Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
On the basis of a careful analysis of Olivier Messiaen's work, this book argues for a renewal of our thinking about religious music. Addressing his notion of a “hyper-religious” music ...
More
On the basis of a careful analysis of Olivier Messiaen's work, this book argues for a renewal of our thinking about religious music. Addressing his notion of a “hyper-religious” music of sounds and colors, it aims to show that Messiaen has broken new ground. His reinvention of religious music makes us again aware of the fact that, if taken in its proper radical sense, it belongs to the foremost of musical adventures. The work of Olivier Messiaen is well known for its inclusion of religious themes and gestures. These alone, however, do not seem enough to account for the religious status of the work. Arguing for a “breakthrough toward the beyond” on the basis of the synaesthetic experience of music, Messiaen invites a confrontation with contemporary theologians and post-secular thinkers. How to account for a religious breakthrough that is produced by a work of art? Starting from an analysis of his 1960s oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, this book arranges a moderated dialogue between Messiaen and the music theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the phenomenology of revelation of Jean-Luc Marion, the rethinking of religion and technics in Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, and the Augustinian ruminations of Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-François Lyotard.Less
On the basis of a careful analysis of Olivier Messiaen's work, this book argues for a renewal of our thinking about religious music. Addressing his notion of a “hyper-religious” music of sounds and colors, it aims to show that Messiaen has broken new ground. His reinvention of religious music makes us again aware of the fact that, if taken in its proper radical sense, it belongs to the foremost of musical adventures. The work of Olivier Messiaen is well known for its inclusion of religious themes and gestures. These alone, however, do not seem enough to account for the religious status of the work. Arguing for a “breakthrough toward the beyond” on the basis of the synaesthetic experience of music, Messiaen invites a confrontation with contemporary theologians and post-secular thinkers. How to account for a religious breakthrough that is produced by a work of art? Starting from an analysis of his 1960s oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, this book arranges a moderated dialogue between Messiaen and the music theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the phenomenology of revelation of Jean-Luc Marion, the rethinking of religion and technics in Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, and the Augustinian ruminations of Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-François Lyotard.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This epilogue sums up the key findings about the religious music composition of Olivier Messiaen. It suggests that Messiaen's is far from exemplifying a Christian music of ...
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This epilogue sums up the key findings about the religious music composition of Olivier Messiaen. It suggests that Messiaen's is far from exemplifying a Christian music of asceticism or contemptus mundi and that it remains deeply affirmative. In this respect, his work is close to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and his affinities seem closer to the lands of the Mediterranean than to the realm of Teutonic imagination. This chapter contends that the dialectic of abstinence and redemption in the structure of Parsifal is answered in Messiaen by a joyous Yes-saying because his music is ultimately a music of Yes.Less
This epilogue sums up the key findings about the religious music composition of Olivier Messiaen. It suggests that Messiaen's is far from exemplifying a Christian music of asceticism or contemptus mundi and that it remains deeply affirmative. In this respect, his work is close to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and his affinities seem closer to the lands of the Mediterranean than to the realm of Teutonic imagination. This chapter contends that the dialectic of abstinence and redemption in the structure of Parsifal is answered in Messiaen by a joyous Yes-saying because his music is ultimately a music of Yes.
Jane F. Fulcher
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190681500
- eISBN:
- 9780190681531
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190681500.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
In light of the recent historiography of Vichy, which stresses its initial political concession, competing factions, and then escalating collaboration with the occupant, this book proposes new ...
