how integral is olivier messiaen

the ross is noise thread brought up messiaen's instrucion wrt the succeeding generation of french composers and via darmstadt to the other serialists

then there is the mysticism, high catholic but some interest in 'the spiritual' generically

the birds, the birds

the organ and his place the maître de chapelle tradition of france (i don't know this well at all)

the apparent irreconcilability of the often closed, introverted earlier music with his bombastic exoteric modes, breaking through in the vingt regards and fully realized in turangalila and later (whorehouse music or whatever boulez said)

the 'man of contradictions', who was so...x...but also so deeply....y is an artifact of public culture owing to the demand that at least some great artists ought to be inscrutable, so i would like to see him more lucidly and altogether

it also seems like this is a limit to his becoming a very great composer, that the showtunes might not limit his accession to the pantheon, rather the lack of clear integral _reason_ that schoenberg or webern certainly have, and bartok and ligeti too

would like to read some more aesthetically specific criticism of him

everything about this fella intrigues me - where to start? apposite youtubes might be against the keen critical spirit of this thread but you gotta start somewhere. just don't expect me to metastasise this newfound appreciation to webern &c just yet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_students_of_Olivier_Messiaen

Are we saying integral, as in his own music is extremely important, or is he an integral figure within 20th century art music? I haven't listened to many of his works, so I don't know about the former -- but I would say he certainly is of the latter.

Po5 for beginners:

Trios Petites Liturgies Pour La Presence Divine

Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps

Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus

'La Roussarolle Effarvette' from Catalogue d'Oiseaux

Chronochromie

You have to read his magnetic and brilliant writing, an excerpt:

http://www.courses.unt.edu/jklein/files/Messiaen1_0.pdf

listening to 'oiseaux exotiques' right now, this is some cool, crazy shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFWeksp0-uo

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU-Z7usXntE

I appealed to twitter earlier this afternoon for an entry point into Messiaen. His body of work has always felt monolithically daunting to me. I started w/ Cosmos Consciousness because well, I figured it'd be the most spiritual and least oppressive to throw on in the office. I was variously recommended La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Quartet For The End Of Time, Turangalila and Apparition De L'Eglise Eternelle. All of which I intend to delve into.

I will say the combination of making a ridiculously strong cup of coffee and blasting clustered minor chords played on church organ was intense and awesome.

His organ music: get all of it

^^

also: chronochromie, couleurs de la cité celeste, cinq rechants, chants de la terre et la ciel

oh and L'ASCENSION

catholicism = sensualism = nature via bird song = victory of sound as it is over totalising theory = clarinet that opens Quatuor pour la fin du temps = Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune

Saint François d'Assise = battle of minimalism as asceticism vs sound as nature/sensualism

somewhere between these poles Messiaen traces his contradictions, the interdependence of structure and expression, the interdependence of spirit and matter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rssPmQPPTos

^^^ programmatic short work that I think of whenever I attempt to summarize this dude's artistic career