Tag: Olivier Messiaen

Thursday 12 December 2024

Bridgewater Hall Manchester

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The BBC Philharmonic brings Messiaen’s extraordinary celebration of faith and nature into vibrant life

The French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992) was commissioned by the American arts patron Alice Tully in 1971 to write a piece for chamber orchestra to celebrate the bicentenary of the American Declaration of Independence in 1976. Des canyons aux étoiles… (From the Canyons to the Stars) was premiered in 1974 at Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York. Last Thursday’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Ludovic Morlot was the fiftieth anniversary, almost to the day, of the world premiere.

Messiaen wrote the piece for unusual forces – plenty of woodwind, brass and percussion, but only six violins, three violas, three cellos and one double bass. The percussion section, made up of five players, includes a wind machine, several gongs, crotales and tumba – plus an instrument invented by Messiaen, a geophone. Not to be confused with the scientific instrument of the same name, Messiaen’s instrument is also called the ocean drum. It consists of a metal drum filled with lead pellets, which are swirled around horizontally. The piece also features four soloists – on Thursday, they were Steven Osborne (piano), Tim Williams (glockenspiel), and Martin Owen (horn). Paul Patrick played xylorimba, which despite its name is not a hybrid of a xylophone and a marimba but more like an extended xylophone.

Messiaen had long been inspired to write music about birds and their surrounding habitat, diligently notated their song in the wild. In the 50s, he wrote Le Merle noir (Blackbird) for solo piano and Catalogue d’oiseaux (Catalogue of birds) for solo piano. He described birds as ‘the greatest musicians’ on earth. He was also inspired by landscape – in Spring 1972, he and his wife Yvonne Loriod visited the canyons of Utah, which he said was ‘the grandest and most beautiful marvels of the world’. He described Bryce Canyon as ‘the most beautiful thing in the United States’, devoting a whole movement of Des canyons aux étoiles… to describing its wonders. Another movement is inspired by the majestic landscapes of Zion Park, and a third by the vast natural amphitheatre of Cedar Breaks National Monument. Other movements are inspired by specific birds whose songs he notated in Utah and elsewhere around the world.

At over 90 minutes without a break, Des canyons aux étoiles… represents a challenge not just to performers but to audiences; as Richard Steinitz wrote, ‘Can this monumental cycle of meditations on the majesty of God’s creation really hold our interest over twelve movements and one-and-a-half hours of playing time?’ The answer last Thursday was a resounding ‘yes’; the BBC Philharmonic and soloists brought the score to compelling life in a way which even the best studio recording will inevitably struggle to do. It was partly observing the sheer concentration and physical effort exerted by the performers. Steven Osborne, in particular, was stunningly visceral, expressing the music through his whole body, not just his hands. He revealed on social media that he had to tape up his left hand to prevent sudden nerve pain while playing Messiaen, who ‘probably needs more noise than any other I play.’ Horn soloist Martin Owen, who usually sits in the middle of the BBC Symphony Orchestra as Principal Horn, left his seat in the orchestra and stood at the front of the stage to play his sixth-movement solo, sometimes stopping (as marked by Messiaen) as if to challenge the audience, and swaying as he played half-notes. Watching the wide range of percussion, including the enormous wind machine and the intriguing geophone, was also fascinating.

But to return to the structure of the piece, it’s essential to bear in mind that, as David Hill wrote in the introduction to The Messiaen Companion,

“Faith, as Messiaen repeatedly emphasised, was his sole reason for composing… Even the structure of his music seems permeated by his faith…“

Messiaen was a Catholic, but his approach to faith was very different from the thrilling drama of the film Conclave (reviewed by Wendy Ide in The Guardian), in which candidates for the papacy are seen as locked in an all-too-human power struggle, earth-bound in their ambition and their doubts; unlike Messiaen who gazed up to the stars with child-like wonder and unshakeable faith in God. As Hill wrote, we shouldn’t expect Messiaen’s music to develop or to explore theological arguments about his faith. As Steinitz wrote, there is no ‘no hint of the pain of Gerontius’s blinding encounter with the absolute perfection of God [in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius], no shadow of concern that the deity should allow agony as well as joy in his creation.’ Instead, to use Steinitz’s phrase, Messiaen’s music, like Bach’s in pieces like his Mass in B Minor, displays ‘radiance, passion and conviction.’ The joy of listening to Des canyons aux étoiles… lies in each movement’s fantastic variety of instrumental colour and techniques rather than the spiritual journey described by the Dream of Gerontius.

