Messiaen

Author : Andrew Shenton
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135155588X
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Olivier Messiaen's System of Signs written by Andrew Shenton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew Shenton's groundbreaking cross-disciplinary approach to Messiaen's music presents a systematic and detailed examination of the compositional techniques of one of the most significant musicians of the twentieth century as they relate to his desire to express profound truths about Catholicism. It is widely accepted that music can have mystical and transformative powers, but because 'pure' music has no programme, Messiaen sought to refine his compositions to speak more clearly about the truths of the Catholic faith by developing a sophisticated semiotic system in which aspects of music become direct signs for words and concepts. Using interdisciplinary methodologies drawing on linguistics, cognition studies, theological studies and semiotics, Shenton traces the development of Messiaen's sign system using examples from many of Messiaen's works and concentrating in particular on the Mtations sur le myst de la Sainte Trinitor organ, a suite which contains the most sophisticated and developed use of a sign system and represents a profound exegesis of Messiaen's understanding of the Catholic triune God. By working on issues of interpretation, Shenton endeavours to bridge the traditional gap between scholars and performers and to help people listen to Messiaen's music with spirit and understanding.

Author : Siglind Bruhn
Publisher : Pendragon Press
ISBN 13 : 9781576471296
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Messiaen's Contemplations of Covenant and Incarnation written by Siglind Bruhn and published by Pendragon Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The celebrated composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) characterized himself as a rhythmician, ornithologist, and theologian.All interpreters concur that his life and work are grounded in a profound faith. This book examines the translation of his faith into his musical language. It centers on a hermeutic analysis of two spiritually motiviated instrumental compositions, Visions de l'amen for two pianos (1943) and Vingt Regards sur l?enfant-Jésus/i> for piano solo (1944). Part I introduces the main aspects of the composer's religious environment (the catholic literary revival, his father Pierre and his mentor Charles Tournemire) as well as the components of his idiosyncratic musico-symbolic vocabulary. Parts II and III examine the twenty-seven movements comprised in the Visions and the Regards, whose thematic material, structure, and musical as well as spiritual function within the whole cycle are interpreted in light of the literary source and imagery that inspired Messiaen. This book is part of Siglind Bruhn's Messiaen Trilogy.

Author : Nigel Simeone
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135155591X
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Olivier Messiaen written by Nigel Simeone and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Olivier Messiaen died in 1992, the prevailing image was of a man apart; a deeply religious man whose only sources of inspiration were God and Nature and a composer whose music progressed along an entirely individual path, artistically impervious to contemporaneous events and the whims both of his contemporaries and the critics. Whilst such a view contains a large element of truth, the past ten years has seen an explosion of interest in the composer, and the work of a diverse range of scholars has painted a much richer, more complex picture of Messiaen. This volume presents some of the fruits of this research for the first time, concentrating on three broad, interrelated areas: Messiaen's relationship with fellow artists; key developments in the composer's musical language and technique; and his influences, both sacred and secular. The volume assesses Messiaen's position as a creative artist of the twentieth century in the light of the latest research. In the process, it identifies some of the key myths, confusions and exaggerations surrounding the composer which often mask equally remarkable truths. In attempting to reveal some of those truths, the essays elucidate a little of the mystery surrounding Messiaen as a man, an artist, a believer and a musician. Specifically, the volume covers Messiaen's attitudes and associations to Cocteau, Stravinsky's Les Noces, Dutilleux and Toesca, as well as exploring his teaching techniques, the Traite rythme, de couleur et d'ornithologie, Messiaen's harmony, performing and transcription techniques, composing for Ondes Martenot, his association with ballet, Saint Fran‘s d'Assise and the influence of his faith. Messiaen himself contributes directly in the form of a speech that he gave about the tapestry-maker Jean Lur and the collection also includes the first literary translation of L' en bourgeon; the garland of poems written by Messiaen's mother, Cle Sauvage, when she was expecting him. The composer de

Author : Peter Hill
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300109078
Total Pages : 462 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Messiaen written by Peter Hill and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With access to Messiaen's private archive, the authors have been able to trace the origins of many of his greatest works and place them in the context of his life. --book jacket.

Author : Jon Gillock
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253353734
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Performing Messiaen's Organ Music written by Jon Gillock and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gillock supplies details about the organ at La Trinité in Paris, the instrument for which most of Messiaen's pieces were imagined.

Author : Siglind Bruhn
Publisher : Siglind Bruhn
ISBN 13 : 1576471365
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Messiaen's Explorations of Love and Death written by Siglind Bruhn and published by Siglind Bruhn. This book was released on 2008 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olivier Messiaens lifelong quest centered on the colors and rhythms of a music that would serve as a vehicle for his thoughts about time, his love of God, and his enthusiasm for birdsong. An additional topic about which he felt deeply is that of passionate, fated human love and its relationship to death on the one hand, the love of God on the other. During the years 1936-1948, he composed five cycles of vocal music to his own texts as well as the Turangalîla Symphony, the monumental centerpiece of his Tristan Trilogy. The focus of this study is the in-depth analysis and interpretation of these six works on love, with particular regard for their unusual wealth of poetic, sonic, and visual colors and imagery. The wonder of rainbows, the magic of exotic sounds, the fantastic attractiveness of surrealist representations, and the majestic inexorability of fate in myths of various times and cultures define Messiaens lyrics as much as his idiosyncratic, highly symbolic musical language, which never fails to build bridges between this and another world.

