Author: Peter Hill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300109078
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 462
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Book Description
With access to Messiaen's private archive, the authors have been able to trace the origins of many of his greatest works and place them in the context of his life. --book jacket.
Author: Jon Gillock
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253353734
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 428
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Book Description
Gillock supplies details about the organ at La Trinité in Paris, the instrument for which most of Messiaen's pieces were imagined.
Author: Christopher Philip Dingle
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754652977
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
This volume assesses Messiaen's position as a creative artist of the twentieth century in the light of the latest research. In the process, it identifies some of the key myths, confusions and exaggerations surrounding the composer which often mask equally remarkable truths. In attempting to reveal some of those truths, the essays elucidate a little of the mystery surrounding Messiaen as a man, an artist, a believer and a musician.
Author: Robert Sherlaw Johnson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520067349
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
The definitive English-language study of the works of Olivier Messiaen, one of the most important of living composers, is here revised and updated. Robert Sherlaw Johnson surveys Messiaen's music and musical language, exploring the development of Messiaen's technique, his individual approach to harmony and rhythm, the theological and symbolic aspects of his music, and his use of birdsong. A brief biographical sketch is included, as well as a chronological list of works.
Author: Nigel Simeone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135155591X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
When Olivier Messiaen died in 1992, the prevailing image was of a man apart; a deeply religious man whose only sources of inspiration were God and Nature and a composer whose music progressed along an entirely individual path, artistically impervious to contemporaneous events and the whims both of his contemporaries and the critics. Whilst such a view contains a large element of truth, the past ten years has seen an explosion of interest in the composer, and the work of a diverse range of scholars has painted a much richer, more complex picture of Messiaen. This volume presents some of the fruits of this research for the first time, concentrating on three broad, interrelated areas: Messiaen's relationship with fellow artists; key developments in the composer's musical language and technique; and his influences, both sacred and secular. The volume assesses Messiaen's position as a creative artist of the twentieth century in the light of the latest research. In the process, it identifies some of the key myths, confusions and exaggerations surrounding the composer which often mask equally remarkable truths. In attempting to reveal some of those truths, the essays elucidate a little of the mystery surrounding Messiaen as a man, an artist, a believer and a musician.
Author: Peter Hill
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754656302
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
Olivier Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques is arguably the first of Messiaen's major works to create a successful synthesis between his music and his passion for ornithology. Messiaen regarded birdsong as music--a belief that led for a time to an obsession with truth-to-nature. Here, Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone provide the background to Oiseaux exotiques, discussing Messiaen's relations with the 1950s avant garde and his involvement with the concerts of the Domaine musical, for which Oiseaux exotiques was composed. The authors analyse Messiaen's compositional methods in unprecedented detail and trace step-by-step the evolution of musical ideas from first notation to finished score.
Author: Andrew Shenton
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754666400
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
For Olivier Messiaen, music was a way of expressing his faith. He considered it his good fortune to have been born a Catholic and declared that 'the illumination of the theological truths of the Catholic faith is the first aspect of my work, the noblest and no doubt the most useful'. Messiaen is one of the most widely performed and recorded composers of the twentieth-century and his popularity is increasing, but the theological component of his music has so far been neglected and continues to provide a serious impediment for some of his audience. Messiaen the Theologian makes a significant contribution by providing cultural and historical context to Messiaen's theology.An array of international Messiaen scholars cover a wide variety of topics including Messiaen's personal spirituality, the context of Catholicism in France in the twentieth century, and comparisons of Messiaen with other artists such as Dante and Maritain.
Author: Paul Griffiths
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571287301
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
Olivier Messiaen was one of the outstanding creative artists of his time. The strength of his appeal, to listeners as well as to composers, is a measure of the individuality of his music, which draws on a vast range of sources: rhythms of twentieth-century Europe and thirteenth-century India, ripe romantic harmony and brittle birdsong, the sounds of Indonesian percussion and modern electronic instruments. What binds all these together is, on one level, his unswerving devotion to praising God in his art, and on another, his independent view of how music is made. Messiaen's music offers a range of ways of experiencing time: time suspended in music of unparalleled changelessness, time racing in music of wild exuberance, time repeating itself in vast cycles of reiteration. In Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time, leading writer and musicologist, Paul Griffiths, explores the problems of religious art, and includes searching analyses and discussions of all the major works, suggesting how they function as works of art and not only as theological symbols. This comprehensive and stimulating book covers the whole of Messiaen's output up to and including his opera, Saint Françoise d'Assise.
Author: Rebecca Rischin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801472978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
The clarinetist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book.... Her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 premiere.... Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicians-- tienne Pasquier, cellist; Henri Akoka, clarinetist; and Jean Le Boulaire, violinist--who played with Messiaen, the pianist at the premiere."--Alex Ross, The New Yorker "This book offers a wealth of new information about the circumstances under which the Quartet was created. Based on original interviews with the performers, witnesses to the premiere, and documents from the prison camp, this first comprehensive history of the Quartet's composition and premiere held my interest from beginning to end.... For the End of Time touches on many things: faith, friendship, creativity, grace in a time of despair, and the uncommon human alliances that wartime engenders."--Arnold Steinhardt, Chamber Music"The clarification of the order of composition of the movements is just one of the minor but cumulatively significant ways in which Rischin modifies the widely accepted account of the events at Stalag VIII A.... For the End of Time is a thorough and readable piece of investigative journalism that clarifies some important points about the Quartet's genesis."--Michael Downes, Times Literary Supplement The premiere of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time on January 15, 1941, has been called one of the great stories of twentieth-century music. Composed while Messiaen (1908-1992) was imprisoned by the Nazis in Stalag VIII A, the work was performed under the most trying of circumstances: the temperature, inferior instruments, and the general conditions of life in a POW camp.Based on testimonies by the musicians and their families, witnesses to the premiere, former prisoners, and on documents from Stalag VIII A, For the End of Time examines the events that led to the Quartet's composition, the composer's interpretive preferences, and the musicians' problems in execution and how they affected the premiere and subsequent performances. Rebecca Rischin explores the musicians' life in the prison camp, their relationships with each other and with the German camp officials, and their intriguing fortunes before and after the momentous premiere. This paperback edition features supplementary texts and information previously unavailable to the author about the Quartet's premiere, Vichy and the composer, the Paris premiere, a recording featuring Messiaen as performer, and an updated bibliography and discography.
Author: Anthony Pople
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521585385
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
An examination of the popular Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen.
