Olivier Messiaen — musician, theologian, ornithologist — is one of the great composers of our the 20th Century. As a musician, he was first of all a composer, but he was also a superb organist, improviser, teacher. As a theologian, he "meditated" on certain religious themes in his music by trying to find everything which has to do with those particular subjects in the Bible (and sometimes other religious writings), and then translating those passages into music. As an ornithologist, he collected birdsongs from around the world (birds for him were a symbol of freedom), reproducing as faithfully as possible all their characteristics (rhythm, variety of structure, and timbre) within the confines of our musical instruments, our twelve note scale, and human hearing. All these appear in his compositions. He was also an extraordinary human being, warm, kind, caring, and humble.
Olivier Messiaen was born into a literary family at midnight on December 10, 1908, in Avignon (he was baptized fifteen days later on Christmas). His father, Pierre, was an English teacher, who made a definitive translation of Shakespeare's plays into French; his mother, Cécile Sauvage, was a poetess. Thus, his father introduced him to drama, and his mother provided sensitivity through her poetry. In her L'Âme en Bourgeon (Soul In Bud), conceived after a premonition while contemplating and awaiting the birth of her son, she wrote, "I suffer from a distant musical presence, which I do not know". Messiaen claimed that this collection of poetry particularly affected him and his career as a musician. Therefore, it was Messiaen's parents who provided the first great influences on his artistic development.
During the years of World War I (1914-1918), Messiaen lived with his mother and grandmother at Grenoble, which is surrounded by the Dauphiné Mountains of the Alps. During this time, he taught himself to play the piano, wrote his first musical composition (La Dame de Shalotte), and became aware of theatre through Mozart's Don Giovanni and by acting out Shakespeare's plays. The sensational geography of the Alps, which Messiaen considered his true "native land", provided another great influence on his artistry. Later, it was in this area, living in his summer retreat in Petichet (looking up at the Alps from a small strip of land between Lake Laffrey and Lake Petichet), that he wrote practically all of his works.
After the war, in time for the beginning of the 1918 school year, the family moved to Nantes where he received his first formal piano and harmony lessons. Here, when he was only ten years old, he became acquainted with the score of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, a gift from his harmony teacher.
In 1919, at age 11, he entered the Paris Conservatory and studied there until 1930. He won first prizes in counterpoint and fugue, piano accompaniment, organ, improvisation, and composition. It was around this time that he was introduced to Greek metrical rhythms (the poetic feet Iamb, Dactyl, Spondee, Amphimacer, Choriambe, Dochmius, and the four Epitrites, etc.), Hindu rhythms (the 120 "deçitâlas" of ancient provincial India), the rhythms of Far Eastern music, the philosophy of time and duration, and plainsong, which he studied independently.
In the preface to his Technique de mon Langage Musical (1942) Messiaen acknowledged all of the above as influences on his development as a composer as well as "my wife (Claire Delbos), Claudel, Reverdy and Eluard, Hello and Dom Columba Marmion (shall I dare speak of the Holy Books which contain the only Truth?), Russian music, and finally, all that evokes stained-glass window and rainbow." He also thanked his master-teachers: "Jean and Noël Gallon, who stimulated in me the feeling for the 'true' harmony, Marcel Dupré, who oriented me toward counterpoint and form, Paul Dukas, who taught me to develop, to orchestrate, to study the history of the musical language in a spirit of humility and impartiality." All of these varied aspects contributed to the development of Messiaen's unique, personal musical language that was to continue to evolve throughout his career.
In 1930, he was appointed organist at l'Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris, a position he assumed in 1931 and which he held until his death, thus a tenure of 61 years. It was around this time that he wrote his first compositions for organ: Le Banquet Céleste (1928), Diptyque (1928), L'Apparition de l'Église Éternelle (1932), L'Ascension (1933), and La Nativité du Seigneur (1935).
In 1936, he married the violinist Claire Delbos; and, in 1937, their son, Pascal, was born. The year 1936 also marked the beginning of Messiaen's career as a teacher: until 1939, he taught sight-reading at the École Normale de Musique and organ and improvisation at the Schola Cantorum, both in Paris. It was also during this year that he joined with three other composers — André Jolivet, Daniel-Lesur, and Yves Baudrier — to form the movement "Jeune-France", a group committed to serious music with a human and spiritual quality. Messiaen finished Les Corps Glorieux (August 25, 1939) one week before the outbreak of World War II. He then joined the army, serving as a hospital attendant until 1940, when he was taken prisoner. He spent one year in Stalag viiia at Görlitz in Silesia (a region of Poland), during which time he wrote his Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps. This work received its first performance in the prison camp on January 15, 1941, with Messiaen at the piano and other prisoners playing the violin, clarinet, and cello. From this point onward, Messiaen ceased to be primarily an organist-composer.
After his repatriation in 1941, Messiaen was appointed Professor of Harmony at the Paris Conservatory. Because he was not allowed to teach composition there, he began private composition classes in the house of a friend, Guy-Bernard Delapierre. It was in these classes that he first came into contact with his most famous pupils: Marius Constant, Nguyen-Thien Dao, Michael Levinas, François-Bernard Mâche, Gilbert Amy, Iannis Xenakis, Jean-Guy Bailly, Antoine Duhamel, Paul Mefano, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Serge Nigg, Maurice Le Roux, and especially Pierre Boulez and Yvonne Loriod. During this time he became very interested in writing for the piano, his favorite instrument, having found the ultimate interpreter in Loriod. It was also during this period that he began making use of birdsong in his compositions. In 1947, he was appointed Professor of Analysis, Æsthetics, and Rhythm (Philosophy of Music) at the Conservatory.
This was also a time of personal despair for Messiaen. After his return from war, his wife became increasingly ill, causing first a separation from her husband, and eventually hospitalization until her death in 1959; it was an illness that lasted almost twenty years. During this long period of solitude and loneliness (realizing that his wife would never regain her health) his devoted disciple Yvonne Loriod gained a larger and larger place in his heart. This impossible human love (because of his marriage) is reflected in three important works during this time which are based on the Tristan-Isolde theme: Harawi (1945, voice and piano), Turangalîla-Symphonie (1946-48), and Cinq Rechants (1948, twelve mixed voices).
At the same time, Messiaen began to enjoy international recognition. In 1949, his Turangalîla-SymphonieM/span>, which had been commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky, was premiered in Boston by Leonard Bernstein. Invitations came from Hungary (Budapest), the United States (Tanglewood), Germany (Darmstadt), Italy, Japan, Bulgaria, Argentina, Finland, etc., to give courses in composition, and his Paris studio now enjoyed worldwide appeal.
His compositions from the next few years represent his most austere and cerebral phase. The organ works dating from this period are Messe de la Pentecôte (1950, a summary of his ideas on improvisation) and Livre d'Orgue (1951, the summit of his work in serial techniques, rhythm, and time). Then, beginning in 1952, Messiaen traversed an almost barren artistic period of seven years (producing only three works), feeling he had come to an end, not knowing how to continue — he found consolation and inspiration in the music of birds. It was during this time that he undertook the project of transcribing into music all the songs of the birds in France, classified by habitat and region: birds of the fields, the edge of the forest, the high mountains, the seacoasts, the rushes, ponds, and marshes. It was an immense undertaking, without an end. This research produced the superhuman work, Catalogue d'Oiseaux (1956-58) for piano, a work lasting two and three-quarters hours. The work was premiered in April 1959 by Yvonne Loriod. (That same month Claire Delbos died.) His masterpiece Chronochromie ("The Color of Time", 1959-60, large orchestra) marks his successful return from that artistic desert, uniting all of his most recent creative interests: birds, rhythm, sound/colors. The organ piece Verset pour la Fête de la Dédicace (1960) comes from this time, and it includes two virtuoso solos of the Song Thrush.
