Orchestral music Les Offrandes oubliees (1930)

(The Forgotten Offerings) Arms extended, sad unto death,

on the tree of the Cross you shed your blood. You love us, sweet Jesus: that we had forgotten.

Driven by folly or the serpent's tongue, on a panting, frantic, ceaseless course, we went down into sin as into a tomb.

Here is the spotless table, the fount of charity, the banquet of the poor, here the Pity to be adored, offering the bread of Life and of Love.

You love us, sweet Jesus: that we had forgotten.

Tres lent, douloureux, prolondement triste Vif, leroce, desespere, haletant-Extremement lent, avec une grande pitie et un grand amour

Les Offrandes oubliees, composed in the summer of 1930, was the first of Messiaen's orchesh al WI ill to be performed. The dialogue of flesh and spirit is a powerful theme in Messiaen's early music. In the 1111,1111/,//1 :;yl1lphony he was to achieve a celebration of carnality as divine, but in his works of the early :m. 11111 I:: nllllil n slark dualism between body and soul, earth and heaven, dynamism and stasis. cll::t:llrll ,11111 111011111 II:III1I()ny. The body, a source of joy in Turangalila, is in the earlier pieces a sito 01 1111111'1 II

II IIpatience. The three sections of Les Offrandes oubliees, corresponding to the three stanzas of the WIIiPOser'S poetic prologue, have to do with Christ's sacrifice, with human sin (implicitly a forgetting of the IIll1ning), and with the eucharist (an unforgetting). Transformations of amusical motif signal this programme: 1111 ~ idea, though always couched in the second mode, moves from a rhythmically supple chromaticism into ,I willi race and on into repose. I\llfllcJing to a later note by the composer, the first part is a "lamentation [in] groups of uneven duration, cut by II IIlg mauve and grey wailings", the second is marked by "strong final accents, whistling glissando I10111 1I0llics, incisive calls from the trumpets", and the last has a "long, slow phrase from the violins, rising Ilv"r ,I carpet of pianissimo chords, with reds, golds, blues (like adistant staine

give you rest. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. "

Vif - Madere - Presque lent - Vif - Lent

Le Tombeau resplendissantwritten in the summer of 1931 has three kinds of music thematically linked (in an ABAC form), and ends with an adagio for muted strings, which is in the key of Emajor - the key of contemplation, as it would seem from such other works as the Quatuor pour la fin du temps. The form answers that of the preface - though an earlier preface suggests that there was a further link with Les Offrandes oubli8es in the finale's subject: "I sing the gift of the divine essence, the body of Jesus Christ, his body and his blood".

Paul Griffiths ([ext adapten)

Hymne (1932) For Olivier Messiaen, religion had acentral place in the concert hall. In the early 1930s, he wrote a solll'" of orchestral works inspired by his Catholic faith. Les Offrandes oubli8es (1930) was followed quickly I,V Le Tombeau resplendissant (1931) and the Hymne au saint-Sacrement (1932) - all composed 11011111 Messiaen's 25th birthday. The Hymn to the Blessed Sacrament was introduced to the Parisian pulIlIl I,v Walther Straram on 23 March 1933 at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. Messiaen himself wrote 1I1i111l11 work was "above all characterized by Its colour effects", but in a review of the first perfOllll:llll l1 II, CO/llrorfia, Paul Ie Flem noted that the Hymn "evokes a mysticism where ecstasy and fO'V'"11 ,II' !:Olllllillon ... Religious fervour, serenity and human violence are portrayed through musical menn:; 111111,11' 1111111101110 point of fierceness."

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Ilie arresting opening (which Messiaen described as "like a gust of wind") is contrasted with a long, slow Illorne; the two ideas are developed to produce a brilliantly lit climax. Performed several times in Paris 1111 illg the 1930s (notably at the first concert of the Groupe Jeune France in 1936), the only copy of the score II II I parts vanished en route to Lyon io 1942. Messiaeo reconstructed the work io 1946, and it was first p' "llIrmed in this version at carnegie Hall, New York, on 13 March 1947, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

Nigel Simeone

L'Ascension (1935) (Ascension Day)

1I11l 111'" symphonic meditations that make up L'Ascension were written in 1932 and orchestrated the 1IIIIIIIvil II Iyear; the organ version, including movements 1,2 and 4with acompletely new third movement,

111;1111) ~fter the orchestral one. Messiaen's language was still in the process of being formed, but the f;~ll ',IVll impulse behind it was already quite alien to the rather febrile, neo-classical, jazz-oriented ill'" wl,iell still made up much of what was new in Paris at the time. Messiaen, like Saint-Satins, looks I~I' ~ III Ilslt (in his use of keys like E major, A major and F sharp major) and to Berlioz - both were

