grows up in the school of purification, may the true disinterestedness of a people who recognize a gift from God in the graces given to the servants of art and beauty, to meet and contribute to our earth expressing this invisible and secret Beauty that our eyes, one day, will contemplate and that our ears, one day, will hear. Already, the heavenly songs, more beautiful than any other song in this world, associate with their union in the Eucharist all the songs of the world through our voices: "una voce dicentes ..." Que le Seigneur de gloire vous bénisse, Maître, lui qui vous a fait la grâce de le servir et de servir son Peuple par votre art. Paris le 28 mars 1989 May the Lord of glory bless you, Master, he who has given you the grace to serve him and to serve his people through your art. Paris March 28, 1989 Cardinal Jean-Marie LUSTIGER II- MESSE DE REQUIEM POUR OLIVIER MESSIAEN Extrait de l’Homélie du Cardinal Jean-Marie LUSTIGER EGLISE DE LA SAINTE TRINITE, PARIS ; 14 MAI 1992 Olivier Messiaen voyait le passage énigmatique de la mort comme un accès à la gloire divine tant désirée et peut-être anticipée par les mystères de son art. Olivier Messiaen saw the enigmatic passage of death as an access to the divine glory so longed for and perhaps anticipated by the mysteries of his art. Toute vie d'homme est un signe de Dieu. Les unes ne sont déchiffrables que dans le secret ultime évoqué par saint Jean dans l'Apocalypse (chapitre 2, verset 17) : au jour de « révélation », chacun recevra le nom nouveau, connu de lui seul, gravé sur une pierre blanche que le Maître de toutes choses lui donnera. D'autres, au contraire, ont cette grâce d'être en ce monde des révélateurs, des êtres par qui apparaît ce qui est caché. Parfois, cela coïncide avec le génie ou le talent extrême, avec des destins hors du commun. All human life is a sign from God. Some can only be deciphered in the ultimate secret mentioned by Saint John in the Apocalypse (chapter 2, verse 17): on the day of "revelation", each will receive the new name, known only to him, engraved on a white stone that the Master of all things will give him. Others, on the contrary, have this grace of being in this world revelators, beings through whom what is hidden appears. Sometimes it coincides with genius or extreme talent, with extraordinary destinies. La vie d'Olivier est certainement de celles-là. En lui – par ce qu'il a été, et par ce qu'il a fait – apparaît avec une pleine clarté une réalité que nous avons du mal à saisir. L'expérience proprement spirituelle, c'est-à-dire dans l'Esprit Saint, l'expérience de la foi (le Christ Messie, doux et humble de cœur, Seigneur de gloire, Fils éternel et Verbe de Dieu, nous fait entrer par le don de l'Esprit dans le mystère ineffable du Père des cieux), cette expérience de la foi, dis-je, dans son insondable beauté et son déploiement dont l'être humain explore peu à peu les richesses insoupçonnées, coïncide avec un autre type d'expérience, celle de l'esthétique, de la musique, pour prendre les termes les plus familiers. Olivier's life is certainly one of them. In him - by what he was, and by what he did - appears with full clarity a reality that we have difficulty grasping. The properly spiritual experience, that is to say in the Holy Spirit, the experience of faith (Christ the Messiah, meek and humble of heart, Lord of glory, Eternal Son and Word of God, brings us into by the gift of the Spirit in the ineffable mystery of the Father in Heaven), this experience of faith, I say, in its unfathomable beauty and its unfolding, of which the human being gradually explores the unsuspected riches, coincides with a another type of experience, that of aesthetics, of music, to use the most familiar terms. Lorsque nous disons qu'Olivier Messiaen a été un musicien liturgique, un musicien d'Église, un croyant musicien, nous trébuchons sur les mots. Car il ne s'agit pas seulement d'une convergence accidentelle, mais d'une concentration, d'une focalisation sur l'essentiel de la vie et de l'intelligence humaine et divine. En réalité, ces deux chemins s'entremêlent et se recouvrent. Et Olivier Messiaen ne confiait-il pas : « Le drame de ma vie, c'est que j'ai écrit de la musique religieuse pour un public qui n'a pas la foi ». When we say that Olivier Messiaen was a liturgical musician, a church musician, a believing musician, we stumble over words. Because it is not only an accidental convergence, but a concentration, a focus on the essentials of life and human and divine intelligence. In reality, these two paths intertwine and overlap. And Olivier Messiaen did not confide: "The drama of my life is that I wrote