Focusing on Messiaen’s relation to history - both his own and the history he engendered - the Messiaen Perspectives volumes convey the growing understanding of his deep and varied interconnections with his cultural milieux. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences examines the genesis, sources and cultural pressures that shaped Messiaen’s music. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception analyses Messiaen’s compositional approach and the repercussions of his music. While each book offers a coherent collection in itself, together these complementary volumes elucidate how powerfully Messiaen was embedded in his time and place, and how his music resonates ever more today. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception explores Messiaen’s imprint on recent musical life. The first part scrutinizes his compositional technique in terms of counterpoint, spectralism and later piano music, while the second charts ways in which Messiaen’s influence is manifest in the music and careers of Ohana, Xenakis, Murail and Quebecois composers. The third part includes case studies of Messiaen’s reception in Italy, Spain and the USA. The volume also includes an ornithological catalogue of Messiaen’s birds, collates information on the numerous ’tombeaux’ pieces he inspired, and concludes with a Critical Catalogue of Messiaen’s Musical Works.

Focusing on Messiaen’s relation to history - both his own and the history he engendered - the Messiaen Perspectives volumes convey the growing understanding of his deep and varied interconnections with his cultural milieux. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences examines the genesis, sources and cultural pressures that shaped Messiaen’s music. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception analyses Messiaen’s compositional approach and the repercussions of his music. While each book offers a coherent collection in itself, together these complementary volumes elucidate how powerfully Messiaen was embedded in his time and place, and how his music resonates ever more today. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences presents many new primary sources, including discussion of Messiaen’s birdsong cahiers, sketch and archival materials for his Prix de Rome entries and war-time Portique, along with performance practice insights and theological inspiration in works as diverse as Visions de l’Amen, Harawi, Timbres-durées and the organ Méditations. The volume places the composer within a broader historical and cultural framework than has previously been attempted, ranging from specific influences to more general contexts. As a centrepiece, the book includes an examination of the impact of one of the greatest influences upon Messiaen, Yvonne Loriod.

In this comprehensive study of Olivier Messiaen's magnum opus, Saint François d'Assise, Vincent Perez Benitez examines the opera from both theological and musical-analytical perspectives to ask how Messiaen expresses his Catholic theology through his work. Benitez combines a close reading of the opera score with accounts from Messiaen's associates, studies of Messiaen's birdsong notebooks and other primary documents, and an examination of the religious, musical, poetic, and visual arts literature with which the composer was familiar to explore how the opera's harmonic language and sound-color relationships motivate its musical meaning and expression. Through his analysis of these diverse sources and comparisons of Saint François d'Assise with other works such as Berg's Wozzeck and Wagner's Parsifal, Benitez places Messiaen's compositional practice within larger musical perspectives and historical contexts.

When Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) completed the vast opera Saint Fran?s d?Assise in 1983, he was mentally and physically exhausted, and believed that this monumental work would be his final compositional statement. In fact, he completed seven further works, and these form the focus of the present study. Christopher Dingle suggests that, following the crisis provoked by the opera, Messiaen's music underwent a discernible change in style. He examines these seven works to identify characteristics of the composer's music, in particular an often overlooked aspect of his technique: harmony. Part I of the book begins with a brief historical survey before discussing Saint Fran?s d?Assise as the work which defines everything that follows. Part II examines the series of miniatures that came after the opera and their links with ?lairs sur l?Au-Del?., his final masterpiece. ?lairs forms the subject of Part III of the book. Each movement is analysed in turn, before the work is considered as a whole and its hidden structure and motivic cohesion is revealed. Finally, Part IV considers the incomplete Concert ? and key stylistic features of the works of Messiaen?s final years.

Olivier Messiaen: A Research and Information Guide, Second Edition presents researchers with the most significant and helpful resources on Olivier Messiaen, one of the twentieth century's greatest composers. With multiple indices, this annotated bibliography will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field. The second edition has been fully revised and updated.

Perspectives on the Performance of French Piano Music offers a range of approaches central to the performance of French piano music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors include scholars and active performers who see performance not as an independent activity but as a practice enriched by a wealth of historical and analytical approaches. To underline the usefulness of contextual understanding for performance, each author highlights the choices performers must confront with examples drawn from particular repertoires and composers. Topics explored include editorial practice, the use of early recordings, emergent disciplines such as analysis-and-performance, and traditions passed down from teacher to student. Themes that emerge demonstrate the importance of editions as a form of communication, the challenges of notation, the significance of detail and of deeper continuity, the importance of performing and teaching traditions, and the influence of cross disciplinary frameworks. A link to a set of performed examples on the frenchpianomusic.com website allows readers to hear and compare performances and interpretations of the music discussed. The volume will appeal to musicologists and analysts interested in performance, performers, students, and piano teachers.

This book charts Messiaen's transformation of birdsong into music and its development into a major work of the twentieth century.

In this comprehensive study of Olivier Messiaen's magnum opus, Saint François d'Assise, Vincent Perez Benitez examines the opera from both theological and musical-analytical perspectives to ask how Messiaen expresses his Catholic theology through his work. Benitez combines a close reading of the opera score with accounts from Messiaen's associates, studies of Messiaen's birdsong notebooks and other primary documents, and an examination of the religious, musical, poetic, and visual arts literature with which the composer was familiar to explore how the opera's harmonic language and sound-color relationships motivate its musical meaning and expression. Through his analysis of these diverse sources and comparisons of Saint François d'Assise with other works such as Berg's Wozzeck and Wagner's Parsifal, Benitez places Messiaen's compositional practice within larger musical perspectives and historical contexts.

Drawing on a range of sources and fields, the rich life story of this polymathic composer. This groundbreaking biography offers fresh perspectives on the life, ideas, and music of French twentieth-century composer, organist, and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen. Drawing from previously unexplored sketches and archival material, the book seamlessly combines elements of biography, musicology, theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics to present a nuanced perspective on Messiaen’s work. Robert Sholl explores the profound impact of Messiaen’s devout Catholicism, which found expression through his work as a church organist, his engagement with birdsong, his interaction with Surrealism, and his profound influence on major musical figures of the latter twentieth century. Unlike previous biographies, this book also considers the perspectives of Messiaen’s contemporaries and students, providing a comprehensive understanding of his life and artistic legacy.

This edited volume of case studies presents a selective history of French music and culture, but one with a dynamic difference. Eschewing a traditional chronological account, the book explores the nature of relationships between one main period, broadly the 'long' modernist era between 1860–1960, and its own historical ‘others’, referencing topics from the Romantic, classical, baroque, renaissance and medieval periods. It probes the emergent interplay, intertextualities and scope for reinterpretation across time and place. Notions of cultural meaning are paramount, especially those pertaining to French identity, national and individual. While founded on historical musicology, the approach benefits from interdisciplinary association with philosophy, political history, literature, fine art, film studies and criticism. Attention is paid to French composers’ celebrations and remakings of their predecessors. Editions of and writings about earlier music are examined, together with the cultural reception of performances of past repertoire. Organized into two parts, each of the eleven chapters characterizes a specific cultural network or temporal interplay, which may result in synthesis, disjunction, or historical misreading. The interwar years and those surrounding the Second World War prove particularly rich sources of enquiry. This volume aims to attract a wide readership of musicologists and musicians, as well as cultural historians, other humanities scholars and concert-goers.