,1111"'""3, born and brought up among mountains. But unlike Saint-Satins, Messiaen was rarely to Iiii)~ I,ll I'om his Christian, and specifically Roman Catholic, orientation, and in L'Ascension a sense of

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iii" I '11'.11, suhverting and overriding earthly time, is extremely strong. 1I11Dllilig phrase of the first movement is taken from the Magnificat Antiphon "Pater, manifestavi

I 1'"'"''', and the manifestatory act is appropriately performed by brass, together with flutes and 11111 Dthe shadow of Cesar Franck is felt, both in the questing chromaticism and in the relief

J lIy IIle resolution on to strong cadences in E major. In the second movement, E natural is 'Ioil as tho climactic note of a modal theme based on F natural. Here the strings gradually 1I11'llIselves into the texture, while the woodwind's "serene alleluias" are of the kind tilat were

1I1IJillifiabie birdsongs in Messiaen's later works. The third movement, "Alleluia sur In ,lIl'luia sur la cymbale", lives up to its title, reminding us that Messiaen learnt orchestration

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1fT ~N' from Paul Dukas, the composer of L'Apprenti sorcier. It provides an ideal contrast with the last movement in which the pleading of the wind in the first one is finally answered by strings alone, rising through and beyond E major triads to a visionary upland of unresolved dissonance. We may have the feeling that Messiaen has not said his last word on the subject and if so, we should be right!

Roger Nichols (fext adapted)

Chronochromie (1960)

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In Messiaen's view or certainly in his mind's eye harmony was colour, and music was coloured time: hence the title of Chronochromie (1959-60), which was his first work for large orchestra since thc Turangali1a symphony (1946-48), and which came as another joyous explosion of things gained, the things this time inlcuding ways of imitating birdsong and ways of measuring duration. For Messiaen, "ornithologist and rhythmician" as he called himself, time was more a frame than a flow, and his music, like that of H bird, exults in the continuous present. Balance, stasis and repetition, then, count for more than progrcs:i and development, and Chronochromie is cast in balanced blocks rather than movements. There are seV011 of them. The basic principle is that of the strophe-antistrophe-epode of choral odes in Greek drama, 11111 with the strophe-antistrophe doubled and the whole placed between an introduction and mirroring COCIII The time frames of the strophes are created by permutations (systematically limited to 36) 01 :1" arithmetical durations - from one demisemiquaver (32nd note) to 32, i.e. a semi breve (whole nOlo) marked out on three layers by percussionists with string chords. Against these rhythmic cages, 110111 II lJirds call out on woodwind and tuned percussion instruments. Other French birds are heard in the 011111111111 parts of the antistrophes: the song thrush on combined woodwind, sounding "gay, alive, COIOlIlOd", III alternation with the skylark on xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel over a background of bells, cylllll,11 anel strings. Each of the antistrophes closes with segments of chorale and of more permutations 01 11111 " IIWllllTliC values, tllis time with Mexican birds in attendance. The epode consists of birdsong will II II II Iii III 1I1lll0mi seafMling: iI is a tangle of 18 songs, again French, heard from solo strings. Mo::::I(loll "SOS 1110 fult rcsourccs of 11 is orchestra only in the introduction and coda, which alO lolilli'd ' 'jill

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III, two strophes or the two antistrophes are related, in that sameness is mixed with difference. At the 1.111 of the introduction is an immensely amplified birdsong, that of the Swedish osprey. Then come Ii Iljlllcnts of rhythmic permutations with Japanese birdsongs from woodwind and tuned percussion, 1"II"wed by more osprey and more Japanese birds (the narcissus flycatcher and the bush warbler). Next 1111 wllole orchestra throws out huge chords representing rocks, after which a mountain stream is 1I1111111lfi with an exactitude that demands quotation from the composer's own account. There are, he said,

IV"I;l1 circling movements." given to solo violas and celtos: this is the moving mass that rolls and flows 1111 11111 little subsidiary noises of the foam and of sheaves of droplets are provided by bass-elarinet IIUIIII '" ,lives from the bassoon, and pizzicatos from the double basses. A trilled chord, stationary on the 1,,1111, iliid changing on the basses, expresses the colour of the resonance against the rock walls. (11111'IIIIII1S that resonance generates a powerful deep hum: this is the bassoon and the tuba on their !KlllillIl lIoles." We return from the composer's beloved mountains to the permutation-plus-birdsong

IIIII~,I' IIIlI then the white-tailed eagle, again a Swedish bird, provides a colossal close, The coda 11~'lId"I:, 1110 sequence, but ends the same way,

./I/omie imagines a natural world without people: a world of birds, mountains and changeless, 111'.11 111I11C.

