The first time I heard the music of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was on my first visit to Manhattan. We were walking by a church from which some intriguingly strange organ sounds were coming. I think it would be fair to say that I was transfixed. After a few minutes of listening to the sound pouring out from the church, we went into an organ recital.

For me Messiaen remains the composer of mysterious-sounding organ music. (I treasure a four-disc set of Messiaen playing Messiaen organ music.) The ecstasy of Catholic mysteries and notations of bird songs came together in Messiaen's one opera (but it is the length of two!) "Saint Francis." He also wrote a symphony (Turangalîla, an extended meditation on the joy of human love, commissioned for the Boston Symphony by Serge Koussevitsky, premiered by Leonard Bernstein), "The Quartet for the End of Time" (in a German prison camp), many works for the piano ("Visions of the Amen" is my favorite), and some clamorous, rhythmically complex works for orchestras, culminating in "Des canyons aux étoiles"(From the canyons to the stars, for solo piano, solo horn, solo glockenspiel, solo xylorimba, small orchestra with 13 string players) in the early 1970s and "Éclairs sur l'au-delà"(Illuminations on the beyond") in the years just before his death).

Messiaen and his wife pianist Yvonne Loriod came to San Francisco for the premiere of "Illuminations" (by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kent Nagano, but in Davies Hall, the home of the San Francisco Symphony). I didn't meet them, but at least saw them in the conductor's box.

I do not understand Messiaen's religious belief (Catholic theological concepts are the basis and referent of many of his compositions), nor do I hear color as he did. Indeed, I often find his "transcriptions" of bird song (down three octaves with much elaborated phrases) hard to identify with the bird he "transcribed."

Although very influenced by Debussy (and having been a student of Paul Dukas, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré), Messiaen's music not only does not sound French, but broke loose from the bases of western music of forward motion, development, and diatonic harmonic resolution. (His Catholicism is also one that has nothing to do with sin and guilt.) In addition to "transcribing" birds, Messiaen studied ancient Greek and Hindu rhythms, Indonesian and Japanese music.

The new 55-minute DVD of "Olivier Messiaen: La Liturgie de Cristal" (the crystal liturgy) touches on these various influences and shows him teaching Debussy's "Pélleas et Mélisande" to students at the Paris Conservatory (he says he "sings like a composer"), as well as making a late-night visit to his "laboratory," the organ loft at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité (in Paris--would that I had ever been wandering by it when he was trying out sounds!).

It shows him trying to explain the transformations of the bird songs he collected and trying to explain how he hard color. The beginning and end of the documentary show Bryce Canyon (in Utah) with no visible human beings to music from "Des canyons aux étoiles" (a lengthy piece that also has invocations of another Utah national park, Zion). It also includes some music from "Saint Francis" (with José van Dam and Dawn Upshaw in the Peter Sellars Salzburg production).

Loriod appears in historical film from the time she was Messiaen's student, through demonstrating birdsong transcriptions, to being his wife (after the death of his first wife) and in some more recent interviewing. Messiaen's student Pierre Boulez and quasi-adopted one Kent Nagano appear conducting Messiaen music, and a young Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays from the "Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus" (Twenty gazes on the Christ-child). I already mentioned that the documentary only runs 55 minutes. It is packed with blazing music and footage of the genial composer/teacher talking about himself with great modesty (bragging not at all about having taught himself to play the piano, for instance; recalling praying for "the gift of music" having obtained a copy of the score for Glück's opera "Orpheus" and realizing that he could hear what he read; he recognized that others, including his students, do not hear colors as he did).

The Ideale Audience also includes trailers for many other documentaries about 20th-century composers, including Mahler, Boulez, Philip Glass, Elliot Carter, Aarvo Part. The disc will be treasured by those who love Messiaen's music (however partial our understanding of it may be, and I think there is more I miss than catch) and may introduce Messiaen's music to some. Anyone so unfortunate as to dislike Messiaen's music (I have never met such a person, though surely they must exist) is unlikely to be transformed by the documentary. C'est la vie!

© 2008, Stephen O. Murray

(Thanks to Sue for adding this to the database. Although Netflix stocks the DVD, it has yet to make it into IMDB.) Since this year is the centenary of Messiaen's birth (though not until December), I will attempt to work up the nerve to write about some of the many recordings of Messiaen music I have.




Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD