Olivier Messiaen, born 10 December 1908

www.oliviermessiaen.org ^ | 10 December 2008 | WikiPedia

[COBOL2Java]

---

OLIVIER-EUGENE-PROSPER-CHARLES MESSIAEN (b. Dec. 10, 1908, Avignon, France.d. April 27, 1992, Clichy, near Paris), Olivier Messiaen was the son of Pierre Messiaen, a scholar of English literature, and of the poet Cecile Sauvage. Soon after his birth the family moved to Ambert (the birthplace of Chabrier) where his brother, Alain was born in 1913. Around the time of the outbreak of World War 1, Cecile Sauvage took her two sons to live with her brother in Grenoble where Olivier Messiaen spent his early childhood, began composing at the age of seven, and taught himself to play the piano. On his return from the war, Pierre Messiaen took the family to Nantes and in 1919 they all moved to Paris where Olivier entered the Conservatoire.

From very early on it was clear that Messiaen would be a composer who would stand alone in the history of music. Coming not from any particular 'school' or style but forming and creating his own totally individual musical voice. He achieved this by creating his own 'modes of limited transposition', taking rhythmic ideas from India (deci tala), ancient Greece and the orient and most importantly adapting the songs of birds from around the world. He was a man of many interests including painting, literature, and the orient where he took in not only the musical culture but theatre, literature and even the cuisine of foreign countries! The single most important driving force in his musical creations was his devout Catholic faith.

---

- snip -

---

MESSIAEN AND SYNAESTHESIA

This is what Messiaen had to say regarding his relationship with colours and synaesthesia

" When I was 20 years old I met a Swiss painter who became a good friend by the name of Charles Blanc-Gatti, he was synaethesiac which is a disturbance of the optic and auditory nerves so when one hears sounds one also sees corresponding colours in the eye. I unfortunately didn't have this. But intellectually like synaethesiacs I too see colours- if only in my mind - colours corresponding to sound. I try to incorporate this in my work, to pass on to the listener. It's all very mobile. You've got to feel sound moving. Sounds are high, low, fast, slow etc. My colours do the same thing, they move in the same way. Like rainbows shifting from one hue to the next. It's very fleeting and impossible to fix in any absolute way. It's true I see colours, it's true they're there. They're musician’s colours, not to be confused with painter's colours. They're colours that go with music. If you tried to reproduce these colours on canvas it may produce something horrible. They're not made for that, they're musicians colours. What I'm saying is strange but it's true. I believe in natural resonance, as I believe in all natural phenomena. Natural resonance is in exact agreement with the phenomena of complimentary colours. I have a red carpet that I often look at. Where this carpet meets the lighter coloured parquet next to it, I intermittently see marvelous greens that a painter couldn't mix - natural colours created in the eye"

---

- snip -

---

Messiaen received many honours and prizes globally including:

• 1959 Nomination as an Officier of the Légion d'honneur
• 1967 Member of the Institut de France
• 1969 Calouste Gulbenkian Prize
• 1971 Erasmus Award
• 1975 Ernest von Siemens Award
• 1975 Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Science, Literature and Art of Belgium
• 1975 Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society
• 1978 The White Cliffs in Utah were renamed Mount Messiaen
• 1980 Presentation of the Croix de Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown
• 1983 Wolf Foundation of the Arts Prize (Jerusalem)
• 1985 Inamori Foundation Prize (Kyoto)
• 1987 He was promoted to the highest rank, Grand-Croix, of the Légion d'honneur
• 1989 Primio Internazionale Paolo VI 1988

[COBOL2Java]

As a Music Major in college I wrote a term paper analyzing Chronochromie (1959-60). I've always enjoyed Messiaen, but then my daughter tells me I have wierd tastes. :-)

[COBOL2Java]

FYI, today is Messiaen’s birthday...

[cmj328]

ping

[Squantos]

Wow......100 ! And the life experiences he must have endured.

[sitetest]

Dear COBOL2Java,

Thanks for the ping!

Classical Music Ping List ping!

If you want on or off this list, let me know via FR e-mail.

Thanks,

sitetest

[Borges]

One of the fathers of Modern Music. Tomorrow is Elliot Carter’s 100th birthday. And he’s still alive!

[Argh]

About 25 years ago I went to a Montreal SO concert conducted by Charles Dutoit which included Messiaen’s Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorem (And I Await the Resurrection of the Dead), a remarkably loud and painful experience. (A friend who also attended has always referred to it since as The Gong Dong Bong Show). Later that year or early the next, at the Montreal Music Competition (it was either the violin competition won by Oliveira or the Piano won by Pogorelich, the memory isn’t what it used to was), I got to have a couple of drinks at halftime of the finale with M. Dutoit. I mentioned some of the concerts that had really made an impression on me (I didn’t mention for good or ill), and when I mentioned Et exspecto the look on Chuckles’s face told me he too had been appalled by the thing...