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Messiaen, a birthday view from accross the channel
par Stephen Mudge
As a student at the Royal College of Music in the nineteen seventies, Olivier Messiaen played a crucial role in my generation's musical education. Twentieth century French musical history was simplified into a direct line from Debussy to Messiaen to Boulez with micro-tonality set up, erroneously as it turned out, as the music of our future. In this respect Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande played as an important a role in our studies as it did in Messiaen's own life and teaching. George Benjamin relates how during his classes with the master in Paris they embarked on a note by note analysis of the opera over six weeks with three four hour sessions a week. It was my love of opera which led this enquiring student to Paris to hear the premiere of St François d'Assise. It is was a confusing but stimulating event for a green musician struggling with the realities of German and Neapolitan sixths. The majesty of the conception was overwhelming and there was that rare sensation of being present for a special and extraordinary event. For a young man the lack of action might have presented an overwhelming problem, but the performance had a similar effect to a high mess, which I knew well from my catholic education. My intellectual French friends, far in advance of my compatriots in terms of stimulating philosophical conversation, had always mocked and rebuked my muddled agnostic faith. Theirs was the country of anti clerical intellectuals, whose views of organised religion was generally negative and patronising, and yet here was a composer whose very essence is Catholicism. If religion is viewed as convenient sects for the gullible, the essence of the revelation of St Francis would seem difficult to countenance. At the heart of this music is a celebration of faith, and if the performance is successful a Cartesian view of religion is inevitably challenged.
This spiritual dimension of Messiaen's music is more easily digested by the English, whose faith based monarchy and education system make the composer's inspiration a more palpable reality. The centenary celebrations in England have never played down this aspect of the composer's work where in France the composer's genius is celebrated with what seems to me a slightly grudging acceptance of his catholic faith. The other cross channel difference is the love of French music stretching across the perfidious Albion. Without rubbing salt into musical wounds, performances of the French nineteenth and twentieth century repertoire would have been the poorer without an Anglo Saxon contribution, although the BBC who pride themselves on correctitude should really not pronounce Messiaen's teacher Dukas in the same way as celebrity chef Ducasse. After the proms, South Bank and the BBC's wholehearted celebrations it is now the time to consider the legacy of the composer. From Stockhausen to Xenakis, Boulez to Benjamin all drew inspiration from the composer, but to a man ignored the composer's obsession with intrinsically melodious bird song and his profound Catholic faith. The arid terrain of total serialism and the electronic meanderings of the IRCAM proved to be a musical cul-de-sac. Fortunately music resists, and at the beginning of a new century a new and less categorical means of expression is being discovered, with technique and theory being put to the service of communication rather than representing an end in itself. Boulez may insult minimalists for lack of substance, but at least these composers recognise that our musical ear is based on our earliest experiences of nursery rhymes from which grows a certain innate sense of tonality, which can be challenged but never lost. If musically there is little to be found in common between Messiaen and sacred minimalists such as Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki, and John Tavener, there is a devotional aspect in their music which the composer would have understood. Faith driven music used to be one of the principal inspirations for music, art and literature. Unfortunately we live in a time where too often worthless evangelical songs, vaguely imitating pop music of the nineteen sixties, have largely undermined modern liturgy. We wait with impatience a new figure to present his or her Catholic faith with the same fervour and imagination as Olivier Messiaen, to present a supernatural challenge to help understand the mysteries of existence through the world of sound.