Classical Music Forum banner

Olivier Messiaen

77K views 426 replies 104 participants last post by  Richannes Wrahms 
#1 ·
We are less than a month from Olivier Messiaen's 100th birthday. His music is, for me, a recent discovery, which has become almost an addiction by now. I hope responses to this guestbook will give me more to think about regarding his music.
 
#253 ·
Only once, in all my concert going life, have I seen an audience collectively in tears by the end of a work's performance. That was when I saw a performance of the Quatuor pour la fin du temps by a makeshift ensemble inside a Catholic church. It was really remarkable. The composer was still alive at the time; I wish he could have been there to see it.
 
#260 ·
Maybe I should have expected that this thread would get a little thorny...

As long as we can all get along and remain in awe with the music. I don't know if speaking critically on one another's beliefs and spirituality is conducive to a greater enjoyment of Messiaen's music. Of course, it's very hard to even talk about his music without talking about spirituality and the divine, because that's damn near all there is to it.

I listened to the full Quatuor last night, just on headphones in my room, and I was moved to tears by the end of it. I can hardly even imagine seeing it live, though it's on my bucket list now.

... does anyone else feel like Messiaen's music is just about the exact opposite to that of his student, Pierre Boulez? That, or they are two sides to the same coin...
 
#262 ·
I don't hear Boulez and Messiaen as two sides of the same coin musically or philosophically. They seem like two very different people.

And to assume a listener is unaware of spirituality, religion, or whatever you want to call it because they are a bit underwhelmed by a piece of music is being just a bit judgemental I would think.

If Messiaen's opera had a secular title and subject but the same music, would the unfair assertion be made by a pious individual towards the unmoved listener? Does the pious churchgoer love every tune in the hymnal? This is truly a silly prejudice concerning matters of taste.
 
#263 ·
Boulez and Messiaen are both cut from the same mold, only manifest differently. They are both :"monks" devoted selflessly to their art. Don't you know that yet?
 
#268 ·
It only "destroys" it because You Can't Handle Mysticism. This is Western music, not pop or jazz, and its very roots are mystic. My advice: Get Mystic Now!
 
#272 ·
No, this is "Catholic Mystic," which is top button buttoned, Clark Kent haircut, stiff posture, meticulous grooming, highly polished Oxford shoes, baggy drape trousers...
 
#277 ·
I've returned to Messiaen's piano music after years of neglect. I'm mostly just listening to sections of Ugorsky's Catalogue of Birds over and over--I don't know why it didn't click with me before, but I suppose that now the time was just right.

I intend to get Austbo's comparatively inexpensive recording next for comparison purposes.
 
#279 ·
It strikes me that birds, one of God's creations, represent the spirit; they fly up, halfway between Heaven and Earth.
 
  • Like
Reactions: flamencosketches
#281 ·
Ignoring the toing and froing about religion and spirituality here (poor Olivier), I have a huge amount of admiration for Messiaen and his music, with a particular focus on the big orchestral pieces, the piano stuff, the organ works.

That said, there is one indisputable masterpiece of his I really do not get. It's the Quartet for the End of Time. I only have one recording, the Barenboim one on DGG, and it just doesn't grab me. I suspect it might be the problem, I hope so.

So please someone recommend me a really involving performance. NLAdriaan's suggestion a couple of pages back is happily noted.

TIA!
 
#342 ·
The Quartet for the End of Time is a work I love and one that responds for me to quite a wide variety of performance approaches. The Tashi one is good but so are many others. This one is a little different -

Line Font Symmetry Circle Engineering


It is one of those works that I cannot separate from the circumstances of their composition. Generally, I don't think it is a good idea to make such associations but sometimes I just can't help it. Beethoven's Eroica is another (not so much the Napoleon story as the arrival in the world of a piece of music so totally different to anything that had come before). With the Quartet for the End of Time I can't avoid thinking of the audience of POWs and their Nazi/German guards, many of whom seem to have found it something special despite it being played by relatively indifferent performers and despite it even now seeming a fairly challenging piece of music.
 
#346 · (Edited)
The Quartet for the End of Time is a work I love and one that responds for me to quite a wide variety of performance approaches. The Tashi one is good but so are many others. This one is a little different -

View attachment 125622

It is one of those works that I cannot separate from the circumstances of their composition. Generally, I don't think it is a good idea to make such associations but sometimes I just can't help it. Beethoven's Eroica is another (not so much the Napoleon story as the arrival in the world of a piece of music so totally different to anything that had come before). With the Quartet for the End of Time I can't avoid thinking of the audience of POWs and their Nazi/German guards, many of whom seem to have found it something special despite it being played by relatively indifferent performers and despite it even now seeming a fairly challenging piece of music.
I don't think you need to think about POWs etc here, but I thoroughly understand why you do/one does.