Music, an art which exists in the here-and-now, in measured time,… is used by Messiaen to convey mysteries which lie beyond time… [He] stands apart from the Western tradition (since the Renaissance at least) in which musical events are ordered into a directional sequence or narrative. Messiaen’s music accumulates but it does not develop (in the accepted sense) or argue. In part this is because Messiaen’s acceptance of faith is so complete he is simply not concerned with the strains and tensions which are the stuff of drama in music.

Peter Hill, The Messiaen Companion

Part 1:
1 Le désert (The desert)
2 Les orioles (The orioles)
3 Ce qui est écrit sur les étoiles (What is written in the stars)
4 Le Cossyphe d’Heuglin (The white-browed robin-chat) for solo piano
5 Cedar Breaks et le don de crainte (Cedar Breaks and the gift of awe)

The opening movement is designed to cleanse the mind in preparation for the religious meditations of the rest of the work. In Messiaen’s words in his Preface, the desert is a

‘symbol for the emptiness of the soul which allows it to perceive the inner conversation of the Spirit.’

It began with an incantatory horn call, played with a lovely tone from Martin Owen. The desert’s humid aridity was perfectly captured by Jennifer Hutchison on piccolo, only just within the threshold of human hearing, and by bowed antique percussion (crotales). The desert was also evoked by the otherworldly sound of the wind machine, describing both spiritual emptiness and the wind in the barren landscape of the desert. The piccolo also described the song of a specific bird, the lark of the Sahara desert.

The second movement is based on the song of another bird transcribed by Messiaen, the oriole, a type of blackbird with black and orange or yellow plumage. Messiaen saw birds as evoking the voice of God, and Steven Osborne’s playing was suitably devotional, with a gorgeously delicate touch and heart-stopping moments of subtlety. As in his opera Saint François d’Assise (St Francis of Assisi), written in the late ‘70s shortly after Des Canyons, immensely complex harmonies were resolved with consonant chords of comfort, representing the simplicity of Messiaen’s religious faith. The movement also featured virtuosic playing from Paul Patrick on xylorimba.

The third movement is the first one to feature the ‘stars’ of Des canyons aux étoiles… Messiaen wrote that standing at the bottom of a canyon one inevitably looks up at the stars, ‘one progresses from the deepest bowels of the earth and ascends towards the stars’.

What is ‘written in the stars’ is the words ‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin’ which come from the Biblical Book of Daniel. In the story of the feast of King Belshazzar (see below) the fateful words were written on the wall, leading to the expression ‘the writing on the wall’, which suggests something unpleasant is about to happen. Musical depictions of the feast date back to the 12th-century Play of Daniel, followed by Handel’s oratorio Belshazzar (1744). The most famous 20th century example is William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast (1931), which has been performed at the BBC Proms no fewer than 35 times.

Walton’s version includes a moment of high drama when the the choir and soloist sing the words of warning, but Messiaen uses them in a much more abstract manner. As Richard Steinitz explained, Messiaen turns the words into music by giving ‘each letter not only matching pitch and duration but its own chord and instrumentation.’

On Thursday, the Biblical message was provided by strident brass. Osborne played the song of Townsend’s solitaire, a type of thrush, with precision and dedication. It was fascinating to watch the geophone’s first appearance, held horizontally as the ‘rocks’ rolled around inside it to create a sound like shifting sand in the desert, returning us to Earth after gazing up at the stars.