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In light of the recent historiography of Vichy, which stresses its initial political concession, competing factions, and then escalating collaboration with the occupant, this book proposes new questions concerning the shifting nature of French cultural as well as political identity. As the occupation advanced, how did those responsible for cultural policies attempt to adapt their conceptions of French values to accord with the agenda of collaboration in all professional fields? How was French cultural identity and its relation to German culture gradually reconceived by both the occupant and by Vichy as the former played an increasingly interventionist role in music, a symbolic stake in the national self-image of both regimes? Employing the theoretical insights of Gramsci and Bourdieu into hegemony and how it is achieved and combated, this book examines the ways in which musical works were fostered or appropriated and transmitted—physically inscribed, framed, and presented during different phases of the regime as specific groups assumed power. As this study concomitantly demonstrates, we find not only accommodation but also resistance among those artists involved with Vichy’s institutions, and especially in music, where new cultural practices, strategies, and modes of communication emerged as musicians confronted the increasing loss of autonomy in their field. They were forced to assume a position along the spectrum from compliance to resistance on the basis of their perceptions, experience, and subjectivity. Some sought to maintain integrity and avoid appropriation while remaining visible, continuing subtly to innovate and incorporate alternative cultural representations proposed by the Resistance.Less
In light of the recent historiography of Vichy, which stresses its initial political concession, competing factions, and then escalating collaboration with the occupant, this book proposes new questions concerning the shifting nature of French cultural as well as political identity. As the occupation advanced, how did those responsible for cultural policies attempt to adapt their conceptions of French values to accord with the agenda of collaboration in all professional fields? How was French cultural identity and its relation to German culture gradually reconceived by both the occupant and by Vichy as the former played an increasingly interventionist role in music, a symbolic stake in the national self-image of both regimes? Employing the theoretical insights of Gramsci and Bourdieu into hegemony and how it is achieved and combated, this book examines the ways in which musical works were fostered or appropriated and transmitted—physically inscribed, framed, and presented during different phases of the regime as specific groups assumed power. As this study concomitantly demonstrates, we find not only accommodation but also resistance among those artists involved with Vichy’s institutions, and especially in music, where new cultural practices, strategies, and modes of communication emerged as musicians confronted the increasing loss of autonomy in their field. They were forced to assume a position along the spectrum from compliance to resistance on the basis of their perceptions, experience, and subjectivity. Some sought to maintain integrity and avoid appropriation while remaining visible, continuing subtly to innovate and incorporate alternative cultural representations proposed by the Resistance.
Kerala J. Snyder
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195144154
- eISBN:
- 9780199849369
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195144154.003.0023
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
With only a few exceptions, organ music since the time of Max Reger had lost its connection to the general development of advanced music. Composers were inspired to use the serial technique to ...
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With only a few exceptions, organ music since the time of Max Reger had lost its connection to the general development of advanced music. Composers were inspired to use the serial technique to organize musical elements other than pitch by the revolutionary approach to rhythm developed in the 1930s and 1940s by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Unlike most other avant-garde composers, Messiaen was an organist and thus very interested in the organ and in trying to apply new compositional techniques to his instrument. The chapter also provides information on the Bremen concert in May 1962 that was regarded by the music critics as revolutionary in approach.Less
With only a few exceptions, organ music since the time of Max Reger had lost its connection to the general development of advanced music. Composers were inspired to use the serial technique to organize musical elements other than pitch by the revolutionary approach to rhythm developed in the 1930s and 1940s by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Unlike most other avant-garde composers, Messiaen was an organist and thus very interested in the organ and in trying to apply new compositional techniques to his instrument. The chapter also provides information on the Bremen concert in May 1962 that was regarded by the music critics as revolutionary in approach.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This introductory chapter explains the coverage and objective of this book, which is to examine the role of French composer Olivier Messiaen on the reinvention of religious ...
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This introductory chapter explains the coverage and objective of this book, which is to examine the role of French composer Olivier Messiaen on the reinvention of religious music. This book is driven by the conviction that one can aspire to come close to the phenomenon of the musicosacral or the sacromusical only by continuously and persistently positing the demarcation question about the quiddity of distinction of religious music. It suggests that by breaking new ground in religious music composition, Messiaen has invited a confrontation with contemporary theologians and post-secular thinkers including Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida.Less
This introductory chapter explains the coverage and objective of this book, which is to examine the role of French composer Olivier Messiaen on the reinvention of religious music. This book is driven by the conviction that one can aspire to come close to the phenomenon of the musicosacral or the sacromusical only by continuously and persistently positing the demarcation question about the quiddity of distinction of religious music. It suggests that by breaking new ground in religious music composition, Messiaen has invited a confrontation with contemporary theologians and post-secular thinkers including Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter attempts to answer the question about what Olivier Messiaen exactly had in mind with his compositions of religious music. It shows that there was a gradual shift ...