religious music for an audience that does not have faith". Olivier Messiaen a été l'un de ces hommes en qui la coïncidence entre l'œuvre musicale et le chemin spirituel s'est exprimée avec une telle sérénité, une telle assurance, que sont dépassées les séparations, les divisions, les hostilités, les incompréhensions parfois mortelles qui ont pu exister entre cette Église que Messiaen aime tant et qu'il nous aide à aimer, et l'art avec ses obscurités et ses lumières, ses allées et venues, ses échecs et ses foudroyantes découvertes. Olivier Messiaen was one of those men in whom the coincidence between the musical work and the spiritual path was expressed with such serenity, such assurance, that separations, divisions, hostilities, misunderstandings are overcome. sometimes deadly that may have existed between this Church that Messiaen loves so much and that he helps us to love, and art with its obscurities and its lights, its comings and goings, its failures and its lightning discoveries. Avec Olivier Messiaen, nous comprenons mieux l'amour mutuel que nous devons nous porter. Nous mesurons la reconnaissance que le peuple des croyants doit à l'artiste capable non pas d'illustrer la foi, mais de faire chanter à des oreilles humaines le plus insondable et le plus inconnaissable langage. With Olivier Messiaen, we better understand the mutual love that we must have for each other. We measure the gratitude that the people of believers owe to the artist capable not of illustrating the faith, but of making human ears sing the most unfathomable and the most unknowable language. L'art est ici comme un vêtement, comme une chair de surcroît à cette chair qu'est la Parole divine, le Verbe incarné. L'art est ici surabondance de la Parole qui nous fait pénétrer dans l'au-delà de la Parole. Art is here like a garment, like a flesh in addition to this flesh which is the divine Word, the Incarnate Word. The art here is an overabundance of the Word which makes us penetrate into the beyond of the Word. Olivier Messiaen nous montre aux uns et aux autres comment avancer dans le chemin qui est le nôtre. Il nous invite et nous encourage à obéir à la Vérité qui est aussi Beauté. Paris le 14 mai 1992, Eglise de la Sainte Trinité Olivier Messiaen shows us both how to move forward on our path. He invites us and encourages us to obey the Truth which is also Beauty. Paris May 14, 1992, Church of the Holy Trinity III- OUVERTURE DU FESTIVAL MESSIAEN, 1995 Intervention du Cardinal Jean-Marie LUSTIGER EGLISE DE LA SAINTE TRINITE, PARIS ; 8 MARS 1995 Extrait de l’intervention du Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, lors de la soirée inaugurale du Festival Messiaen, à l'église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris. Ces paroles traitent essentiellement de l'œuvre d'orgue du maître, qui avait été intégralement donnée au cours de ce festival. Nous conservons le style oral de cette intervention. « Olivier Messiaen n'a pas été un « fabricant de liturgie ». Il n'a rien fait qui soit utilisable dans ce registre. Mais il acréé un nouveau genre, puisque l'œuvre d'orgue est comme une place, qui brusquement est prise dans le culte catholique [par] la musique seule, qui ne se substitue pas à l'acte du culte, mais qui y ajoute comme une nouvelle dimension„Ÿ analogue et comparable à ce que fut la cantate, sans doute, dans le culte luthérien, mais qui se déploie à l'intérieur de l'espace sacramentaire et eucharistique du culte catholique. C’est, me semble-t-il, non seulement un nouveau genre musical mais un nouveau genre liturgique, où l'œuvre d'orgue n'est pas là seulement pour accompagner une action et couvrir les bruits d'une assemblée... n'est pas là comme soutien plus ou moins renforcé d'un chant plus ou moins déficient... n'est pas là comme pour donner voix à un chœur ou à une foule qui cherche sa voix ou ses voix... Il se fait entendre comme la voix, oserais-je dire, d'un concélébrant, « cocélébrant », qui par lui-même ajoute le déploiement de la méditation contemplative, devenue communicable à une foule par la grâce du langage esthétique et de la musique. Extract from the intervention of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, during the inaugural evening of the Messiaen Festival, at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Paris. These lyrics mainly deal with the master's organ work, which was given in full during this festival. We keep the oral style of this intervention. “Olivier Messiaen was not a“ maker of the liturgy ”. He did nothing that could be used in this registry. But he created a new genre, since the organ work is like a place, which is suddenly taken in