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The fourth movement, for solo piano, describes an African bird, the Heuglin’s robin or the white-browed robin-chat. Michael Clive describes its song as ‘melodious and highly variable… heard at dawn and dusk.’ Osborne brought out the rich, vibrant colours of the bird and its song, with contrasting tone and dynamics. He played across the whole piano, sometimes low and melancholy, at other times high and precise, with incredible power where required, digging right in.

The fifth movement describes Cedar Breaks, a ‘natural amphitheatre sliding down towards a deep abyss’, and the ‘gift of awe’ that it provokes. Rather than being fearful of the immensity of the landscape, Messiaen said, ‘to replace fear by awe opens a window for the adoration.’ The fear was expressed by a frightening low melody and cinematic strings. We heard the sound of the American robin and crashing chords, which brought a brief, terrifying climax. Unusual instruments included a solo trumpet mouthpiece (only) and the return of the wind machine. The awe inspired by nature was expressed in bright brass with several gongs; Messiaen again combined a description of nature with the religious feelings it provoked in him. There was a lovely deep brass melody with explosive gongs. Complex, almost aleatoric music with the full orchestra and amazing textures led to silence and the lonely sound of the wind machine.

Part 2:
6 Appel interstellaire (Interstellar call) for solo horn
7 Bryce Canyon et les rochers rouge-orange (Bryce Canyon and the red-orange rocks)

Part 2 of Des canyons aux étoiles… begins with a movement for solo horn, Interstellar call. It was the first movement to be written, in 1971, to commemorate Messiaen’s friend Jean-Paul Guézac, who died aged 38. Martin Owen stood to play his solo part as if standing at the top of a mountain. His playing was at once intimate and declamatory. Sometimes, the horn sounded like a hunting horn; elsewhere, it was mournful, banshee-like. In an incredible performance, he provided a whole range of sounds and extended techniques for the instrument.

The next movement is about Bryce Canyon, which Messiaen described as,

“…the greatest marvel of Utah. It is a gigantic circle of rocks – red, orange, violet – in fantastic shapes: castles, square towers, natural windows, bridges, statues, columns, whole cities, with here and there a deep black hole.“

The movement demonstrates Messiaen’s sheer joy at this fantastic spectacle. It began with a joyful, dancing tune which was reminiscent of another long-form ecstatic piece, Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie (1948), which the BBC Philharmonic performed at the Proms earlier this year. A splendidly deep brass theme was accompanied by swirling strings, and pulsating chords led to incredibly intense string chords. Osborne, illustrating the call of the Stellar’s Jay, again dug deep into the piano keyboard and then leapt back as if the keys were burning his fingers, playing with stunning precision. Deep brass and scurrying strings opened up shafts of golden light, and a chorus of birds blossomed. The full orchestra reached a glowing, exuberant climax; a gong died away, bringing this remarkable movement to an end.

Part 3:
8 Les Ressuscités et le chant de l’étoile Aldébaran (The resurrected and the song of the star Aldebaran)
9 Le Moqueur polyglotte (The mockingbird) for solo piano
10 La Grive des bois (The wood thrush)
11 Omao, leiothrix, elepaio, shama (ʻōmaʻo, leiothrix, ʻelepaio, shama)
12 Zion Park et la cité céleste (Zion Park and the celestial city)

There were more echoes of the Turangalîla-Symphonie in the opening movement of part 3; it shared the serene joy of Turangalîla‘s sixth movement, Jardin du sommeil d’amour (Garden of Love’s Sleep). The soaring melodies of the flutes and piccolo sounded like the sine-wave electronic swoops of the ondes Martenot in Turangalîla. The movement looked upwards, literally to the star Aldébaran, the brightest star in the Taurus constellation; and figuratively – Messiaen chose the star to represent himself as a composer as its name means ‘follower’ in Arabic. The movement also looked up to Heaven, to the song of resurrection sung by stars, inspired by the Biblical Book of Job, ‘When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy’ (Job 38: 7). This was a gorgeous moment of stasis beyond time, beautifully played by the BBC Philharmonic and soloists; the world stopped turning below the surface glitter of the glockenspiel and piano.

