For Tuesday 4.24: short additional reading: DQ for Watkins 481-86

DQ for Watkins 481-86 (grad students: please also read and be prepared to summarize and describe the insights in pp506-17)

Please be prepared to respond in either seminar meeting or in "Comments" on the course blog. In all venues, you must be prepared to cite specific passages (by page, paragraph, line, and quotation) in support of your responses—and specific works.

Summary: This short reading summarizes the early influential works of Olivier Messiaen, and of the very wide and remarkably “free” (e.g., variable) combinations of influences, procedures, and strategies that go into these works. Though the Quatuor pour le fin du temps rightly receives much attention, both for its innovations and for the very stark circumstances of its composition, other works from the late ‘30s and the war years equally represent Messiaen’s individuality and his integration of influences, philosophies, and procedures. Much more than members of more rigidly-circumscribed “Isms” (and certainly in contrast to the serialists who dominated post-WWII academic composition), Messiaen was always his “own man.” But in the pan-global and pan-historical diversity of his influences, in the combination of extraordinary “control” (of pitch, duration, dynamics, and other parameters) and remarkable freedom (of interpretation and “chance” elements), and in his sense of music as a component of multi-sensory ritual performance, he is a significant inspiration for composers as diverse as 1950s/60s Boulez, Cage, and the Minimalists.

General question(s) for consideration: What is the relationship between Messiaen’s wide and diverse influences—which you should be prepared to list—and his compositional strategies in the 1930s/40s works? Be prepared to provide at least three examples of his source influences and ways in which those specific examples can be demonstrated to influence the organization of specific works (the Quatuor, Les corps glorieux, L’Ascension, or the Messe de la Pentecote).

What are the sources of Messiaen’s ordering of various parameters, including not only pitch, but also duration, dynamics, and (especially important) registration?

(1) On p481, Watkins refers to a “new and fundamental perspective” in Messiaen’s early works. Upon what did this perspective reflect? What is the impact of this perspective on all of Messiaen’s work, through much of the balance of his career? And, an interpretive question: how and why is this new perspective a fundamental rejection of Romantic structural models? [Hint: look at the discussion, top of p482]

(2) I will have more to say in class regarding Messiaen’s diverse influences, but specifically in reference to p482, first para, what is the impact of Messiaen’s church experience upon his compositional procedures? Upon his artistic goals? Please be very specific.

(3) Be prepared to describe the specific organization structures which are summarized in the discussion (p482 bottom) from Messiaen’s Technique of My Musical Language. Note the wide range of sources he drew from and the specific impact of those sources on the techniques described.

(4) As stated above, the Quatuor is probably Messiaen’s best-known early work, but typically this is more a response to the circumstances of its composition than to the details of the work. Yet it is a composition of astonishing sophistication, an extraordinary integration of very diverse sources and ideas, and (Messiaen’s particular genius) the ability to see both procedural and philosophical parallels between such diverse ideas. In this sense, I would thus posit that the Quatuor is simultaneously a deeply “Neo-classical” and a deeply “modernist” work, that it is both deeply Catholic and yet profoundly sympathetic to other religious traditions, that it is grounded in both Messiaen’s own background as organist but also reflective of his interest in other (even non-human) musical resources. Please be prepared to explain how.

(5) Similarly: be prepared to link Messiaen to his own French and Russian predecessors (both musical and non-musical), and be specific.

(6) [Grad students only] Be prepared to summarize for the class the procedures (both organizational and structural) in Mode de valeurs et d’intensité and the Livre d’orgue [hint: what is the literal translation of each of these titles, and, why does Watkins say the latter was composed for organ rather than piano?].

(6) [Grad students only] Pay particular attention to the discussion pp509-11 of (a) the nature of the influence and relationship between Messiaen and Boulez (still one of the most respected interpreters of Messiaen’s work) and (b) (very important) Boulez’s perspectives on Webern versus Schoenberg. Be prepared to describe for, and explain to, the class Watkins’s own analysis on the attraction of Webern versus Schoenberg to a post-War generation of composers. This analysis will be equally important in understanding responses to Webern in 1950s Europe and in 1950s America.