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OLIVIER MESSIAEN/ 2009
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Prints on paper: Portraits 2 | | Medium: | Giclée on Japanese matte paper | | Size (inches): | 16.5 x 11.7 (paper size) | | Size (mm): | 420 x 297 (paper size) | | Edition size: | 25 | | Catalog #: | PP_0127 | | Description: | From an edition of 25. Signed, titled, date, copyright, edition in pencil on the reverse / Aside from the numbered edition of 5 artist's proofs and 2 printer's proofs.
In my hours of gloom, when I am suddenly aware of my own futility, when every musical idiom -- classical, oriental, ancient, modern and ultramodern -- appears to me as no more than admirable, painstaking experimentation, without any ultimate justification, what is left to me but to seek out the true, lost face of music somewhere off in the forest, in the fields, in the mountains or on the seashore, among the birds?
--- Olivier Messiaen
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Olivier Messiaen -
Olivier Messiaen (French pronunciation: [ɔlivje mɛsjɛ̃]; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and numbered Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré among his teachers. He was appointed organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris in 1931, a post he held until his death. On the fall of France in 1940 Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, and while incarcerated he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the end of time") for the four available instruments, piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners for an audience of inmates and prison guards. Messiaen was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941, and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservatoire, positions he held until his retirement in 1978. His many distinguished pupils included Pierre Boulez, Yvonne Loriod (who later became Messiaen's second wife), Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, George Benjamin, and Betsy Jolas.
Messiaen's music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources), and is harmonically and melodically based on modes of limited transposition, which were Messiaen's own innovation. Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the marvellous aspects of the faith", drawing on his unshakeable Roman Catholicism. He travelled widely, and he wrote works inspired by such diverse influences as Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah, and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Messiaen experienced a mild form of synaesthesia manifested as a perception of colours when he heard certain harmonies, particularly harmonies built from his modes, and he used combinations of these colours in his compositions. For a short period Messiaen experimented with the parametrization associated with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many exotic musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works), and he also championed the ondes Martenot.
Messiaen found birdsong fascinating; he believed birds to be the greatest musicians and considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer. He notated birdsongs worldwide, and he incorporated birdsong transcriptions into a majority of his music. His innovative use of colour, his personal conception of the relationship between time and music, his use of birdsong, and his intent to express religious ideas all combine to make Messiaen's musical style notably distinctive.
Music:
Messiaen's music has been described as outside the western musical tradition, although growing out of that tradition and influenced by it.[24] Much of his output denies the western conventions of forward motion, development and diatonic harmonic resolution. This is partly due to the symmetries of his technique—for instance the modes of limited transposition do not admit the conventional cadences found in western classical music.
Messiaen's youthful love for the fairy-tale element in Shakespeare prefigured his later expressions of what he called "the marvellous aspects of the [Roman Catholic] Faith"—among which may be numbered Christ's Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Transfiguration, the Apocalypse and the hereafter. Messiaen was not interested in depicting aspects of theology such as sin;[25] rather he concentrated on the theology of joy, divine love, and human redemption.
Although Messiaen continually evolved new composition techniques, he integrated them into his musical style; so, for instance, his final work still retains the use of modes of limited transposition. For many commentators this continual development of Messiaen's musical language made every major work from the Quatuor onwards a conscious summation of all that Messiaen had composed up to that time. However, very few of these major works contain no new technical ideas—simple examples being the introduction of communicable language in Meditations, the invention of a new percussion instrument (the geophone) for Des canyons aux etoiles…, and the freedom from any synchronisation with the main pulse of individual parts in certain birdsong episodes of St. François d'Assise.
As well as discovering new techniques for himself, Messiaen found and absorbed exotic music into his compositional style, including Ancient Greek rhythms, Hindu rhythms (he encountered Śārṅgadeva's list of 120 rhythmic units, the deçî-tâlas[26]), Balinese and Javanese Gamelan, birdsong, and Japanese music (see Example 1 for an instance of his use of ancient Greek and Hindu rhythms).
While he was instrumental in the academic exploration of his techniques (he published two treatises, the later one in five volumes which was substantially complete when he died), and was himself a master of music analysis, he considered the development and study of techniques to be a means to intellectual, aesthetic and emotional ends. In this connection, Messiaen maintained that a musical composition must be measured against three separate criteria: to be successful it must be interesting, beautiful to listen to, and it must touch the listener.[27]
Messiaen wrote a large body of music for the piano. Although a considerable pianist himself, he was undoubtedly assisted by Yvonne Loriod's formidable piano technique and ability to convey complex rhythms and rhythmic combinations; in his piano writing from Visions de l'Amen onwards he had her in mind. Messiaen said, "I am able to allow myself the greatest eccentricities because to her anything is possible."[28]
Notes:
24. ^ Griffiths (1985) p. 15
25. ^ Messiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 213
26. ^ Messiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 77
27. ^ a b Messiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 47
28. ^ a b Messiaen & Samuel (1994), p. 114
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Messiaen
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