TITLE: Coulours de la Cite Celeste (1963)

COMPOSER: Oliver Messiaen (1908-1992)

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Oliver Messiaen was born in Avignon, France and studied organ and composition in Paris. In 1942, he was on faculty at the Paris Conservatory, as a professor of harmony. Two of his most famous students were Boulez and Stockhausen. Messiaen was not a founder of any school of compositional style or technique. He tried to influence his students to expand their imagination and talents in order to find their own way of communicating their creative expressions. Messiaen integrated elements of mysticism, impressionism and romanticism. His compositional life could be categorized into four distinct periods. Until 1948, Messiaen was strictly neoclassical, as is demonstrated in his organ works completed in the 1930's and the Turangalila Symphony (1948). By 1948, he was one of the first composers to begin experimentation with total serialism. The 1950's became known as Messiaen's Bird Period, for he was very interested in cataloguing bird calls from around the world. The 1960's brought simpler structures and textures to Messiaen's music. This period could be classified as his Assessable Period, since his music was easier to understand to the listener. Like Mahler, Messiaen became a devout Roman Catholic, and believed that composing music was an act of faith. Messiaen worked with rich homophonic textures and employed harmonic and melodic material from a variety of sources, among them the plainchant modes, octatonic scales, pitch sets and conventional harmony.

MOVEMENTS: One

PERFORMANCE TIME: 16' 56"

INSTRUMENTATION: 18 Instruments

• 1 Piano, 3 Clarinets, 1 Trumpet in D, 3 Bb Trumpets, 2 Horns, 3 Trombones, 1 Bass Trombone, 3 Keyboard Percussion (Xylophone, Xylorimba, Marimba), Metallic Percussion (Tuned Cow Bells, Tubular Bells, 4 Gongs, 2 Tam-Tams)

EDITIONS: Rental

• Alphonse Leduc, 175 rue Saint-Honore, Paris France 17040
• Score available for purchase at http://www.jwpepper.com

COMPOSITION SKETCH AND MUSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The work was composed in 1963, and first performed on October 17, 1964 at a concert at the Donaueschingen Festival under the direction of Pierre Boulez. These "inner colours" spring from five quotations from the Apocalypse: Revelations IV, 3; Revelations VIII,6; Revelations IX,1; Revelations XXI,11; and Revelations XXI,19-20. The form of the piece depends entirely on colours. The themes, melodic or rhythmic and the complexes of sounds and timbres evolve like colours. In their perpetually renewed variations, there can be found (by analogy) colours that influence their neighbors, shading down to white, or toned down to black. These transformations can be compared to the superimposition of plays enacted on several stages, the simultaneous unfolding of several different stories that assume and call out for it. Plainsong Alleluias, Greek and Hindu rhythms, permutations of note-values, the bird-song of different countries were all collected and used in this work. All these accumulated materials are placed at the service of colour and of the combinations of sounds that assume and call out for it. The sound-colours, in their turn, are a symbol of the Celestial City and of Him who dwells there. Above all time, above all place, in a light without light, in a night without night... That which the Apocalypse, still more terrifying in its humility than in its visions of glory, describes only in a blaze of colours... To the song of two New Zealand birds is opposed "the abyss", with its pedal-notes for the trombones and the resonance of tam-tams. To the cries of the Brazilian Araponga is opposed "the coloured ecstasy" of pedal points. The work ending no differently from the way it began, but turning on itself like a rose-window of flamboyant and invisible colours.

--written by Oliver Messiaen

SELECTED RECORDINGS:

RELATED WEBSITES:

Messiaen Page- http://home.earthlink.net/~paulcarr/music_files/messiaen.html