| Abstract |
Olivier Messiaen was first and last an organist -- at the age of 23, Messiaen became organist at L'Église de la Trinité in Paris, and kept the job until he died in 1992. Considering this, it is fitting that the key features of his music should be poured out in full in the works he composed for his "home" instrument. So it is with the Livre d'orgue (Organ Book), a set of seven pieces written in 1951. In it, one finds hearty portions of serialism (an occasional bedfellow of Messiaen), complex games using exotic rhythms, birdsong, and freewheeling chromatic ecstasy. Messiaen kindly provided little descriptions at the head of each of the seven pieces of the Livre d'orgue, explaining in part how each piece is organized. No. 1, Reprises par interversion, is built around three Hindu rhythms that take shape as a single line of disjunct melody runs the full course of the manuals and pedals. There are four sections in the piece, the last three of which present the same music as the first but reorganized and reordered. No. 2, Pièce en trio I moves into a much richer, fuller world; here Hindu rhythms are again employed, and underneath the title are words from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: "For now we see through a glass, darkly..." Homophony is explored for the first time at the start of No. 3, Les mains de l'abîme, triple-fortissimo and harmonically dense. The center of the piece is, however, floridly polyphonic. No. 4, Chants d'oiseaux, as its title indicates, is all about birdsong. Messiaen at several points reduces the score to just a single staff for some ornate, cadenza-like treble solos. No. 5, Pièce en trio II is again inscribed with a quote from St. Paul: "For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things..." No. 6, Les yeux dans les roues is a blistering, loud 16th note moto perpetuo, while No. 7, Soixante quatre durées, is "64 chromatic durations, thirty-second notes from 1 to 64 -- inverted in groups of four from the outside in, forwards and backwards in alternation -- treated as a retrograde canon; and all populated with birdsong" -- one of the most astonishing examples of rhythmic complexity in all of music. - Blair Johnston on allmusic.com |