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This chapter attempts to answer the question about what Olivier Messiaen exactly had in mind with his compositions of religious music. It shows that there was a gradual shift in Messiaen's musical localization of religion. While his earlier works emphasize the sincerity of feelings, his later compositions suggest this subjective dimension has faded into the background. This chapter also examines Messiaen's conception of the relation between music and religion, and concludes that Messiaen was ambivalent both about the idea of pure music and about the idea of pure expression.Less
This chapter attempts to answer the question about what Olivier Messiaen exactly had in mind with his compositions of religious music. It shows that there was a gradual shift in Messiaen's musical localization of religion. While his earlier works emphasize the sincerity of feelings, his later compositions suggest this subjective dimension has faded into the background. This chapter also examines Messiaen's conception of the relation between music and religion, and concludes that Messiaen was ambivalent both about the idea of pure music and about the idea of pure expression.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the compositional side of the music of dazzlement of Olivier Messiaen's religious music. It analyzes five passages from La Transfiguration and suggests ...
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This chapter examines the compositional side of the music of dazzlement of Olivier Messiaen's religious music. It analyzes five passages from La Transfiguration and suggests though that there are great mutual differences between them there are also a number of tendencies that they have in common. At the point of spectacle of breakthrough and dazzlement, Messiaen appears to be doing a great deal more than evoking synthetic effects in his music because there are aspects of narrativity and mise-en-scene in play that indicate a step beyond musical content in the direction of form.Less
This chapter examines the compositional side of the music of dazzlement of Olivier Messiaen's religious music. It analyzes five passages from La Transfiguration and suggests though that there are great mutual differences between them there are also a number of tendencies that they have in common. At the point of spectacle of breakthrough and dazzlement, Messiaen appears to be doing a great deal more than evoking synthetic effects in his music because there are aspects of narrativity and mise-en-scene in play that indicate a step beyond musical content in the direction of form.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the connection and convergence between the religious music composition of Olivier Messiaen and the works and philosophy of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von ...
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This chapter examines the connection and convergence between the religious music composition of Olivier Messiaen and the works and philosophy of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Messiaen considers von Balthasar a major influence. However, the music of Messiaen appears to fall beyond the theological schemes that it alleges to adhere to, and these theological schemes have the greatest difficulty in maintaining what they actually assert. An analysis of von Balthasar's philosophy indicates that he bases his musical theology on the notations of Gestalt and on the information of the total Idea in the arts, in the form of a flowing rhythm, evolving melody, and theatrical plot of development.Less
This chapter examines the connection and convergence between the religious music composition of Olivier Messiaen and the works and philosophy of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Messiaen considers von Balthasar a major influence. However, the music of Messiaen appears to fall beyond the theological schemes that it alleges to adhere to, and these theological schemes have the greatest difficulty in maintaining what they actually assert. An analysis of von Balthasar's philosophy indicates that he bases his musical theology on the notations of Gestalt and on the information of the total Idea in the arts, in the form of a flowing rhythm, evolving melody, and theatrical plot of development.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the music of dazzlement in Olivier Messiaen's religious music composition based on the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. It explains that Marion ...
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This chapter examines the music of dazzlement in Olivier Messiaen's religious music composition based on the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. It explains that Marion contrasts everyday experience to two exceptional phenomena that constitute a frame that may help interpret the phenomenon of breakthrough: the idol whose luster is closely related to the thematics of overwhelming in La Transfiguration, and the icon which Marion relates to a different sort of excess than that which can be found in the idol. This chapter analyzes where the phenomenology of idol and icon provide a key for understanding the relation between religion and music, and argues that the position of Messiaen is poised between iconicity and idolatry.Less
This chapter examines the music of dazzlement in Olivier Messiaen's religious music composition based on the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. It explains that Marion contrasts everyday experience to two exceptional phenomena that constitute a frame that may help interpret the phenomenon of breakthrough: the idol whose luster is closely related to the thematics of overwhelming in La Transfiguration, and the icon which Marion relates to a different sort of excess than that which can be found in the idol. This chapter analyzes where the phenomenology of idol and icon provide a key for understanding the relation between religion and music, and argues that the position of Messiaen is poised between iconicity and idolatry.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the conflict between Olivier Messiaen's testimony on the hyperreligious qualities and the technicity in his music. It proposes a concept of technics that ...
