Olivier Messiaen

Born in Avignon on December 10, 1908, French composer, organist and teacher Olivier Messiaen combined his passion for ornithology and his taste for the sacred with mysticism in a contemporary musical style, enveloping them in rhythmic innovations. The son of a teacher and translator of English literature, Pierre Messiaen, and a poetess, Cécile Sauvage, he grew up in a cultural environment and discovered mysticism through a collection of his mother's poems written during her pregnancy, L'Âme en bourgeon. When his parents moved to Grenoble, he learned piano and harmony, and then discovered the score of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande through his teacher, a revelation. After the First World War, the family moved to Paris. He entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied piano, organ, harmony and composition for eleven years, with teachers Jean and Noël Gallon, Marcel Dupré, Abel Estyle, Maurice Emmanuel and Paul Dukas. Organ music particularly appealed to him, earning him three first prizes in mastery, improvisation and composition. He showed his aptitude for the latter with Le Banquet céleste (1928), a piece in which he already developed a regular-interval mode (known as "mode à transposition limitée"), in addition to his attraction for religious subjects. After two unsuccessful attempts at the Grand Prix de Rome, he became titular organist at the Eglise de la Trinité from 1930 onwards, and for sixty years had a Cavaillé-Coll instrument at his disposal, which he used for many future compositions, developing its sonic resources. The young Messiaen became interested in medieval plainchant, the rhythms of Indian music and birdsong, which he memorized and transcribed into music, giving rise to his passion for ornithology. In 1931, he published Les Offrandes oubliées, a well-received symphonic triptych. An adept of synopsis, he continued his research into the correspondences between sounds and colors. In 1932, works such as Apparition de l'Église éternelle and the symphonic suite Ascension en quatre méditations, adapted for organ, defined his stylistic approach. Breaking away from the imposed framework of liturgical compositions and classical forms, Messiaen opted for the use of a program, giving each work a unique character. In 1935, he began the organ cycle La Nativité du Seigneur, whose rhythms are inspired by Hindu tâlas. The following year, he joined the Jeune France group, whose members included Yves Baudrier, André Jolivet and Daniel-Lesur, whose aim was to give new spiritual and aesthetic impetus to French music. But the Second World War would separate them. That same year, 1936, Messiaen was appointed professor at the École normale de musique and taught at the Schola Cantorum. He married violinist Claire Delbos, whose nickname "Mi" inspired such pieces as Poèmes pour Mi. In 1937, he composed Fête des belles eaux, for ondes Martenot, for the Universal Exhibition, followed by Chants de terre et de ciel, to celebrate the birth of their son Pascal, for which he wrote the text sung by the soprano. With the outbreak of war, he began the organ cycle Corps glorieux and became involved in the fighting, before being taken prisoner and deported to Stalag VIII-A at the Görlitz camp in Silesia, where he wrote his Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941), a powerful work inspired by the Apocalypse, which he created with three fellow prisoners. Its non-retrogradable rhythms, embedded in a complex structure, form a figure that can be read in both directions. After repatriation, Messiaen returned to his post at La Trinité and began teaching harmony at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1943, with Yvonne Loriod, he premiered his Visions de l'Amen, for two pianos, which found many performers. He made his knowledge available in Technique de mon langage musical (1944), then composed two accessible works premiered together on April 21, 1945, Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence divine, for female choir, piano, ondes Martenot and orchestra, and Vingt regards sur l'Enfant Jésus, a cycle for solo piano that ranks among the most frequently performed pieces in his repertoire. After Harawi, a song of love and death inspired by the myth of Tristan and Isolde (1945), came the gigantic Turangalîla-Symphonie (1948), commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky, in ten movements for large orchestra, piano and ondes Martenot. The same year saw the release of Rechants polyphoniques. In the meantime, he obtained the creation of a special analysis class at the Conservatoire, with students including Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Henry, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul Méfano, Michèle Reverdy and Tristan Murail. A recognized pedagogue, Messiaen gave courses at Tanglewood (1948) and Darmstadt (1950-1953), and began writing a Traité du rythme that he would update constantly. He composed Études de rythme for piano, including Modes de valeur et d'intensité, followed by Messe de la Pentecôte and Livre d'orgue in 1951. From the sensuality of his early work, Messiaen moved on to rhythmic abstraction. He experimented with musique concrète in Timbres-Durées (1952) and drew inspiration from birdsong for Le Merle noir for flute and piano (1951), Réveil des oiseaux for piano and orchestra (1953), Oiseaux exotiques for piano, two clarinets, percussion and wind instruments (1956), preludes to his Catalogue d'oiseaux (1958), a suite of thirteen pieces for piano. In 1960, Chronochromie, for orchestra, placed him in the serial field. After the death of Claire Delbos, he married Yvonne Loriod in 1961, the main interpreter of his piano works. Over the next two decades, Messiaen continued to compose, notably Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, for wind and percussion, in honor of the dead of the two world wars (1966); his only opera, Saint François d'Assise, a testimony to his Catholic faith and love of nature, in progress since 1975 and premiered by Seiji Ozawa at the Paris Opéra on November 28, 1983; and the Livre du Saint-Sacrement organ cycle (1986). Named Commander of the Légion d'honneur in 1984, Olivier Messiaen, one of the most innovative composers of the 20th century, died in Clichy on April 27, 1992, aged 83.

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