Journals / Konservatoryum / 2025 / Cilt: 12 Sayı: 2
“A Kind of Office”: The Paraliturgical Facets and Aims of Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards Sur L’enfant-Jésus
- Journal
- Konservatoryum
- Pages
- 560–577
- Publication Date
- 2025-12-31
Abstract
In the richly storied and musically productive life of Olivier Messiaen, he developed and returned to a set of prototypical and nuanced compositional techniques of birdsong, Hindu rhythms, serial structures, and colored scales (or “modes of limited transposition”), all synthesized to form a distinct musical language, frequently religious and always liturgical, inviting participants into a ritual of worship and delight. This connection between his music and its practical purpose is supported by the 61-year position he held as the organist at Église de la Sainte-Trinité, and the subsequent posture of a pilgrim and worshipper co-opted into his other professional spheres of composition and teaching. The potential of this study properly contextualizes a small part of the composer’s oeuvre, namely Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus (1944) for solo piano, enhancing the ritualistic and festal elements that are difficult to replicate in a sterile classroom or concert hall and inseparable from the practiced faith of a lifelong Catholic. A liturgical framework reveals the intent of Messiaen’s music: a process through which to discover or experience delight, awe, and inspire listeners after his own love for spiritual and earthly truths.
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