Olivier Messiaen
Turangalîla-Symphony
Olivier
Messiaen’s music was equally influenced by his deep spirituality and his
interest in a wide range of musical sources -- from plain chant to Indian ragas,
serial techniques to birdsong. (An avid amateur ornithologist, he spent long
hours transcribing birds in the wild.) He entered the Paris Conserva toire
at the age of 11, studying organ and improvisation with Marcel Dupré and composition
with Paul Dukas. He was principal organist at La Trinité Cathedral in Paris for
nearly 40
years beginning in 1930,
and he returned to the Conservatoire as a teacher starting in 1942; his students included Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Messiaen
also had “synesthesia”—a neurological condition in which input received on one
sensory pathway involuntarily stimulates another sensory pathway. In his case,
the sound of chord structures also stimulated his sense of color, leading him to
compose music based in part on the colors he saw in different chords, which he
called “color progressions.” (Other composers believed to be synthesthetes
include Duke Ellington, Franz Liszt, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.)
In
1945, Serge Koussevitzky commissioned Messiaen to write a work for the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, using a special fund earmarked for any works Koussevitzky
cared to request. There were no constraints on what was expected of Messiaen,
either in size, length, or instrumentation. Inspired by the love story of
“Tristan and Isolde,” by 1947 he had completed three movements, which the Orchestre
de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire premiered
in Paris in February, 1948, as Trois
Tâla
(a reference to the Indian classical form the tâla, literally a “clap”). These movements, which
became III, IV, V in the final work, include a concerto-like part for piano,
played by Yvonne Loriod (Messiaen’s future wife), and significant sections for
the ondes
martenot,
an early electronic keyboard instrument, played by its inventor’s sister,
Ginette Martenot. Although Messiaen had originally intended to write a
four-movement symphony, by the time these three movements were premiered he had
already envisioned a much larger work. And in fact, it is also part of a
three-work set, along with the song cycles Harawi
(1945)
and Cinq
Rechants (1948). The completed Turangalîla-Symphony
(the hyphen in the title is Messiaen’s) is ten movements long. Its
title consists of two Sanskrit words, turanga
and lîla,
meaning roughly “time” and “love” (or “play”). The work was
premiered by the Boston Symphony under the baton of Leonard Bernstein in 1949.
The
reviews from the first performance were decidedly mixed; the Boston
Globe declared it “the longest and most futile music
within memory.” On the other hand, an arts correspondent for the Associated
Press wrote, “To this listener, the symphony seemed like one of the most
radical extensions of orchestral range, color and expressivity contrived by any
modern composer.” In a radio interview at the time, Koussevitzky advised
concertgoers to “have patience and listen with your own interest, if you
really love music.”
The
work is 70
to 80
minutes long in performance, and features ‘non-retrogradable’
rhythmic patterns (patterns that are the same played forwards as backwards) and
four distinct musical themes. Messiaen described the themes as follows:
The
“statue theme,” named for the threatening images on ancient Mexican
monuments, features moving thirds often played by fortissimo brass.
The
“flower theme” is a very slow, quiet figure introduced first by clarinets.
The
“love theme” is the longest and according to Messiaen most significant
theme, and is played by many different combinations
of instruments throughout the work.
The
final theme is a set of opposing chords that produces crossing counterpoints
in the orchestra.
Messiaen
described these themes, and how they interweave throughout the movements, in his
program notes for the first performance:
I.
Introduction: Here are heard the first two cyclic themes – the first, in heavy
thirds on the trombones; the second, in tender arabesques, on the clarinets.
II.
Chant d’amour 1 [Love
song]:
This movement is a refrain, evoking two violently contrasted aspects of love:
passionately carnal love, and tender and idealistic love.
III.
Turangalîla 1: A nostalgic theme on the ondes
martenot; a weightier theme on the trombones; slow song-like melody for the oboe.
Rhythmic play on three planes for the maracas, wood-block and bass drum.
IV.
Chant d’amour 2: A scherzo with two trios. In the restatement, the
scherzo and two trios appear simultaneously, making a musical scaffolding in
three tiers.
V.
Joie du sang des étoiles [Joy
of the blood of the stars]:
This is the climax of sensual passion expressed in a long and frenzied dance of
joy. The development contains a reversible rhythmic canon between trumpets and
trombones, while the piano adds its vehement brilliance to the movement’s wild
clamour. [A reviewer at the opening declared this clamour to remind him of
“Hindu hillbillies, if there be such.”]
VI.
Jardin du sommeil d’amour [Garden
of the sleep of love]:
Here appears the third cyclic theme: that of love. It is a long slow melody for ondes
martenot and
the strings, decorated by the vibraphone, the glockenspiel and the bird-song of
the piano. Tender, idealistic and ethereal love.
VII.
Turangalîla 2: Rhythmic pattern for the percussion, together with
‘rhythmic chromaticism’ of the time-values.
VIII.
Développement de l’amour [Development
of love]:
This movement develops the three cyclic themes.
IX.
Turangalîla 3: A rhythmic mode, using a ‘rhythmic chromaticism’
of 17 note-values: it uses five percussion instruments, wood-block, cymbal,
maracas, tambourin
provençal and
tam-tam. Each percussive sound is reinforced by a string chord which is a
realization of its particular resonance, thus uniting the quantitative and
phonetic lines.
X.
Finale: Here are two themes: (1) a joyful fanfare of trumpets and horns; (2)
the ‘love’ theme. The coda is based on the love-theme.
Messiaen
wanted to create a “love song and hymn of joy, time, movement, rhythm, life,
and death.”
Whether his work achieves this lofty goal is up to each
individual listener to decide. What remains certain is that his inventive piece
is like no other, a work of huge structural scope that strives to convey the
gamut in experience, from most tender to most wild, of its basic theme: love.
June 8, 2008
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