Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News Editorials & Other Articles General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Judi Lynn

(162,495 posts)
Wed Sep 25, 2024, 12:09 AM Sep 25

'Olivier Messiaen' Review: Composing in Sound and Color

Opinion by Tim Page • 1mo • 4 min read

The life and work of the French composer Olivier Messiaen continue to fascinate. A mystic Catholic who sought inspiration from birdsong, vast empty canyons, stained-glass windows and his own explorations of Asian music, Messiaen (1908-92) was an original thinker who, from the beginning, went his own way. His music combined jagged modernist melodies, complex rhythmic patterns and dense formal schemata in a manner that was, paradoxically, passionate, extravagantly colorful and sometimes swooningly Romantic.

Like Liszt and Scriabin before him, Messiaen spent his life in a state of synesthesia, a sensory crossing of wires that may result in “seeing” sounds. “When I hear music, when I read music,” Messiaen said, “I see colors, which are marvelous and impossible to describe because they are moving like the sounds themselves.” He described one of his harmonic sequences as going “from blue striped with green to black spotted with red and gold, by way of diamond, emerald, purplish-blue, with a dominant pool of orange studded with milky white.” Once, while watching a ballet, he became sick to his stomach because the purplish hue of the lighting clashed with his own conception of the color of G major.

Messiaen is a ripe subject for study. Though his works appear on concert programs less frequently than those of some of his contemporaries, he is far from an obscure figure. His most popular work, a piece best known in English-speaking countries as the “Quartet for the End of Time,” even inspired a 2014 novel with that title, by the Canadian writer Johanna Skibsrud. Now Robert Sholl, a professor of music at the University of West London who also teaches at the Royal Academy of Music has given us a slim, smart and sympathetic volume titled “Olivier Messiaen: A Critical Biography.”

Like Messiaen’s music, the book is not for everybody. Mr. Sholl knows the composer’s work intimately—he has played all of Messiaen’s organ music and seems to subscribe to much of his worldview. But “Olivier Messiaen” seems to me most valuable as an annotated meditation on the composer’s work for those who know it well and have the training to absorb its complications. As pure storytelling, it is somewhat less captivating.

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/olivier-messiaen-review-composing-in-sound-and-color/ar-BB1r60pU




“Quartet for the End of Time"




“Turangalîla Symphony”




“Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus”
(“Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus”)




What's the Colour of Music? Messiaen and Colour




Xylophone orchestral excerpt- Olivier Messiaen - Oiseaux exotiques




Olivier Messiaen: Oiseaux exotiques




Album cover!
4 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
'Olivier Messiaen' Review: Composing in Sound and Color (Original Post) Judi Lynn Sep 25 OP
Video: Synesthesia: The 6th Sense Judi Lynn Sep 25 #1
Love his music La Coliniere Oct 20 #2
Most definitely one of a kind! Hard to realize how it can be accomplished! Judi Lynn Oct 20 #3
There's an episode La Coliniere Oct 21 #4

La Coliniere

(1,005 posts)
2. Love his music
Sun Oct 20, 2024, 07:10 PM
Oct 20

Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony is one of my all time favorite pieces of 20th century classical music. Monumental, frightening, beautiful…a one of a kind sonic masterpiece.

Judi Lynn

(162,495 posts)
3. Most definitely one of a kind! Hard to realize how it can be accomplished!
Sun Oct 20, 2024, 11:20 PM
Oct 20

It's a real adventure.

Wikipedia has an excellent entry for the Symphony:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turangal%C3%AEla-Symphonie

Only the most accomplished, seasoned people would ever attempt it! Intense.

Thank you, so much.

La Coliniere

(1,005 posts)
4. There's an episode
Mon Oct 21, 2024, 08:15 PM
Oct 21

of Mozart in the Jungle where the orchestra performs Turangalila for incarcerated inmates at a penitentiary. That was really a nice surprise. If you’ve not watched Mozart in the Jungle, I think it’s still streaming on Amazon Prime.

Latest Discussions»Culture Forums»Classical Music»'Olivier Messiaen' Review...