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This chapter examines the conflict between Olivier Messiaen's testimony on the hyperreligious qualities and the technicity in his music. It proposes a concept of technics that may be used for analyzing the singularity of breakthrough together with both structural possibility and empirical cases of the repetitions of it. This chapter asserts that the technical is a constitutive part of what Messiaen calls breakthrough and that that singularity of religious experience is always contaminated with the artificiality and repeatability of technics.Less
This chapter examines the conflict between Olivier Messiaen's testimony on the hyperreligious qualities and the technicity in his music. It proposes a concept of technics that may be used for analyzing the singularity of breakthrough together with both structural possibility and empirical cases of the repetitions of it. This chapter asserts that the technical is a constitutive part of what Messiaen calls breakthrough and that that singularity of religious experience is always contaminated with the artificiality and repeatability of technics.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230570
- eISBN:
- 9780823236695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230570.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines an aspect of breakthrough in Olivier Messiaen's religious music composition concerning listening “here” and listening in the “beyond”. It analyzes the ...
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This chapter examines an aspect of breakthrough in Olivier Messiaen's religious music composition concerning listening “here” and listening in the “beyond”. It analyzes the Judeo-Christian tradition relevant to music hearing and listening. These are the circumcision of the ear and the notion derived from the patristic tradition of the spiritual ear. This chapter suggests that the breakthrough toward the beyond, which Messiaen considers a musical possibility, situates the listener at once inside and outside faith.Less
This chapter examines an aspect of breakthrough in Olivier Messiaen's religious music composition concerning listening “here” and listening in the “beyond”. It analyzes the Judeo-Christian tradition relevant to music hearing and listening. These are the circumcision of the ear and the notion derived from the patristic tradition of the spiritual ear. This chapter suggests that the breakthrough toward the beyond, which Messiaen considers a musical possibility, situates the listener at once inside and outside faith.
Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226255590
- eISBN:
- 9780226255620
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226255620.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Later life is a fraught topic in our commercialized, anti-aging, death-denying culture. Where does creativity fit in? The canonical composers whose stories are told here—Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), ...
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Later life is a fraught topic in our commercialized, anti-aging, death-denying culture. Where does creativity fit in? The canonical composers whose stories are told here—Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), and Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)—offer radically individual responses to that question. In their late years, each of these national icons wrote an opera around which coalesced for them major issues about their creativity and aging. While these and other late works helped them explore creatively their own aging and mortality, the composers nonetheless had to face a variety of challenges that came with their own aging—ranging from health issues to the critical expectations that accompany success. They also had to deal with the social, political and aesthetic changes of their times, including World Wars and the rise of musical modernism. By investigating their own attitudes to their aging and their creativity, their late compositions, and the critical reception of them, this book tells the stories of their different but creative ways of dealing with those changes, Each composer began his career in an individual manner; each also ended it in a unique way. It is the complexity of the interrelationship of aging and creativity in all its individuality that this book investigates.Less
Later life is a fraught topic in our commercialized, anti-aging, death-denying culture. Where does creativity fit in? The canonical composers whose stories are told here—Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), and Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)—offer radically individual responses to that question. In their late years, each of these national icons wrote an opera around which coalesced for them major issues about their creativity and aging. While these and other late works helped them explore creatively their own aging and mortality, the composers nonetheless had to face a variety of challenges that came with their own aging—ranging from health issues to the critical expectations that accompany success. They also had to deal with the social, political and aesthetic changes of their times, including World Wars and the rise of musical modernism. By investigating their own attitudes to their aging and their creativity, their late compositions, and the critical reception of them, this book tells the stories of their different but creative ways of dealing with those changes, Each composer began his career in an individual manner; each also ended it in a unique way. It is the complexity of the interrelationship of aging and creativity in all its individuality that this book investigates.
Leslie A. Sprout
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520275300
- eISBN:
- 9780520955271
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275300.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Music mattered to the three forces competing for political authority in France during the Second World War. German occupying authorities promoted German music at the expense of the French, while the ...
