Olivier Messiaen

So this afternoon I went on up to Saint Thomas Church in Midtown to hear a recital of Olivier Messiaen's sixth and final work for organ, "Livre du Saint Sacrement." I'll be writing up some notes about it along with some other concerts I've seen this semester in my logs for the Composers' Forum, so I thought I'd do a little test-run with you guys.

In Olivier Messiaen's "Livre du Saint Sacrement" the composer seeks to speak heart-to-heart with his audience about God, nature, and music. He is able to use his synesthetic gift and ornithological obsession to this advantage. Messiaen's music is rarely music in the most base sense: it is an atmosphere and an echoing of all that surrounds him.

Olivier Messiaen's unique harmonic structures carefully filled with rich dissonances give way, at times, to incidental major triads. This is striking to those of us familiar with Messiaen. Yet, these "common chords" are unlike anything heard in Wagner or Strauss. They do not bring a resolution or a break from any dissonance; these chords simply are. Arising from these thick harmonies are subtle overtones dancing above the sustained organ parallel to bird songs above the din of a secluded forest. Through the use and variation of many vertical harmonies and organ stops, Messiaen presents all aspects and colors of music to the attention of the listener--an understanding of supernatural reality.

Interspersed within these large organ chords Messiaen is so famous for are quotations of medieval plainsong and, of course, birds chirping. Messiaen does not develop these melodic ideas in the same fashion Bartók would develop a Hungarian folk song, nor does he treat them as Stravinsky treats Russian folk music in his ballets and symphonies. Messiaen presents these melodies, and leaves them almost immediately. Though the contrast may be stark, these transitions from heavy harmonies to empty chants and bird songs is intrinsic to the concept Messiaen is writing about.

Olivier Messiaen does not write about "God, creator of Man" as Bach did in his organ toccatas preludes. Messiaen instead writes about "God, creator of Everything." This music is a confession of Messiaen's faith echoing natural law, both physical and cognitive, Pythagoras' "Music of the Spheres."

And that's what I think about that. Right now I'm listening to a recording of Messiaen's "Quartuor pour la fin du temps" ("Quartet for the End of Time"). It's for piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. He wrote it while in a German POW camp during WWII and chose the instruments because those are the ones he could find among the fellow prisoners and guards.