Paul Griffiths (fext adapted)

Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (1964) (And I await the resurrection of the dead)

II It'surrectionem mortuorum (1964) is a large-scale work concerned with the world to II:illlllnentation - for orchestral woodwind and brass with bells and gongs - fits it, as ill l1olcel, "for large spaces: churches, cathedrals, and even out of doors and among

I 1111:,", lis first performance was given in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, whose medieval wlllclows offered "an ideal environment, because of the marriage of t[le colours of

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the timbres and sound complexes with the dazzlement of blues, reds, golds, violets". This again, then, is coloured time: a requiem whose words are obliterated by colours and volumes of sound. There are five sections, beginning with a prayer from the depths of which this monumental orchestra is capable. The second section has three kinds of music: a six-note streak of lightning followed by a chord, from which the same six notes (but two octaves down) are successively removed in a "melody by losses"; a litany of imitations and answers played by solo woodwinds; and a trumpet-led chorale overlaid by bells in an ancient Indian rhythm. The third part, too, is threefold, representing the voice of Christ as that of an Amazonian bird on the full woodwind ensemble, as a pattern of change ringing on bells, and as a massive chord in crescendo. More complex is the fourth section, though again this is music in grand blocks. Triple strokes from tam tams "symbolize at once the solemn moment of resurrection and the distant melody of the stars". Bells play the Easter introit and trumpets the alleluia; the Calandra lark sounds from woodwinds, like the sono thrush of Chronochromie, as an image of joy. Finally the chants are combined with the melody 01 the first part, and a sequence of chords prepares for the chorale of the last, "enormous, unanimou:; and simple".

Paul Griffilli' (Text adapillill

La Ville d'en Haut (1987) (The City Above)

I i1 Ville d'en Haut (1987), scored for wind-percussion ensemble with solo piano anel kl'V' , percussion, turns to the sound colours of Paradise, of "The City Above". it is enornlllll:, ,III' elcmcntal, built from a few elements: a great summons for the full wind with cymbal and 1:1111 1.1111

~nd with complementary decoration of sustained chords from the keyed instruments; aClllllill,' 110 SOIiO of Ihe meiodious warbler, given by xylophones with trilling cymbal; and an aiternatiolllll'lw, IJI:lckcnp (wooclwind anet trianglp.) and garden warbler (piano solo). According to the COI11II1I1i1" II Illil!:!: cllOinlo represents the glory of the Heavenly City. The birds of thp. xyloplllllill Ifill

Ilodwinds, the piano solo, symbolize the joy of the resurrected, assured of being always near to tillis!. The chords' colours change almost constantly, and symbolize in their turn the colours of the 1I'i11l Above."

Paul Griffiths (Text adapted)

Un Sourire (1989) (A Smile)

I,ll' ,III 11is sorrows and sufferings, hunger, cold, incomprehension and closeness to death, Mozart VI ;I"flped smiling. His music smiles too. So I allowed myself, in all humility, to call my homage ':4

ldl'll I,'peatedly refined his ideal of the string adagio until it would levitate, free from double basses, :11/ l:4u-OeI8". Un Sourlre, his contribution to the Mozart bicentenary, brings a first glimpse of

I! '" ,111":ill.l\t the start of the piece, the strings, with wind highlighting, sing a phrase which moves \II"llJIld mode into the third, Then comes a contrast: birdsongs from wind, percussion and both

"'i,'IIIl:I. The two sorts of music - smile and birdsong - are interchanged, with variation and I 1111011'1, in an ABABABA pattern. Each time the song begins, it is as a recommencement; the

It: 1II,Iween the recommencements function as frames and preparations; and each II' 1'1I1Wll initiates a longer unfolding, one not so much developed as stretched, presented in a II /III Sourire is thus music of eternity as much as homage to Mozart.

