Olivier Messiaen

1908–1992, FRENCH

An outstanding organist, composer, and teacher, Messiaen drew on numerous influences in his work, from Asian rhythms to birdsong, but his constant source of inspiration was his unshakable Catholic faith.

OLIVIER MESSIAEN
One of the most influential figures in modern French music, Messiaen poses in front of the 2,500 or so pages of the score for his opera St. Francis of Assisi, his last major work before his death.

ON TECHNIQUE

Ondes Martenot

Messiaen was an important pioneer of the ondes Martenot (Martenot “waves”)—an early electronic instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot, a former radio telegrapher and cellist, who was inspired by the radio oscillators that were used by the army. Messiaen first used the instrument’s strange, futuristic, wavering sound (which resembles the theremin) in a work commissioned for the World Fair in 1937. His future sister-in-law, Jeanne Loriod, was a highly accomplished performer on the unusual instrument.

ONDES MARTENOT, INVENTED BY MAURICE MARTENOT IN 1928

Messiaen was born in the French city of Avignon on December 10, 1908, and was baptized on Christmas Day. Both his parents were highly cultivated. His father, Pierre, was an English teacher and translator of some of Shakespeare’s plays, but Olivier was closer to his mother, Cécile Sauvage, a distinguished poet. While pregnant, she wrote a collection of poems for her unborn child: L’Ame en bourgeon (The Budding Soul). Messiaen treasured them, believing some lines to be prophetic, such as: “I suffer from an unknown, distant music” and “All the Orient is singing here within me, with its blue birds.”

BABY OLIVIER
Messiaen is shown here as a baby, sitting on the knees of his mother, poet Cécile Sauvage. The composer later said she raised her children “in a fairy universe.”

First steps

At the outbreak of World War I, Pierre was conscripted and Olivier moved with his mother to Grenoble. There, his musical gifts soon became apparent. He taught himself to play the rickety old piano in his uncle’s house and began making up music of his own. Olivier received some private lessons, but his progress accelerated after the war, when the family moved to Paris. In 1919, aged just 10, he entered the Paris Conservatoire.

Messiaen’s teachers at the Conservatoire included Paul Dukas and Marcel Dupré. Regarded as the finest organist of his generation, the latter had a particularly important influence. Under his tutelage, the organ superseded the piano as Messiaen’s principal instrument, which was to play an important part in his career. In 1931, Messiaen was appointed chief organist at the church of La Ste-Trinité in Paris, a great honor for one so young. He often played there over the next 60 years, although he was careful not to use it for any of his more extravagant experiments. Messiaen reassured his curate in a letter: “In music, one always has to seek what is new, but reserve that for chamber and orchestral works in which fantasy is admissible.” Messiaen’s employment at the church did, however, dovetail with his chief source of inspiration as a composer: his faith. A devout Catholic, he often claimed that he was “born believing.” Not surprisingly, this was reflected in his choice of material. His first published work was an ethereal organ piece celebrating the Eucharist (Le Banquet céleste, or The Heavenly Feast, 1928). Similarly, La Nativité du Seigneur (The Nativity of the Lord, 1935) was his first truly mature work, in which all the various components of his compositional experiments fell neatly into place.

If religion was the dominant theme of Messiaen’s work, the driving force behind his creative impulse was a tireless search for new forms. While still a student, he became intrigued by the possibility of looking beyond the traditional modes of Western music—the major and minor scales.

Over the years, he explored the modes of antiquity, the forms of plainsong, and non-European modes (from India, in particular). He also defined a number of new, modern modes and later codified these as “modes of limited transposition,” writing at length about the seven alternative modes in his book La Technique de mon langage musical (1944). Messiaen worked backward, from practice to theory. One of his friends at the Conservatoire, Jean Langlais, described how he found the sounds that he liked through improvisation and then developed a system to accommodate them: “he told me later on, he discovered his system by analyzing his own works, the scales and everything. He did not decide before—he discovered afterward.”

Messiaen was equally radical in his approach to tempo. He sometimes lengthened individual notes or played them very slowly (occasionally, he marked the tempo as ”infinitely slow”). Le Banquet céleste, for example, consists of only 25 bars, but when Messiaen performed it, the piece could last for seven or eight minutes. This helped to endow it with a solemn, meditative quality.