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Music mattered to the three forces competing for political authority in France during the Second World War. German occupying authorities promoted German music at the expense of the French, while the Vichy administration pursued projects of national renewal through culture. Meanwhile, Resistance networks gradually formed to combat German propaganda while eyeing Vichy's efforts with suspicion. In this book, I explore how each of these forces influenced the composition, performance, and reception of five well-known works: the secret Resistance songs of Francis Poulenc (Figure humaine) and Arthur Honegger (Chant de Libération); Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, composed in a German prisoner-of-war camp; Maurice Duruflé's Requiem, one of sixty-five pieces commissioned by Vichy between 1940 and 1944; and Igor Stravinsky's Danses concertantes, which was met at its 1945 Paris premiere with protests that prefigured the aesthetic debates of the early Cold War. I explore not only how these pieces were created and disseminated during and just after the war but also how and why we still associate these pieces with the stories we tell—in textbooks, program notes, liner notes, historical monographs, and biographies—about music, France, and the Second World War.Less
Music mattered to the three forces competing for political authority in France during the Second World War. German occupying authorities promoted German music at the expense of the French, while the Vichy administration pursued projects of national renewal through culture. Meanwhile, Resistance networks gradually formed to combat German propaganda while eyeing Vichy's efforts with suspicion. In this book, I explore how each of these forces influenced the composition, performance, and reception of five well-known works: the secret Resistance songs of Francis Poulenc (Figure humaine) and Arthur Honegger (Chant de Libération); Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, composed in a German prisoner-of-war camp; Maurice Duruflé's Requiem, one of sixty-five pieces commissioned by Vichy between 1940 and 1944; and Igor Stravinsky's Danses concertantes, which was met at its 1945 Paris premiere with protests that prefigured the aesthetic debates of the early Cold War. I explore not only how these pieces were created and disseminated during and just after the war but also how and why we still associate these pieces with the stories we tell—in textbooks, program notes, liner notes, historical monographs, and biographies—about music, France, and the Second World War.
Vincent Giroud
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300117653
- eISBN:
- 9780300168211
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300117653.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
French opera is second only to Italian opera in the length, breadth, and diversity of its history. Yet most people, if asked to come up with titles, could mention only a handful—Carmen, Faust, ...
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French opera is second only to Italian opera in the length, breadth, and diversity of its history. Yet most people, if asked to come up with titles, could mention only a handful—Carmen, Faust, Pelleas et Melisande, Samson et Dalila—a small list for an operatic tradition that began in the seventeenth century and is still very much alive. This book provides a full, single-volume account of opera in France from its origins to the present day. It looks at the leading composers, from Lully to Messiaen and beyond; at the development of French operatic form and style; at performance, performers, and audience; and at the impact of French opera beyond France's borders.Less
French opera is second only to Italian opera in the length, breadth, and diversity of its history. Yet most people, if asked to come up with titles, could mention only a handful—Carmen, Faust, Pelleas et Melisande, Samson et Dalila—a small list for an operatic tradition that began in the seventeenth century and is still very much alive. This book provides a full, single-volume account of opera in France from its origins to the present day. It looks at the leading composers, from Lully to Messiaen and beyond; at the development of French operatic form and style; at performance, performers, and audience; and at the impact of French opera beyond France's borders.
Holly Rogers
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199861408
- eISBN:
- 9780199332731
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199861408.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
This chapter unpacks the hypothesis that early video was used by artist-composers to bring together the separate but related histories of music and art. Starting in the early modern era, it ...
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This chapter unpacks the hypothesis that early video was used by artist-composers to bring together the separate but related histories of music and art. Starting in the early modern era, it identifies an emerging audiovisual culture that ran through visual music, audible art, audio-visual instruments, colour-sound synaesthesia and experimental film. With reference to the theories of Gotthold Lessing, Daniel Albright, Richard Leppert, Theodor Adorno and Nicholas Cook, musicians ranging from Wagner, Lachenmann, Nancarrow, Skryabin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Messiaen to Elvis and Britney Spears are used to explore the the physicality of music performance and the possibilities for spatialising sound: the work of artists Boccioni, Klee, Klimt and Kandinsky provide examples of temporal and synaesthetic visual work. Lastly, the experimental films of Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and the Whitney Brothers provide a technological link from earlier experimentation to the birth of video art-music.Less
This chapter unpacks the hypothesis that early video was used by artist-composers to bring together the separate but related histories of music and art. Starting in the early modern era, it identifies an emerging audiovisual culture that ran through visual music, audible art, audio-visual instruments, colour-sound synaesthesia and experimental film. With reference to the theories of Gotthold Lessing, Daniel Albright, Richard Leppert, Theodor Adorno and Nicholas Cook, musicians ranging from Wagner, Lachenmann, Nancarrow, Skryabin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Messiaen to Elvis and Britney Spears are used to explore the the physicality of music performance and the possibilities for spatialising sound: the work of artists Boccioni, Klee, Klimt and Kandinsky provide examples of temporal and synaesthetic visual work. Lastly, the experimental films of Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and the Whitney Brothers provide a technological link from earlier experimentation to the birth of video art-music.
Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226255590
- eISBN:
- 9780226255620
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226255620.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
When the 67-year-old composer of organ, piano, voice, and orchestral music, Olivier Messiaen, accepted his first opera commission, he seized the opportunity both to renovate what he saw as a moribund ...
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When the 67-year-old composer of organ, piano, voice, and orchestral music, Olivier Messiaen, accepted his first opera commission, he seized the opportunity both to renovate what he saw as a moribund form and to ensconce his deep Catholic faith in the opera house. By the time the frequently postponed Saint François d’Assise was premiered 8 years later in 1983, Messiaen had been taxed creatively, physically, psychologically, and emotionally. This first and last monumental opera was to be his final testimony to his religious faith and his musical innovations (in rhythm, harmony, and melody): once briefly a “super-serialist,” Messiaen had developed his own idiosyncratic modernist style, based on a complex transformation of birdsong. The opera’s sheer scale and its musical complexity match its religious aim: to make its audience experience, through the music, nothing less than transcendence—a sensual, emotional dazzlement (“éblouissement”). The opera completed, Messiaen felt “finished” as a composer, but for this deeply Catholic man, who had dedicated his life and his work to expressing the truths of the faith, not to write music again constituted a significant threat to his very sense of himself.Less
When the 67-year-old composer of organ, piano, voice, and orchestral music, Olivier Messiaen, accepted his first opera commission, he seized the opportunity both to renovate what he saw as a moribund form and to ensconce his deep Catholic faith in the opera house. By the time the frequently postponed Saint François d’Assise was premiered 8 years later in 1983, Messiaen had been taxed creatively, physically, psychologically, and emotionally. This first and last monumental opera was to be his final testimony to his religious faith and his musical innovations (in rhythm, harmony, and melody): once briefly a “super-serialist,” Messiaen had developed his own idiosyncratic modernist style, based on a complex transformation of birdsong. The opera’s sheer scale and its musical complexity match its religious aim: to make its audience experience, through the music, nothing less than transcendence—a sensual, emotional dazzlement (“éblouissement”). The opera completed, Messiaen felt “finished” as a composer, but for this deeply Catholic man, who had dedicated his life and his work to expressing the truths of the faith, not to write music again constituted a significant threat to his very sense of himself.
Leslie A. Sprout
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520275300
- eISBN:
- 9780520955271
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275300.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Composed and premiered in 1941 in a German prisoner-of-war camp, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time has become emblematic of the French wartime experience for today's listeners. Yet, although the ...
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Composed and premiered in 1941 in a German prisoner-of-war camp, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time has become emblematic of the French wartime experience for today's listeners. Yet, although the music of numerous French soldier-composers received repeat performances and positive press coverage in German-occupied Paris, where repatriated prisoners were symbols of hope for a nation shamed by its swift military defeat, wartime critics gave Messiaen's Quartet decidedly mixed reviews. I contrast the wartime reception of Messiaen's Quartet with that of Jolivet's musical and verbal documentary, Trois complaintes du soldat, to discuss the ways in which the Quartet demonstrates Messiaen's remarkable ability to write ethereal music that transcended his physical ordeals more than it engaged with them.Less
Composed and premiered in 1941 in a German prisoner-of-war camp, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time has become emblematic of the French wartime experience for today's listeners. Yet, although the music of numerous French soldier-composers received repeat performances and positive press coverage in German-occupied Paris, where repatriated prisoners were symbols of hope for a nation shamed by its swift military defeat, wartime critics gave Messiaen's Quartet decidedly mixed reviews. I contrast the wartime reception of Messiaen's Quartet with that of Jolivet's musical and verbal documentary, Trois complaintes du soldat, to discuss the ways in which the Quartet demonstrates Messiaen's remarkable ability to write ethereal music that transcended his physical ordeals more than it engaged with them.
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251629
- eISBN:
- 9780823252961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251629.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
“Late style” is often used to refer to a period of consummation in an artist's output in which he or she looks back on previous work in harmony and resolution. However, “lateness” may also express ...
