On another list, I was asked to explain my love of Messiaen's music.
Some people thought my post would interest some of the people on the
MCML.
I first encountered the music of Messiaen when I was about 14 - heard
La Nativite and was instantly bowled over by it. Of course, I was an
organist, and until then had not been exposed to much modern music -
Flor Peters and Tournemire were as about as modern as it got back then.
I rushed out and bought the score of La Nativite and soon realised most
of it was far beyond the technique I had at the time. But it had awoken
an interest in me for modern music in general - and perhaps that is why
I have always had a soft spot for Messiaen.
It wasn't until several years - and many, many hours of practice -
later that I returned to Messiaen and discovered other works such as
L'Ascension and L'Apparation de l'eglise eternelle. I threw myself
into the latter - surprised at the relative technical ease of the piece.
But studying it taught me something very significant about Messiaen's
music: the ability to suspend time. The piece is marked "Tres lent" and
I realised, as I played the piece more regularly, that the core difficulty
of the piece was to be able to play it slowly enough.
The first contact I had with the piano music of Messiaen was at the
home of my good friend Felix Aprahamian, at that time music critic for
the Sunday Times. Felix invited me to a soiree (you never, ever had
simple visits to Felix), and there Yvonne Loriod - Messiaen's wife -
played several of the Vingt Regards. (As a footnote: the first English
performance of the two piano Visions de l'Amen was given at one of Felix's
soirees in 1948 [I did not attend] by Messiaen and Loriod; the guests
included, as I was later told by Felix, Michael Tippett.)
Looking back, I doubt whether there could have been a better introduction
to Messiaen's piano music than this: Loriod was, after all, the person
for whom Messiaen wrote most of his piano music. I remember her saying
that the one thing that set Messiaen's music apart from that of other
composers of the time was "l'ecstase." It has taken me many years to
realise just how true that is. She later did me the very great honour
of attending a recital I gave, at which I played "L'Apparition" in public
for the first time. She said to me afterwards: "You played it slow
enough to show the ecstasy."
I was never much of a pianist, but a friend of mine persuaded me to
learn the Visions de l'Amen, which we performed together on several
occasions. And I still believe this is the very best starting point for
anybody truly interested in discovering the hidden depths of Messiaen's
piano works. So much of his style is found there: the chordal statements,
the fine filigrees of decoration, the suspension of "beat" in favour of
a free rhythm that never does what you expect, yet always seems so
perfectly right and balanced. And the ecstasy. It always comes back
to the ecstasy. The way, in the first movement, the sudden chordal
statement echo up the keyboard, perhaps in some ways foretelling that
remarkable piano cadenza in the "Joie du sang des etoiles," which is,
for me, one of the greatest orgasmic outpourings of ecstasy in the whole
symphonic repertory. And there are, too, the first hints of Messiaen's
love for birdsong - never pretty or chirrupy, but somehow ethereal,
spiritual.
But then, spirituality is at the centre of Messiaen's music. But it is
never an insipid, acetic spirituality; it is a vigorous, celebratory
ecstasy that can, perhaps, only be experienced by true believers.
Nowhere was this spirituality more profoundly experienced than in the
Trinite in Paris. Messiaen was the resident organist there, and I was
fortunate enough to attend one of the services he played. He ended
the service with the most remarkable piece of improvisation I have ever
heard. It was at once timeless, spiritual, uplifting - and, yes, ecstatic.
The two great piano collections - Vingt Regards sur l'enfant Jesus
and Catalogue des Oiseaux - could be said to reflect the two sides of
Messiaen's interests: the ecstatic belief of a true Catholic on the one
hand, and the hedonist belief in nature, spirituality, and mysticism on
the other. And for this reason, I believe that the true Messiaen only
emerges when you listen to both of these works. I will admit to finding
initially the Vingt Regards more familiar territory; I am, after all,
an organist, even if I now no longer play. It took me a little longer
to discover and fully understand (do I, even now, fully understand? I
doubt it) the mysticism of the Catalogue. But I persevered, and it is
now one of the piano works that is most frequently in my CD player.
But all this says little about why I consider Messiaen better/greater/more
inspired than other composers of his generation. I admire on the one
hand his ability to build up incredible chordal progressions, that have
dignity, timelessness, solidity, and on the other, his unique ability
to create rhythmic statements that defy the strictures of bars and beats,
but instead seem to reflect the timeless rhythm of the universe. His
amazing ability to make time stand still - Les Jardins d'Amour is a
perfect example of this - is sharply contrasted to the skill he shows
in whipping up passions, driving music on in his search for that final
ecstatic release on which his spirituality is so clearly based.
Jonathan
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