MARCEL DUPRE
An atmospheric depiction by Ambrose McEvoy of organist Marcel Dupré at the organ of Notre-Dame, Paris. Dupré was an important early influence on Messiaen.

CONCERT OF BIRDS
Increasingly obsessed by ornithology, Messiaen used birdsong as a model for some of his music—these innovative works are some of the most challenging in the piano repertoire. This 17th-century painting of a concert of birds led by an owl choirmaster (center) is by Flemish painter Paul de Vos (c. 1591–1678).

Changing circumstances

Meanwhile, Messiaen’s personal circumstances were changing dramatically. In 1927, his mother died. She had been suffering from depression for years, often locking herself away from the family. Shortly afterward, Messiaen met his future wife Claire Delbos, marrying her in 1932. She was a talented violinist and the pair performed a number of recitals together in the early 1930s. Their married life did not run entirely smoothly—Claire suffered a number of miscarriages, before finally giving birth to a son, Pascal, in 1937.

In the same year, Messiaen won a prestigious commission to provide music for the Fêtes des belles eaux (a combination of fireworks, light, and water effects) at the World Fair in Paris. For this, he opted to create a futuristic sound by employing a sextet of ondes Martenot. Messiaen was certainly not the first composer to make use of this unusual electronic instrument, but it was to become one of his trademarks (see box).

Messiaen doubtless hoped for further commissions, but the outbreak of World War II put a brake on his career. Conscripted, he was sent to the front and was captured by the Germans at Verdun. Like thousands of his fellow prisoners, he was forced into a cattle-truck and endured a hellish four-day journey to the east with no food, water, or sanitation.

While imprisoned at Stalag VIIIA in Silesia (see box), Messiaen composed and performed one of the major musical landmarks of the 20th century. Played on ramshackle instruments, his Quartet for the End of Time was a startling chamber piece for violin, piano, cello, and clarinet—the only options that were available to him. Fittingly, given its wartime context, the theme was drawn from the Apocalypse, as described in the Book of Revelation.

MESSIAEN AND YVONNE LORIOD
Pianist and composer Yvonne Loriod was Messiaen’s second wife and also one of the principal interpreters of his work. The couple are shown here in 1964, three years after their marriage, examining a score of music.

Repatriation and tragedy

Messiaen was repatriated to France in 1941. He returned to work at Trinité and was also given a teaching job at the Conservatoire. One of his pupils there was a brilliant young pianist called Yvonne Loriod. She was to become one of the leading interpreters of Messiaen’s music, particularly his innovative birdsong compositions. Together with her sister Jeanne, she was also a soloist in the Turangalîla Symphony.

Yvonne’s personal relationship with Messiaen also grew closer, following a tragedy in his domestic situation. During the 1940s, his wife began to show signs of dementia. Claire’s condition worsened after an operation, as she gradually lost her memory and most of her physical faculties. She entered a sanatorium in 1953 and died there six years later. Yvonne and Messiaen were married in 1961.

Claire’s illness cast a shadow over the most successful period of Messiaen’s career, when his work gained international recognition. The Turangalîla Symphony was a joyous affirmation of the power of love, and he followed this with an ever-deepening fascination with ornithology. Messiaen was by no means the first composer to evoke the sounds of birdsong in his music, but no other has explored the theme so thoroughly. His collections—Le Réveil des oiseaux, Oiseaux exotiques, and Catalogue d’oiseaux—were truly unique, even if they presented an immense challenge for the pianist concerned. Messiaen was able to combine his two great passions—religion and nature—in his last major work, St. Francis of Assisi, a five-hour opera on the life of the saint.

IN CONTEXT

Stalag VIIIA

The first performance of the Quartet for the End of Time took place in a prisoner-of-war camp, located near Görlitz, in the easternmost part of Germany. Conditions were grim: 30,000 men were crammed into a space that was meant for half that number; it was bitterly cold; and food was scarce—the prisoners survived on a thin stew of potatoes, cabbages, and turnips. Fortunately, though, the camp commandant was sympathetic, allowing Messiaen writing materials. The four-man orchestra played initially in the washrooms, while the Quartet itself was staged in the hut that was used as a theater.

A PERFORMANCE OF QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME IN 2010