The next decade began a period of personal rebirth for Messiaen: he returned to theologically centered subjects as a basis for composition, all surrounded by birdsongs (from this point onward, he traveled all over the world collecting new birdsongs for his compositions); in 1962, he married Yvonne Loriod in a simple, private ceremony; and, in 1966, he was finally officially appointed Professor of Composition at the Paris Conservatory. He retired from teaching in 1978.
It was also the time of the development of his Son/Couleur (sound/ color) relationships. In Claude Samuel's Conversations with Olivier Messiaen (1967), Messiaen states, "When I hear a score or read it, hearing it in my mind, I also see in my mind's eye corresponding colors which turn, mix and blend with each other just like the sounds which turn, mix and intermingle, and at the same time as them...and I've sometimes even precisely indicated these correspondences in my scores. One should, of course, be able to prove this relationship scientifically, but I'm incapable of it". In his Conférence de Notre-Dame (December 4, 1977), he explains that "colored music does that which the stainedglass windows and rose-windows of the Middles Ages did: it dazzles us. At the same time touching our noblest senses, hearing and sight, it shakes our sensitivity, excites our imagination, augments our intelligence, pushes us to go beyond concepts, to grapple with that which is higher than reasoning and intuition, that is to say Faith." The sixties were also years of official recognition and honors — official commissions, such as Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum (1964) commissioned by André Malraux and dedicated to those who died in the two World Wars, participation in festivals, and his nomination to the French Institute. He traveled all over the world supervising performances of his compositions, while world commendation and demand for his presence continued to grow, with festivals, competitions, and awards being organized in his honor.
In 1972, he gave the world premiere of Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité (1969) for organ at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Shortly afterwards in 1974, his cycle Des Canyons aux Étoiles (1971-74, after a visit to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park in Utah), for chamber orchestra, piano, and French horn, was premiered in New York City. These works are characterized by a summation or synthesis of all of his ideas on a very large scale. This process continued in his most recent compositions: his opera, Saint-François d'Assise (1975-83), his last work for organ, Livre du Saint Sacrement (1984), and his final work, Éclairs sur l'Au-Delà (1988-91).
In 1989, the Primio Internazionale Paolo VI 1988 was bestowed on him in a moving ceremony in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. This prize had been awarded only one time previously, to the great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Olivier Messiaen died in Paris on April 27, 1992, following surgery. His funeral was held in Petichet on May 5, and a memorial service was held in Paris at La Trinité on May 14. At the time of his death Messiaen had just finished orchestrating Éclairs sur l'Au-Delà, an eleven movement work for orchestra which had been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to celebrate its 150th anniversary. It was premiered in New York on November 5, 1992. On September 26, 1994, the last premiere of a work by Messiaen occurred in Paris at the Opéra Bastille: a Concert à Quatre (concerto for piano, flute, violoncello, and oboe with orchestra), an unfinished work (four of five movements were completed) conceived in 1990. Since 1994, volumes of his Traité de Rythme, de Couleur, et d'Ornithologie have been appearing one by one, edited for publication by Yvonne Loriod. To date, four of the anticipated seven volumes are in print (Leduc, Paris). In the preface of his Technique de mon Langage Musical, Messiaen describes the kind of music he believed his era was in need of and awaiting: "a true music, that is to say, spiritual, a music which may be an act of faith; a music which may touch upon all subjects without ceasing to touch upon God; an original music, in short, whose language may open a few doors, take down some yet distant stars." He also described the kind of artist he believed necessary to produce this music: "To express with a lasting power our darkness struggling with the Holy Spirit, to raise upon the mountain the doors of our prison of flesh, to give to our century the spring water for which it thirsts, there shall have to be a great artist who will be both a great artisan and a great Christian." He also gave this advice to this "liberator": "First, that of Reverdy: ‘May he draw in the whole sky in one breath!' And then that of Hello: "There is no one great except him to whom God speaks, and in the moment in which God speaks to him.'" This great artist that Messiaen was in search of, awaiting, was, in fact, himself! Olivier Messiaen was a genius of our time.
by Jon Gillock, for Voices of Ascension program of December 10, 2008