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“Late style” is often used to refer to a period of consummation in an artist's output in which he or she looks back on previous work in harmony and resolution. However, “lateness” may also express more fundamental dimensions of temporality which are not necessarily dependant on a “before” and “after.” Since Theodor Adorno's and Edward Said's writings on the topic, the notion also evokes the intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction occasionally found in such works. Rather than evincing the breakthrough of biological reality in the creative biography, these authors contend, late style is what happens if art does not abdicate its rights in favor of reality. Late style suggests a mode of being apart from one's life while continuing to claim its full rights, a mode of being in time without completely belonging to it, and without belonging to history, or to the Elysian fields, either. This mode of artistic production is tested against the French composer Olivier Messiaen's “late” musical works, many of which appear to thematize, in a monumental manner, the same eschatological themes found in his earlier work. Is there a late style Messiaen? Would such a thing be possible in the first place?Less
“Late style” is often used to refer to a period of consummation in an artist's output in which he or she looks back on previous work in harmony and resolution. However, “lateness” may also express more fundamental dimensions of temporality which are not necessarily dependant on a “before” and “after.” Since Theodor Adorno's and Edward Said's writings on the topic, the notion also evokes the intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction occasionally found in such works. Rather than evincing the breakthrough of biological reality in the creative biography, these authors contend, late style is what happens if art does not abdicate its rights in favor of reality. Late style suggests a mode of being apart from one's life while continuing to claim its full rights, a mode of being in time without completely belonging to it, and without belonging to history, or to the Elysian fields, either. This mode of artistic production is tested against the French composer Olivier Messiaen's “late” musical works, many of which appear to thematize, in a monumental manner, the same eschatological themes found in his earlier work. Is there a late style Messiaen? Would such a thing be possible in the first place?
Sander van Maas
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251384
- eISBN:
- 9780823253029
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251384.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter examines Olivier Messiaen's music drawing upon bird song. Arguing against François-Bernard Mâche's bioacoustic reading of Messiaen, it stresses the particularity of the temporal mode ...
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This chapter examines Olivier Messiaen's music drawing upon bird song. Arguing against François-Bernard Mâche's bioacoustic reading of Messiaen, it stresses the particularity of the temporal mode invoked by the composer. Messiaen's music speaks in a voice similar to those of apocalyptic utterances. It proclaims a “to-come.”Less
This chapter examines Olivier Messiaen's music drawing upon bird song. Arguing against François-Bernard Mâche's bioacoustic reading of Messiaen, it stresses the particularity of the temporal mode invoked by the composer. Messiaen's music speaks in a voice similar to those of apocalyptic utterances. It proclaims a “to-come.”
Stephen Schloesser
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262373
- eISBN:
- 9780823266425
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262373.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Whether to categorize Olivier Messiaen’s music as “mystical” or “theological” has been an ongoing historiographical question for several decades. In this chapter, Stephen Schloesser argues that ...
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Whether to categorize Olivier Messiaen’s music as “mystical” or “theological” has been an ongoing historiographical question for several decades. In this chapter, Stephen Schloesser argues that Messiaen’s shift from the mystical to the theological occurred around the year 1935, marked by Messiaen’s composition of La Nativité, and by the foundation of La Jeune France group, which called for a “third way” new order beyond the Left and Right. With the onset of the Spanish Civil War and the collapse of the Popular Front government in 1937, disillusionment set in along with a sharp turn to order and stability. In 1938 came Munich; on September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Just one week earlier, Messiaen had concluded his organ cycle, Les Corps glorieux, an apocalyptic composition closely following St Thomas Aquinas. Schloesser interprets this work as Messiaen’s way of preserving the “marvelous” while simultaneously embracing the new order called for by apocalyptic times.Less
Whether to categorize Olivier Messiaen’s music as “mystical” or “theological” has been an ongoing historiographical question for several decades. In this chapter, Stephen Schloesser argues that Messiaen’s shift from the mystical to the theological occurred around the year 1935, marked by Messiaen’s composition of La Nativité, and by the foundation of La Jeune France group, which called for a “third way” new order beyond the Left and Right. With the onset of the Spanish Civil War and the collapse of the Popular Front government in 1937, disillusionment set in along with a sharp turn to order and stability. In 1938 came Munich; on September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Just one week earlier, Messiaen had concluded his organ cycle, Les Corps glorieux, an apocalyptic composition closely following St Thomas Aquinas. Schloesser interprets this work as Messiaen’s way of preserving the “marvelous” while simultaneously embracing the new order called for by apocalyptic times.
