The Seven Affirmations of Olivier Messiaen

With Holy Week coming up, for Christians who observe such holidays, I return to my occasional series of articles on the French composer Olivier Messiaen, whose intensely spiritual works were expressed in the language and imagery of his Roman Catholic faith.

Although there is no reference to Easter in his Visions de l'Amen ("Visions of the Amen"), one of the movements refers to the suffering of Jesus. The seven pieces or movements of the work, however, could enhance your spiritual experience, no matter in what tradition that spiritual experience is centered.

What is an amen?

Often said, heard, and sung, amen, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, goes back to Hebrew, meaning "certainty, truth." In Greek, it came into Christian use "as a solemn expression of belief, affirmation, consent, concurrence, or ratification." Ernest Hello, a philosopher whose writing about the word amen influenced Messiaen's work (more), noted the connection to the Latin fiat (let it be; no, the Beatles did not come up with that). So, Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen are visions of belief, of concurrence, of affirmation of all creation.

Hebrew? Greek? Latin? Where is my free music?

Here are links to listen to the Visions. Stick around after the music, to learn what the sad story is behind this joyous music, when a piano is not a piano, whether the Virgin Mary washed dishes, and why this music by a conservative Catholic recalls a novel banned for obscenity.

1. Amen de la Création ("Amen of Creation") - video
2. Amen des étoiles, de la planète à l'anneau ("Amen of the stars, of the ringed planet") - video
3. Amen de l'Agonie de Jésus ("Amen of the Agony of Jesus") - video
4. Amen du Désir ("Amen of Desire") - video
5. Amen des Anges, des Saintes, du chant des oiseaux ("Amen of the Angels, of the Saints, of Bird Song") - video
6. Amen du Jugement ("Amen of Judgment") - video
7. Amen de la Consommation ("Amen of Consummation") - video

If you listen to only one of these, I suggest the fifth, the only one of these performed by Messiaen and his wife, who premiered this piece. Messiaen's comments on these seven movements are here.

What is the sad story behind Messiaen's amens?

By 1943, the year of the premiere of Visions de l'Amen, Olivier Messiaen was known both as composer and as performer. He had a loving wife (also a composer) and a seven year old child, but his wife had begun to show signs of the mental and physical illness that would leave her confined to an institution for the rest of her life.

Messiaen had a student named Yvonn Loriod, a brilliant young pianist. Messian and Loriod apparently conducted themselves according to the dictates of Messiaen's conservative Catholic conscience and did not marry until 1961, two years after his first wife's death. Messiaen wrote solo piano music to challenge Loriod as well as to show his feelings for her. I have written about one such piece, Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus or "Twenty Gazes upon the Infant Jesus" (here).

Messiaen wrote Visions de l'Amen for two pianos, for himself and Loriod to perform together. So intense is the work that at times it seems as if the two pianists are at a single piano; at other times, it seems as if the two pianos are on opposite sides of the world, and the two pianists know that they can never touch.

And... exactly how is this Catholic, or appropriate for Holy Week?

Olivier Messiaen wrote with the beliefs and imagery of his conservative Catholicism as naturally as he spoke French. Just as we can translate his words from French, so can non-Catholics (such as I) find a way to "translate" his music into our own world view.

The imagery in his titles is what inspired him to compose. But, I am listening to and responding to the music itself; besides, instrumental music is not a very effective medium for theology. You no more have to be a Catholic to appreciate the music of Olivier Messiaen than you have to be a Catholic to play bingo in the parish social hall. With a small letter, catholic, after all, means universal.

Try a little experiment. After listening to the second movement here ("Amen of the stars and the ringed planet"). listen to Gustav Holst's "Saturn" from The Planets here. Can you find the planet and its rings?

Messiaen's music is all about love. For some this is about sacred love, while that is about erotic love. Some of Messiaen's "religious" works are intensely erotic, while other "erotic" works are transcendentally spiritual. What draws me to Messiaen's work is not that is is about Christian love or sexual love but that it is about love.

Could we compose an "Amen of the Kitchen Sink of the Virgin Mary"?

Listening to Messiaen, I sometimes think about the kitchen sink, as in, everything but the kitchen sink. There is so much going on in his compositions - the odd instruments (sometimes, he had to invent an instrument to get the sound he wanted), the modes and rhythms from music from around the world, the incredible imagery - that I think the kitchen sink must be the only thing missing.

If Olivier Messiaen can create music for the planet Saturn or the saints, why could not someone create music, in this instance, an amen, for a kitchen sink? And, not just any kitchen sink, but in terms of Messiaen's Catholicism, why not the kitchen sink of the Virgin Mary? Of all the controversies surrounding Mary, I don't think anyone has ever wondered whether she washed dishes, but, would she not have washed dishes, cooked, and swept the floor? Amen!

When is a piano not a piano?

When someone is "Messiaen" around on it? Messiaen was so fascinated by rhythms from many and varied musical traditions that he included exotic percussion instruments in his orchestrations. His Turangalîla-Symphonie (which I have written about here) has such an assortment of percussion instruments that the London Philharmonia Orchestra has produced two videos about the percussion instruments in that one work. You can watch, listen, and learn here and here.

In a brilliant article found on the Carnegie Hall website (here) music critic Paul Griffiths says that the two pianos in Visions de l'Amen become a percussion orchestra, like the gamelan (more), the Indonesian percussion group that Messiaen turned to for inspiration in other compositions.

Listen for the ways that the pianos are used as percussion instruments in this and other piano compositions by Olivier Messiaen, especially when performed by Yvonn Loriod. Listening to her deconstruct if not demolish a piano, I think that she must have had arms like Popeye's. Perhaps surreptitious cans of spinach got her through the challenges that Messian composed for her.

What great but sometimes censored novel do I associated with Visions de l'Amen?

In 1922, James Joyce's Ulysses appeared in Paris, but it could not legally appear in the United States until 1933. Much of the material that was found objectional was in the final chapter, in which Molly Bloom, lies in bed with the main character, her husband Leopold Bloom, as her mind wanders over her life and loves. Her soliloquy has no punctuation, except for a final period, but it is marked by the repetition of the word yes more than a hundred times: "and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

For Molly Bloom, yes was her amen, her affirmation of love, of creation, and, in the title of the final movement of Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen, "consummation."

When will Philadelphia affirm Messiaen?

On April 20, 2011 at 8 p.m. Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music (website) presents a student recital in which Patrick Kreeger and Alan Morrison will tackle Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen. Although I would love to be there, I am afraid I would embarrass myself. With my visceral response to the music of Olivier Messiaen, I am afraid I would give those two brave young pianists an unexpected amen corner.

Sources

Sources are linked to throughout this article, but I must emphasize my debt to a very informative article by Paul Griffiths here. I post on Twitter as @MessiaenProject. I would like to thank the folks who maintain @LocalArtsLive and @Lux_Seeker for some helpful comments. (By the way, check out the haunting music of @Lux_Seeker here.)