Paul Griffiths (Text adapted)

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Eclairs sur I'Au-Dela (1991) (Illuminations of the Beyond)

The only signs of age in this last piece are in its wisdom of which its orchestral virtuosity and its breadth of reference provide material evidence and perhaps also in its audacity, including its audacity in bringing together an ensemble of 128 players only to leave many of them silent for long periods. When writing to accept the commission from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, in August 1987, Messiaen had remarked that he could not predict the size or the scoring of the work he would write. It might then have seemed, even to him, that his output was to end in miniatures. As the new work emerged, though, it grew to be acycle of eleven movements aconcert in itself for an orchestra including whole sub-orchestras of flutes and clarinets (ten of each), and of percussion, with adozen or so players on xylophones, crotales, glockenspiel, tubular bells, gongs, triangles, woodblocks, bass drum, wind machine, cymbals, whip ami reco-reco. The other conspicuous inflation is of the brass section, made up of five trumpets, six horns, three trombones and three tubas. The first movement, "Apparition of Christ in Glory", is scored for a large symphonic wind ensemble, similill to those used for parallel movements in L'Ascension and Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. WII enter anew place, anew time, but immediately could be back 30 or 60 years in Messiaen's output: thOHI' "flash visions", all through, not only see into the world beyond, through images from the world prescnlln us (timbres, rhythms, melodies, birdsongs, evocations of stars and light), but celebrate the constancy Iliid richness of the composer's musical universe. Each movement is headed with at least one inscripllllil most of them taken, as in this case, from the Book of Revelation: "I saw the Son of Man, clothecl willi ,I long robe and with a golden girdle around his breast; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his face ::1111111 like the sun. In his right hand he held seven stars." After this strongly unified piece, the second movement breaks into a pattern of small ensombll", III represent "The Constellation of Sagittarius", the composer's own birth sign: invisiblo IllIilVI'1i I foreshadowed in the visible heaven of the night sky. Wind and bells sound arobust melody onlwil ,,11111'11 Im1ian rhythmic formulas. Amore assuaging fragment of tune is played by strings, against fllllo 1111 d'I'llti 111111 rhythmic canons in percussion. Following this, first violins produce natural-harmonic 011 (;:::111111,. II mako what is defined as a nebula image in the score, whose three volumes are bound witl1 pi 111111111 '1,1 01 \lOlilxics oncinobiliao as frontispieces) over an accelerating upward rush from seconds IIl1el villi" IIIIIIIH 1111111 piny six cliffClont birdsongs. Ear-h 01 these four kinds of music is then repoalod 1111'1111 Iii

1111111 arrival of the first kind is followed by a coda. The modal phrases, in Messiaen's second mode, are "" d13racteristic as the songs of birds: the composer lays down his own music alongside that of his fellow 111"lmes. III Illird movement presents a whole cascade of music from just one creature, the Superb Lyrebird, Iill II Messiaen heard and saw as it put on its plumage display in a sunlit eucalyptus forest. (The 11,II,llian birdsongs throughout the score are souvenirs of his 80th birthday tour -though at the same

111111' limy are emblems of another world, as they were in Saint Franr;ois.) The title, "The Lyrebird and the 1IIIdili "ity", indicates that the joy and the glory are to be heard as those of the Heavenly City in dressing 111'1 ,1,11101' espousal to Christ. bUt. quite unusually for Messiaen, there is a registering too of the comedy ,11111' 'lung, That gift of serene good humour was perhaps the last gain his music could have made, and III' 1IIIIIostricted to this movement. 1111 111111111 movement folds back into abstraction. Like sections of Chronochromie, which was Messiaen's

IIII~ IIlIlIll major orchestral piece without a solo piano part for Yvonne Loriod, the music marks out three ill II III. II IIl01lS "interversions" of number sequences in rhythmic durations tolled by bells, gongs and illlll' while woodwinds and xylophone infiltrate birdsongs into the arithmetic. Here the title, "The Elect

MJII "iI wilh a Seal", refers to the passage in Revelation where an angel marks the foreheads of the 110: 'II, 1II1I the music seems to be remembering a particular feature of this episode: the holding back of lIiD 111111 wincls by four other angels, "that no wind might blow or harm the earth". hilllnill IWS is the work's interior conclusion in its fifth movement, "Abide in Love", which is a long adagio

,,,1111',, violas and cellos, as the final movement also will be, We are back in the "Garden of Love's 1,1~lr "I "If(lllgatrla as well as in the praise movements of the Quartet for the End of Time, though with

1111I11I1I3tic urgency and rhythmic flexibility in the line, and asearing, glistening colour that arrives '''1111" 1IIIIIoci violins are taken up to an extreme high register. In 1", 1'''1111 tile movements have succeeded each other as distinct and separate blocks, but the sixth,

