Messiaen: His Spirit Sang With Nature's Voice
By Stephen Brookes
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 28, 2008; M04
The French composer Olivier Messiaen is walking through a tangled field of wildflowers outside Paris, listening. It's shortly after dawn, and a cold sun is just starting to break through a line of far-off trees. Suddenly a trilling cry comes through the air. "That's a song thrush," he says, pulling out a pad of music paper and jotting down the melody in quick, decisive strokes of a pencil. "One of the best singers -- perhaps the most beautiful singer -- in France."
The scene is from the documentary "The Crystal Liturgy," and it shows a familiar side of Messiaen, whose centenary this month was celebrated with a raft of major CD releases as well as concerts throughout 2008 (including a performance last summer of his large-scale "Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum" at the Meije glacier in France). One of the composer's hallmarks was his use of bird song, transcribed from all over the world, in works such as "Catalogue d'Oiseaux" ("Catalogue of Birds"), a 2 1/2 -hour sequence of 13 works for solo piano.
But Messiaen is equally well known as a devout Catholic who explored mysticism and sexuality through music, a sensualist who perceived sounds as radiant colors, and a musician of limitless curiosity who drew on influences ranging from ancient Japanese gagaku music to medieval isorhythms.
Messiaen's life appeared almost numbingly ordinary. Mild-mannered, drab and somewhat fashion-challenged, he lived in spartan simplicity with his second wife, pianist Yvonne Loriod, teaching at the Paris Conservatory (where his students included Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen and other postwar luminaries ) and serving as the organist at the Eglise de la Trinite in Paris from 1931 until his death in 1992.
Not that his life was altogether without incident. During World War II, he was captured by the Germans and interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Silesian town of Gorlitz. There, under arduous conditions, he wrote one of the most searching works of the 20th century, the "Quartet for the End of Time," for the four instruments available to him -- violin, cello, piano and B-flat clarinet. He premiered it in the freezing camp on Jan. 15, 1941, before an audience of his fellow prisoners. Rather than the raging, mournful antiwar work one might expect, this quartet, with its echoes of Balinese gamelan music, evocations of birds awakening and rhythms deliberately designed to stop forward movement, was sensual, otherworldly, deeply spiritual and intensely moving. It has remained an iconic work of 20th-century music (and received a searing performance in Washington by musicians of the Paris Opera at the La Maison Française on Dec. 10, Messiaen's actual birthday).
After his release in 1941, Messiaen returned to Paris and continued to write, exploring sources from Hindu chants to ancient Greek modes while filtering his eclectic tastes through what he called "the marvelous aspects of the [Catholic] faith." This marked the beginning of a series of remarkable pieces: "Visions de l'Amen" (1943), "Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant J¨¦sus" (1944), the song cycle "Harawi" (1944) and the sprawling, 10-movement "Turangalila-Symphonie" (1946-48), a work of almost lurid color and sensuality that used chord clusters, exotic percussion and the wailing sound of an early electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot.
Messiaen remained an original throughout his life: admired, eccentric and without imitators. The theories and orthodoxies of the serialism that dominated postwar music held little appeal for him. "I'm modal, tonal, serial -- as you like," he once told an interviewer. "In fact, I'm colorful. And when you think you hear a series of tones, even triads, you're wrong. Those are colors." Indeed, he wrote music as if he were painting with them.
But his interest in the natural world was perhaps the most distinguishing feature of his music. And the bird songs are a veritable leitmotif. A riveting 1952 work for flute and piano called "Le Merle Noir" ("The Blackbird") was quickly followed by larger works, including 1953's "R¨¦veil des Oiseaux" ("Awakening of the Birds") for orchestra, "Oiseaux Exotiques" ("Exotic Birds") from 1955-56, and "Catalogue d'Oiseaux" (1958). And bird songs appear in most of his major works, from his large-scale exploration of the American Southwest, "Des Canyons aux Étoiles," to the massive opera "Saint François d'Assise" (1983).
"Nature has retained a purity, an exuberance, a freshness we have lost," he once observed. "Nature never displays anything in bad taste; you'll never find a mistake in lighting or coloration or, in bird songs, an error in rhythm, melody or counterpoint."
- posted on 12/28/2008
Truely a nature boy!
Balinese gamelan music, evocations of birds awakening and rhythms deliberately >designed to stop forward movement, was sensual, otherworldly, deeply spiritual and >intensely moving.
Everytime my kids and I go out for the nature trip, my kids like to say:
we're not piano boy, we're nature boy.
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/natureboy.htm
thanks!
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