Performing Messiaen's Organ Music

Performing Messiaen's Organ Music PDF Author: Jon Gillock
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253353734
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
Gillock supplies details about the organ at La Trinité in Paris, the instrument for which most of Messiaen's pieces were imagined.

Performing Messiaen's Organ Music

Performing Messiaen's Organ Music PDF Author: Jon Gillock
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253353734
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
Gillock supplies details about the organ at La Trinité in Paris, the instrument for which most of Messiaen's pieces were imagined.

Messiaen the Theologian

Messiaen the Theologian PDF Author: Andrew Shenton
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754666400
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

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.

French Masters of the Organ

French Masters of the Organ PDF Author: Michael Murray
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300072914
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study draws portraits of the French romantic organist-composers including Aristide Cavaille-Coll, Cesar Franck, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, Marcel Dupre, Jean Langlais and Olivier Messiaen. The author details the lives, times, styles, and techniques of these composers.

Messiaen

Messiaen PDF Author: Peter Hill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300109078
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 462

Get Book Here

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.

Olivier Messiaen's System of Signs

Olivier Messiaen's System of Signs PDF Author: Andrew Shenton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351555871
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
Andrew Shenton's groundbreaking cross-disciplinary approach to Messiaen's music presents a systematic and detailed examination of the compositional techniques of one of the most significant musicians of the twentieth century as they relate to his desire to express profound truths about Catholicism. It is widely accepted that music can have mystical and transformative powers, but because 'pure' music has no programme, Messiaen sought to refine his compositions to speak more clearly about the truths of the Catholic faith by developing a sophisticated semiotic system in which aspects of music become direct signs for words and concepts. Using interdisciplinary methodologies drawing on linguistics, cognition studies, theological studies and semiotics, Shenton traces the development of Messiaen's sign system using examples from many of Messiaen's works and concentrating in particular on the M?tations sur le myst? de la Sainte Trinit?or organ, a suite which contains the most sophisticated and developed use of a sign system and represents a profound exegesis of Messiaen's understanding of the Catholic triune God. By working on issues of interpretation, Shenton endeavours to bridge the traditional gap between scholars and performers and to help people listen to Messiaen's music with spirit and understanding.

Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue D'oiseaux

Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue D'oiseaux PDF Author: Roderick Chadwick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107000319
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

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

For the End of Time

For the End of Time PDF Author: Rebecca Rischin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801472978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

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.

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen PDF Author: Peter Hill
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754656302
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

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.

Messiaen's Interpretations of Holiness and Trinity

Messiaen's Interpretations of Holiness and Trinity PDF Author: Siglind Bruhn
Publisher: Siglind Bruhn
ISBN: 157647139X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
Three of Olivier Messiaen's later works, La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité, and Saint François d'Assise, are linked by the fact that the composer refers to and quotes from Thomas Aquinas. The composer's reception of Thomistic texts is one of the principles guiding the interpretations in this study. On the one hand, Messiaen had been pondering Thomas's thoughts on the role of music in the life of a Christian and on music's possible spiritual content all through his professional life; on the other hand, the oratorio, the organ meditations, and the opera are the only works in which Messiaen quotes extensive Thomistic sentences addressing purely theological subject matter. The first aspect, Messiaen's appropriation of or felicitous congruence with the medieval theologian's views on music underlies all analyses as a kind of background fabric. The second aspect, Messiaen's quotations from the Summa theologica and their musical translation, determines segments of a larger discussion that, in the book's three main chapters, attempts to do justice to the compositions as a whole. While Thomas' theological aesthetics appears as a thread woven through a texture in a way that brings it only periodically to the foreground, the statements from Thomas's writings provide essential foundations determining the works' content and its musical rendering. This book is part of Siglind Bruhn's Messiaen Trilogy.

Twentieth-Century Organ Music

Twentieth-Century Organ Music PDF Author: Christopher S. Anderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136497897
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores twentieth-century organ music through in-depth studies of the principal centers of composition, the most significant composers and their works, and the evolving role of the instrument and its music. The twentieth-century was a time of unprecedented change for organ music, not only in its composition and performance but also in the standards of instrument design and building. Organ music was anything but immune to the complex musical, intellectual, and socio-political climate of the time. Twentieth-Century Organ Music examines the organ's repertory from the entire period, contextualizing it against the background of important social and cultural trends. In a collection of twelve essays, experienced scholars survey the dominant geographic centers of organ music (France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, the United States, and German-speaking countries) and investigate the composers who made important contributions to the repertory (Reger in Germany, Messiaen in France, Ligeti in Eastern and Central Europe, Howells in Great Britain). Twentieth-Century Organ Music provides a fresh vantage point from which to view one of the twentieth century's most diverse and engaging musical spheres.