Jos Janssen wrote:

>I would be very interested to see a discussion thread opened on Olivier
>Messiaen's music.

So would I, although I'm not familiar with all that much of it.

>More specificly any views on the following would be appreciated:
>
>1.  Having bought recently Kent Nagano's stunning account of Messiaen's
>"Saint Francois d'Assise" (snip) How do others rate this opera vs his
>total output?

Sorry, don't know it at all. I'll put it on my list.

>2.  What do people think of Messiaen's instrumentation techniques?

A lot. But I'm not competent to discuss this technically.

>3.  But for a few of his very early works Messiaen was never much tempted
>by classical forms such as sonata or fugue.  Indeed, as Boulez put it:
>"Messiaen doesn't compose, he juxtaposes".  By what ways did Messiaen
>secure "structural integrity" of his works, and how far did he succeede?

I don't judge "structural integrity" in technical terms, but by the sense
I get of a coherent logic in a piece - a central core and everything else
fitting and making sense around it.  A kind of inevitable "right-ness"
about the way the music hangs together.  By this standard and from my point
of view, Messiaen's music falls pretty much into two groups - one of them,
exemplified by the Quartet for the End of Time, much of the solo piano
music and Turangalila, passes the test easily.  The other - most of the
organ music and most of the big orchestral pieces, notably "From the Canyon
to the Stars", which made an unforgettable impression on me in Glasgow a
few years ago, seem to be shapeless sprawling splurges with no shape to
hold them together at all.  I like the first group and I can't get along
with the second at all.  So far, I haven't been able to build any bridges
between the two.

>4.  Messiaen always made a point of perceiving harmony and colour as
>two phenomena originating from the same source, i.e.  E major is a vast
>Bordeaux red.  I must confess that my poor mortal mind doesn't quite follow
>him there.  Is there anybody who can "enlighten" me?

I can't.  As far as I know, this kind of synaesthesia is a very private
thing - several people suffering from / gifted with it are unlikely to find
any agreement over their experience - if E major is Bordeaux red to one, it
might be Chartreuse green or malt whisky amber or the scent of roses to
another.  My wife "sees" days of the week in colour, also numbers and other
ordered lists - but there is no connection.  It doesn't follow that, for
instance, the third item in a list is always associated with the same
colour.  So I don't think that knowing that a composer had synaesthesia is
likely to help much in understanding his music.  I seem to remember that
Scriabin was another.

Ian Crisp
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