Author : Rebecca Rischin
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801472978
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book For the End of Time written by Rebecca Rischin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The clarinetist Rebecca Rischin has written a captivating book.... Her research dispels several long-cherished myths about the 1941 premiere.... Rischin lovingly brings to life the other musicians-- tienne Pasquier, cellist; Henri Akoka, clarinetist; and Jean Le Boulaire, violinist--who played with Messiaen, the pianist at the premiere."--Alex Ross, The New Yorker "This book offers a wealth of new information about the circumstances under which the Quartet was created. Based on original interviews with the performers, witnesses to the premiere, and documents from the prison camp, this first comprehensive history of the Quartet's composition and premiere held my interest from beginning to end.... For the End of Time touches on many things: faith, friendship, creativity, grace in a time of despair, and the uncommon human alliances that wartime engenders."--Arnold Steinhardt, Chamber Music"The clarification of the order of composition of the movements is just one of the minor but cumulatively significant ways in which Rischin modifies the widely accepted account of the events at Stalag VIII A.... For the End of Time is a thorough and readable piece of investigative journalism that clarifies some important points about the Quartet's genesis."--Michael Downes, Times Literary Supplement The premiere of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time on January 15, 1941, has been called one of the great stories of twentieth-century music. Composed while Messiaen (1908-1992) was imprisoned by the Nazis in Stalag VIII A, the work was performed under the most trying of circumstances: the temperature, inferior instruments, and the general conditions of life in a POW camp.Based on testimonies by the musicians and their families, witnesses to the premiere, former prisoners, and on documents from Stalag VIII A, For the End of Time examines the events that led to the Quartet's composition, the composer's interpretive preferences, and the musicians' problems in execution and how they affected the premiere and subsequent performances. Rebecca Rischin explores the musicians' life in the prison camp, their relationships with each other and with the German camp officials, and their intriguing fortunes before and after the momentous premiere. This paperback edition features supplementary texts and information previously unavailable to the author about the Quartet's premiere, Vichy and the composer, the Paris premiere, a recording featuring Messiaen as performer, and an updated bibliography and discography.

Author : Siglind Bruhn
Publisher : Siglind Bruhn
ISBN 13 : 157647139X
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Messiaen's Interpretations of Holiness and Trinity written by Siglind Bruhn and published by Siglind Bruhn. This book was released on 2008 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three of Olivier Messiaen's later works, La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité, and Saint François d'Assise, are linked by the fact that the composer refers to and quotes from Thomas Aquinas. The composer's reception of Thomistic texts is one of the principles guiding the interpretations in this study. On the one hand, Messiaen had been pondering Thomas's thoughts on the role of music in the life of a Christian and on music's possible spiritual content all through his professional life; on the other hand, the oratorio, the organ meditations, and the opera are the only works in which Messiaen quotes extensive Thomistic sentences addressing purely theological subject matter. The first aspect, Messiaen's appropriation of or felicitous congruence with the medieval theologian's views on music underlies all analyses as a kind of background fabric. The second aspect, Messiaen's quotations from the Summa theologica and their musical translation, determines segments of a larger discussion that, in the book's three main chapters, attempts to do justice to the compositions as a whole. While Thomas' theological aesthetics appears as a thread woven through a texture in a way that brings it only periodically to the foreground, the statements from Thomas's writings provide essential foundations determining the works' content and its musical rendering. This book is part of Siglind Bruhn's Messiaen Trilogy.

Author : Robert Sherlaw Johnson
Publisher : Omnibus Press
ISBN 13 : 0857120476
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Messiaen written by Robert Sherlaw Johnson and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2009-12-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Sherlaw Johnson's pioneering work on the music of Olivier Messiaen has become the foundation stone upon which all Messiaen scholarship is based. In it he discusses all Messiaen's main works, exploring his musical language, the development of his technique, his individual approach to harmony and rhythm, the theological and symbolic aspects of his music, and his use of birdsong. The appendices include a complete chronological list of works, a bibliography and a list of bird names. Messiaen died in 1992 aged 84. In between the publication of the last edition of this book in 1989 and this final, updated version he composed a further set of masterpieces that are more than a postscript to his compositional oeuvre. This new edition brings the book fully up to date on these and other works and offers additional assessment on Messiaen's influence as a composer. Robert Sherlaw Johnson (1932-2000) was a lecturer in music at the University of Oxford and a fellow at Worchester College. He was also a composer and Pianist of note who recorded a number of Messiaen's works, including the Catalogue d'Oiseaux, of which he gave the first complete performance in Britain at Coventry Cathedral in 1973. This edition of his Messiaen study has been updated by Dr Caroline Rae.

Author : Vincent Benitez
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135871310
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Olivier Messiaen written by Vincent Benitez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-11-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olivier Messiaen: A Research and Information Guide is a unique bibliographical resource that presents the reader with the most significant and helpful resources on Olivier Messiaen, one of the twentieth century's greatest composers, published between 1930 and 2007. An introductory chapter offers a short biography of Messiaen, a consideration of his musical style and works, and a discussion of Messiaen studies. Chapters 2 and 3 concentrate on the primary literature, organized around manuscript collections, articles and reviews, pedagogical works, lectures and librettos, prefaces, interviews, correspondence, and documentaries and filmed performances. Chapters 4 through 9 focus on the secondary literature, namely, biographical and stylistic studies, topical examinations, discussions of particular works, accounts of Messiaen in works devoted to other topics, reviews of books and significant performances of Messiaen's music, and examinations of source materials on the Internet. A list of works and a selected discography conclude the book.