I have listened to Barenboim again, and it's a bit in-your-face, and lacking whatever the French for Innigkeit is. Involving.

I've also listened to Frost et al, and get a lot more from it. But perversely the recording that I have clicked with is the other DGG one, with conductor Chung at the piano. The recording is superb, and maybe its immediacy has made the big clarinet solo movement and the hopeless (?) finale really hit home. Looking forward to giving de Leeuw & co, and the EMI with Mrs.M a proper and respectful listen.
 
#284 · (Edited)
Fair enough, but surely you have heard what could be described as "flat" recordings/performances, or even routine ones? I am not saying that Barenboim's is that, but there have been several works that haven't meant that much to me until that one special performance makes it click - Serkin's Diabelli Variations, Wand's Bruckner 5, Kubelik's Meistersingers. Hickox's VW Pastoral, spring to mind. Religious works or not, ignoring those aspects or not, sometimes a slightly different perspective brings that "Road to Damascus" moment.

Or indeed, I'll be perfectly happy that this is a work that I just won't like, ever. It happens, but I think it's important enough as a piece of music for me to give it a few more tries?
 
#285 ·
Or indeed, I'll be perfectly happy that this is a work that I just won't like, ever. It happens, but I think it's important enough as a piece of music for me to give it a few more tries?
As I mentioned upthread, it basically took years away from the Catalogue d'oiseaux for me to acquire an interest in the work. By comparison with things like the Vingt Regards and Quartet, it sounded kind of "random" to me. Returning to all the works, I feel differently. The Vingt Regards sounds more formally rigid--more positively, for Messiaen, maybe more liturgical?--and the bird music sounds correspondingly more open and eclectically expressive. I find myself preferring listening to the Catalogue d'oiseaux over the others--though they all sound like they're by the same composer; this is something I never expected.

Anyway, with regard to the Quartet: you might try the Tashi recording, which is famous; I currently have and like the Fontenay/Brunner version.
 
#286 ·
A very good performance. The players seem to understand what this music demands, and it is very effective at creating a sense of mystery and awe. The "being" of the players comes through, as if this music was an expression of their own being and voice, rather than completely scored music. That's the point in classical music, right? I love this cover, too.

What does this music demand? Well, it's not Tchaikovsky, gentlemen.

View attachment 125322
 
#288 ·
"...Messiaen rightly calls himself a "theological" composer, and that his music aims to make concrete statements of faith rather than evoking vague "religious" feelings." -Aloyse Michaely
 
#290 ·
Can instrumental music make concrete statements of faith? "Theological composer" sounds awful pretentious. The way I see it, religion, music, creativity, is all a product of the human imagination.
 
G
#292 · (Edited)
If I recall correctly, his final organ work contained motifs or mottos which referred to specific scriptures. I remember them as a distraction from the musical argument. Sort of like his claims that different passages had different "color" that only he could perceive due to a neurological peculiarity of his.
 
#294 ·
I don't doubt Messiaen's sincerity. But if I listen to any piece of instrumental music without knowledge of the identity of the composer or titles suggesting religious devotion, I am free to allow the music to inspire my imagination free of association. And for me this in no way is a denial or negation of the composer's intent.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mikeh375
#297 ·
I don't doubt Messiaen's sincerity. But if I listen to any piece of instrumental music without knowledge of the identity of the composer or titles suggesting religious devotion, I am free to allow the music to inspire my imagination free of association. And for me this in no way is a denial or negation of the composer's intent.
No, it is not a direct denial or negation, but don't even mention the composer's intent in the same breath as your argument, because your approach in no way takes the composer's intent into consideration. You're just hearing the music and letting it become whatever your imagination makes it, and this has nothing do with the composer's intent. Messiaen called his music a statement of his faith, which apparently you want nothing to do with.
 
#304 · (Edited)
Maybe the term art doesn't always have to be connected to music? What about all of the church music of the renaissance or medieval era created in anonymity? We don't know anything about the composers who created it other than they were providing music for the church or some other function. They may have had other inspirations but were employed by the church, royalty or whomever? The same for traditional/folk music from around the globe. We can assume much of it was connected to some social event or ritual sacred or secular. But it's just something humans have always done because they can. We sing and play among our family and friends or to ourselves.
 