1I1~, Illllpon a longer second phase in the work, begins with ashock. The strings die away, and d Iiy ~ loud thwack on the bass drum, initiating a drama of rhythmic characters that again has II 111 I/lfangatrla. Three quaver (eighth-note) drumbeats start each cycle in the same way, and Ibl OliOS similarly with a crack on the whip, or slapstick, but between these elements the "v lIoligs and tam-tams progressively lengthens and shortens from three dotted quavers to 111'''' (quarter-notes) and so on up to three double-dotted crotChets, then back again. The I";" l10re (values of from one to seven semiquavers [sixteenth-notes]; a total of seven

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semiquavers measured out by the drums and whip) are apparently intended in cryptic homage to the fanfaring angels of the title: "The Seven Angels with the Seven Trumpets". At the same time - echoing on from Messiaen's treatment of the same subject in the Quartet - a rugged theme is repeated in its own cycles, independent of the percussion mechanics, by a fused ensemble of horns, trombones and bassoons. After this comes the gentlest movement, and the one least like anything else in Messiaen's music: "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes ... " (again the quotation is from Revelation). The tone of consolation, of cherishing, of God stooping to man, is unusual for an artist whose spiritual gaze normally went the other way, towards the grandeur, the mightiness, the bewilderment; and for anything like the tenderness of this movement one has to look back as far as the Vingt regards. Violins set up a high trill (the trill, not a common feature in Messiaen until this late period, is the musical signature especially of "Eclairs . . '), preparing for acondescension of woodwind chords, marked "like acaress" in the sketches. Then comes a rising horn summons, a tiny echo of Siegfried's call, echoed in turn by flutes and cellos taking over the harmony, and completed by awelcome from axylophone's birdsong. After ablackbird solo on the flute - an extraordinary moment where the entire orchestra rests and listens to just one player and then a little more of the xylophone, the whole first part is repeated. Now is the point where the double basses come in for the first time. The previous movement was all ill the middle-high register; suddenly there is this plummetting into the previously unheard far bass, for II III loud introduction of a four-note motif in ascending tritones (B-F/E-B flat), a motif whose subsequoill speeding-up and lifting through the orchestra will generate the power to justify the title: "The Stars nll!l Glory". This is the biggest and boldest of the movements, setting its assertive main theme against til III among birdsongs and nimbuses of nebulae, the latter pictured this time by murmurings from cellos.11111l1 are birds here from around the world: birds from Australia and from Papua New Guinea, together willi 1111 Shama of Oiseaux exotiques and one of Messiaen's home favourites, the Garden Warbler, associatccl willi the flute. Finally comes the climactic enlargement of the principal motif, and then a pause befolli 1111 colossal chorale-coda, also based on the four-note motif. Just for this moment the whole orchestra Willi togettler, joining in the angels' chorus to the shepherds: "Glory to God in the highest!" Once more thp, work breathes back into itself, for the ninth movement is scored only for 18 wootlwillil nil playillQ Liifferent birdsongs. The lines flicker and fade !n luminous confusion, at least for mOl 1111 P,1I Iii IIlc olernal time of paradise, where the successive can be simultaneous and the SilrJillllllll'lill 11I11;C0i1sivO, oacll of lI1C birds has honour. Uniquely for this movement, Messiaen takes his inscdpllr II I II

110m the Bible but from a French mystic, Dam J. de Monleon, who imagines the souls of the redeemed .t!, birds in the branches of the tree of life, gathering its fruits and singing. IIIP penultimate movement, "The Way of the InVisible", swivels back from paradise to review the t1i1liclilties of the approach. The mood is restless and punishing: only one bird sings in this movement, 1I111111e principal theme is astrenuous appeal in the sixth mode, presented as apair of phrases Messiaen 11'livilS the angularity and the anxiety that came before the bliss in Les Offrandes oUbliees, and the piece

IIII~; as it had begun, with a wrenching chord and a slump to a low C, as if it had not got anywhere. IIi VI ~vcr, the larger work goes on to arrive at its destination in heaven - though this is not properly an II ,val when heaven has already been glimpsed so much along the way, and when the music's time has 'II, ,.tv::, IJeen the eternal time of repetition, reversal and endless protraction rather than the earthly time fll plowess, pulse and development The final movement, "Christ, Light of Paradise", is the second 1l"lol1lento of muted violin melody couched on chords from other strings, and though, as in the earlier

Ii), Jill, there are places where the melody comes to rest, these are not now partitionings of a form: ICCI III limy are pauses for breath along an endless path, around an endless circuit Nor is there any more ""'11111 Ilito the uppermost register: the echo of the far treble - the light of Christ, perhaps - is always

II'!!II 1111110 metal shimmer of the triangles. The melody unfolds only because it is being played and heard !IV I' "plo still on earth: it is the extension onto our time-scale of an instant, a flash of eternity.

Paul Griffiths

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