After the shimmering stars of the eighth movement, it was time for Steven Osborne to shine again in the first of three movements featuring the songs of various birds. In this movement for solo piano, Osborne was astonishingly virtuosic, combining incredible energy with huge concentration to depict the Mockingbird, described by Steinitz as ‘the most famous bird of the United States’. At times, he silently pressed the keys to maintain the piano’s resonance, creating what sounded like a halo of electronics. Elsewhere, he played clusters with the palm of his hand and with his arms. Steinitz, whilst acknowledging Messiaen’s technical innovations here, was dismissive of the movement as a whole, criticising the ‘fragmented, seemingly directionless phrases of the mockingbird [which] do somewhat undermine the broader architecture and pacing of the whole work.’ Steinitz made a strong case to justify his opinion, but he might have changed his mind if he’d had the privilege of seeing Osborne’s intensely visceral performance which made this movement one of the highlights of the evening.

The next movement was based on the song of the wood thrush, a bird found in many parts of North America. The movement felt like a theme and variations with a sparkling, optimistic theme for high percussion and violin harmonics restated at various points. According to Paul Griffiths, even in this description of birdsong, Messiaen makes a subtle Biblical reference, ‘eventually the slow form, through cycles of repetition, is reconfigured, now shining and simple – a symbol of the ‘new name’ that is promised [in the Biblical Book of Revelation] for each individual after resurrection.’

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”

(Revelation 2:17)

The last movement of the trio of birdsong celebrated various birds – the ʻōmaʻo, leiothrix, ʻelepaio and shama – which can only be found far away from Utah, in Africa and the Hawaiian islands. These are all small songbirds that are physically similar to the wood thrush of the previous movement. But, as Griffiths points out, ‘the first song is avian, not human’, a robust theme for bassoon and horn which alternated with an aviary of birds made up of piano, xylorimba, woodwind and strings. The two factions joined together in a celebratory dance. There was a moment of contemplative calm from the piano before the dance resumed. The movement was notable for the range of orchestral colour brought by the orchestra under the baton of Ludovic Morlot, who conducted superbly all evening. One striking moment was when the wind machine sounded like a siren, recalling Amériques (1921) and Ionisation (1931) by the French composer Edgard Varèse.

The final movement celebrates the earthly Zion Park and Heaven – ‘the celestial city’. Messiaen saw Zion as ‘a symbol of Paradise.’ It features birds from Zion Park, the lazuli bunting whose song was performed by Tim Williams on glockenspiel, and Cassin’s finch, Steven Osborne on piano. A brass chorale kept returning ecstatically to the same chord, as did a glowing string motif. Tubular bells brought a ceremonial ending, resonating in joyful exultation.  

Performers

Martin Owen (horn)
Paul Patrick (xylorimba)
Tim Williams (glockenspiel)
Steven Osborne (piano)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Ludovic Morlot (conductor)

The concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and is available to listen for 30 days after the date of broadcast on BBC Sounds

Sources

Peter Hill (Editor),The Messiaen Companion (Faber and Faber 1995)
Steinitz, Richard, Des canyons aux étoiles… (Ibid.)
Potter, Caroline, Programme Notes (BBC Philharmonic Orchestra)
Messiaen, Olivier Programme Notes for Des canyons aux étoiles…
Griffiths, Paul, Des canyons aux étoiles… (2023 Programme notes for the Utah Symphony recording conducted by Thierry Fischer, Hyperion records)
Clive, Michael What to Listen for in Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles (utahsymphony.org 5 April 2022)
Ide, Wendy, Conclave review – Ralph Fiennes is almighty in thrilling papal tussle (The Guardian 1 December 2024)
BBC Proms Performance Archive