Catholic worship [by] music alone, which does not replace the act of worship, but adds to it. as a new dimension „Ÿ analogous and comparable to what the cantata was, no doubt, in Lutheran worship, but which unfolds within the sacramental and Eucharistic space of Catholic worship. It is, it seems to me, not only a new musical genre but a new liturgical genre, where the organ work is not there only to accompany an action and cover the noises of an assembly. . is not there as a more or less reinforced support for a more or less deficient song ... is not there as if to give voice to a choir or to a crowd which seeks its voice or its voices ... It is heard like the voice, dare I say, of a concelebrant, "co-celebrant", which by itself adds the deployment of contemplative meditation, which has become communicable to a crowd by the grace of aesthetic language and music. Et [le] caractère savant [de cette musique] est une garantie de sa rectitude spirituelle, de sa rigueur spirituelle. Nous ne sommes pas là devant le déploiement abusif du sentiment religieux; nous sommes là devant une œuvre qui, s'appuyant sur la sensibilité et l'esthétique, veut nous mener jusqu'aux rigueurs pures et saintes de la contemplation du mystère ineffable ». Paris le 8 mars 1995, Eglise de la Sainte Trinité Petit supplément : « Il se trouve que j’ai été très touché par la musique de Messiaen. J’y entends ce que la Parole peut inspirer à un musicien et ce qu’un musicien peut exprimer d’une Parole reçue ; j’y ai trouvé, dans la méditation exprimée du musicien, des aspects qui m’ont aidé à comprendre la Parole neuve qu’il commentait… » And [the] learned character [of this music] is a guarantee of its spiritual rectitude, of its spiritual rigor. We are not here in the face of the abusive display of religious sentiment; we are there in front of a work which, based on sensitivity and aesthetics, wants to lead us to the pure and holy rigors of the contemplation of the ineffable mystery ”. Paris March 8, 1995, Church of the Holy Trinity Small supplement: “I happened to be very touched by Messiaen’s music. I hear what the Word can inspire in a musician and what a musician can express from a received Word; I found there, in the expressed meditation of the musician, aspects that helped me to understand the new Word that he was commenting on ... " Cardinal Lustiger, extrait d’interview, Janvier 2005. Le Cardinal Aron Jean-Marie Lustiger a été rappelé à Dieu le dimanche 5 août 2007, dans la soirée, en la vigile de la Transfiguration. Cardinal Lustiger Further writings, papers and readings Interview with Messiaen and Edith Walter. First published in French magazine 'HARMONIE' 1970. The interview focuses on La Transfiguration then only recently composed. Cheong, Wai-Ling. "Symmetrical Permutation, the Twelve Tones, and Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux." Perspectives of New Music 45/1 (Winter 2007): 110-37. Christoph Neidhöfer. "A Theory of Harmony and Voice Leading for the Music of Olivier Messiaen." Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 27 Issue 1, pp. 1-34. 2005. Gareth Healey: "Messiaen and the concept of 'Personages'. Tempo (October 2004) 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]. Nigel Simeone: 'Towards "un succès absolument formidable": the birth of Messiaen's La Transfiguration'. Musical Times (Summer 2004) pp.5-24. N. Simeone: ‘”Chez Messiaen, tout est prière”: Messiaen’s appointment to the Trinité in 1931,’ Musical Times (Winter 2004)pp.36-53 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. 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 Part One Brio Vol 11 No 1 Spring 1974 IAML UK Olivier Messiaen In The Surrealist Context: A Bibliography Part Two Brio Vol 11 No 2 Autumn 1974 IAML UK ‘Messiaen and Surrealism’ see article 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) Les Editions de Minuit, CONTREPOINTS. No 1, Janvier 1946. Revue de Musique dir. par Fred. Goldbeck. Paris, 1946,128 pages. Contient: OEUVRES DE DARIUS MILHAUD, par Francis Poulenc. FRANCIS POULENC, MUSICIEN FRANCAIS, par A, Schaeffner - LA PROPAGANDE ALLEMANDE ET LA MUSIQUE, par Marc Pincherle - MUSIQUE ET RESISTANCE , par H. Barraud, Olivier Messiaen musicien mystique ?, Eric Satie évoqué a Londres .... War Music. A play by Bryan Davidson Directed by Jessica Kubzansky b ased upon dramatic events in the lives of composers Frank Bridge, Anton Webern, and Olivier Messiaen 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.) Jennifer Bate 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 1995, 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). Visit Jennifer's home page Back to top