#305 ·
Maybe the term art doesn't always have to be connected to music? What about all of the church music of the renaissance or medieval era created in anonymity? We don't know anything about the composers who created it other than they were providing music for the church or some other function.

They may have had other inspirations but were employed by the church, royalty or whomever? The same for traditional/folk music from around the globe. We can assume much of it was connected to some social event or ritual sacred or secular.
The purpose may be religious, or social event, or ritual, but those are all universal human concerns. We don't have to know who the specific composer was; the important thing is that we can relate to it on a human level, and if not actually participate, at least empathize with the intent it was created for.
 
#306 · (Edited)
"We listen to musical sounds in the air"

The same can be said for speech but we attribute meaning to certain primordial sounds - a scream is not a purr - and the patterns of language that creates words, phrases, etc.

I'm conflicted, on one hand I want to believe that our brains learn these things... but the similarities across races and even species, how sounds affect us, and how we use them, make me consider an "a priori" theory of sonic neurology as well. OTOH I imagine that people respond to their native music differently than outsiders who can enjoy it but maybe "interpret" it differently.

As they say, there are no mountains in Finland... or are there? I wouldn't know but Sibelius makes me see mountains... 600 years ago I was supposed to see angels, listening to Josquin... then came secular composers setting classical civilization to music, a period which seems very abstract and theoretical to me, devoid of imagery but full of precision and physicality, like architecture.

Then came the Pastoral, Ma Vlast and La Mer using nature as a visual model... so I can see Messiaen taking his very personal path to his own visual models, aided by synaesthesia, and convolving it with the spiritual zeal of Josquin, bringing angels, birds, rainbows, and all of creation into his soundscape.

And then came Sun Ra :)
 
#310 · (Edited)
"We listen to musical sounds in the air"

The same can be said for speech but we attribute meaning to certain primordial sounds - a scream is not a purr - and the patterns of language that creates words, phrases, etc.
True. But the meaning in music is ambiguous and abstract.
 
#308 ·
The intent is obvious. Music is a creative way of communication without using written or spoken language. And there is the aesthetic aspect of simply appreciating the beauty of it. No message needs to be conveyed.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mikeh375
#311 · (Edited)
Communication with no message... I know this is supposed to mean something too, but the words conflict with each other... I'll try suggesting that music could be communicating "messages" that we can't express verbally, so talking about them is doomed to failure.

One could say that music is a fundamental facet of our communication toolbox, that we are more fragmented and isolated without it, and cannot be replaced with speech. In a way this gets into the whole theory of consciousness, language, so-called "qualia", emergent sensations, etc.

I mentioned Sun Ra and it's interesting to note that his disciples are moving toward a classical period of jazz theory and practice... listen to Sorey and Crispell on their new CD, by getting away from visual motives they are expanding their vocabulary to be more about "pure sound" and I think these developments are some of the most exciting in music right now...
 
#313 ·
Yes. Music is weird! It "speaks" to me with no message. What's the message in a Frank Zappa guitar improvisation? I don't know? But it connects with me in some fundamental way.
 
#314 · (Edited)
I disagree with most of this to the extent that I see Messiaen as he saw himself: as a theological composer. This is quite different, and far more specialized than a Frank Zappa guitar solo.

If you listen to Messiaen like you listen to Debussy or Frank Zappa, you are missing the point.

I suppose a major disconnect here is that Messiaen's music was in the service of, and a statement of, and was a vehicle for, his beliefs and faith, unlike Debussy, who just wanted to evoke beauty, and the sea, or Zappa, who wanted to transport you with his guitar for musical reasons. Those are simpler, more straightforward aesthetic goals.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Josquin13
#315 · (Edited)
Well, I remember we have a member here, who describes his experience of Messiaen (say 'Des Canyons aux Etoiles'), as clearly resembling earlier children's cartoon's music.

I think the discussion would benefit from concrete examples of works, including the 'programme' the composer intended, since Messiaen's oeuvre after all is somewhat diverse.
 
#317 ·
Well, I remember we have a member here, who describes his experience of Messiaen (say 'Des Canyons aux Etoiles'), as clearly resembling children's cartoon's music.
So? Those are just subjective imaginings of a child. What does he know about Messiaen's intent? We all know this is NOT what the music was intended by the composer to be.
 
#329 ·
I'm not trying to "control" the way they listen to music. I'm just saying that it is an incomplete understanding of Messiaen if they don't recognize his intent as a composer. If they want to proclaim that "Messiaen sounds like children's cartoon music," then that's their right, but don't insist that I need to "chill out" if I disagree.
 
Top