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A composer, organist, and teacher of remarkable ability, Olivier Messiaen fashioned an individual sound rooted in his deeply held spiritual beliefs.
Born into an educated household, his mother a poet and father a noted translator of Shakespeare, Olivier Messiaen’s early interest in the arts were nurtured and encouraged by his family. By the age of nine, Messiaen had already begun playing the piano and composing. The following year, his musical world changed when his harmony teacher Jehan de Gibon gave him a copy of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Melisande, a moment and work that Messiaen described as being, “probably the most decisive influence of my life.”
At the age of eleven, Messiaen enrolled in the prestigious Paris Conservatory. He excelled in his scholastic studies, receiving five first prizes (piano accompaniment, organ, music history, composition, counterpoint, and composition). Messiaen’s musical language was also greatly influence by his teachers, especially Paul Dukas, whose modal writing had a profound affect. An early example of this harmonic language is evident in Le banquet celeste, an organ work composed in 1928. The work’s instrumentation and utilization of an extremely solo tempo reflect both a concern with temporal and religious matters that would appear throughout Messiaen’s career.
In 1930, Messiaen left the Conservatory, gaining employment the following year as organist at La Trinite in Paris. Messiaen would remain in this position for over 60 years, highlighting the importance of the organ and the Catholic faith in his oeuvre. Of the later, he said, “A number of my works are dedicated to shedding light on the theological truths of the Catholic faith. That is the most important aspect of my music…perhaps the only one I shall not be ashamed of in the hour of death.”
In June 1932, Messiaen married violinist and composer Claire Delbos. Both his wife and the birth of his son, Pascal, in 1937 would become the inspiration for several works during this period, such as Theme and Variation for violin and piano (1932), Poemes pour Mi (1936-7), and Chants de terre et de ciel (1938). At the same time, Messiaen also became involved with La Jeune France; a group of composers who rejected the cold, formal works of Neo-Classical composers, especially prevalent in France, and instead sought to infuse their pieces with emotion, passion, and
colour.
With the advent of the Second World War, Messiaen entered into military service. In May 1940, he was captured and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Silesia where he wrote his most recognizable work, Quatuor pour la fin du temps. The piece, aimed at simulating the “end of time” in eight movements, shows the use of additive rhythms, the result of previous studies of Indian music, and bird songs, which Messiaen believed to be symbolic of angels.
Released in the spring of 1941, Messiaen soon began teaching harmony at the Paris Conservatory where he attracted a variety of students, including Pierre Boulez. While relatively inactive compositionally for nearly two years, he managed to write Technique de mon language musical, a highly influential book explaining his compositional method. When he returned to composition, his students began to increasingly influence his musical language, as Messiaen began experimenting with serialism and tape music. Although these innovations did not last, this period saw the birth of Vingt regard sur l’Enfant-Jesus (1944) and the mammoth Turangalîa-symphonie (1946-8).
The 1950s witnessed Messiaen’s musical focus shift to the subject of ornithology. Throughout the decade, and for the rest of his life, Messiaen copied various bird songs, even traveling throughout the globe to find different species, while incorporating them into his works. Most obvious on Reveil des oiseaux (1953), Oiseaux exotique (1955-6), and Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956-8), they also figure in this period’s magnum opus, the orchestral ode to nature, Chronochromie (1959-60). While a productive phase musically, the period was a difficult one for Messiaen personally due to his wife’s prolonged illness, of which she died in 1959.
A trip to Japan and his marriage to Yvonne Loriod, a former student and frequent pianist in the premieres of his works, highlighted the early 1960s. The remainder of the decade showed a return to overtly Catholic based works, evident in Couleur de la cite céleste (1963) and Et exspecto resurrection mortuorum (1964). It also marked the beginning of a series of gigantic pieces that synthesized the many disparate aspects of Messiaen’s musical vocabulary. The first of these works was the fourteen-movement La Transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ (1965-9), followed by Des Canyons aux
etoiles (1971-4).
In 1978, Messiaen was forced to retire from the Conservatory due to its age policy. By this time, he had already made a sizable impact as an educator, having taught such notable composers as Boulez, Barrque, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Goehr, and Murail, frequently taking an active interest in their lives and often staying in touch with them after their graduation from the Conservatory. The additional time at his disposable helped him to complete his only opera, Saint Francois d’Assise (1975-83), and continue his global pursuit of bird songs. He died at the age of eighty-three, shortly after completely the monumental orchestral work Eclairs sur l’Au-dela (1988-92).
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