Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen (*December 10, 1908, Avignon; † April 27, 1992, Paris) is considered a pioneer of serial music and one of the most important composers of the 20th century. He came from an educated family; his father was an English professor and specialist in William Shakespeare, and his mother was a poet who passed on her artistic talent to her son (all of Messiaen's vocal compositions are based on his own texts). He proved to be highly gifted, beginning his musical education at the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of eleven and winning virtually every prize the institution offered during his comprehensive studies, including first prizes in counterpoint and fugue, piano accompaniment, organ and improvisation, percussion, music history, and composition. Among his most important teachers was Paul Dukas, and Messiaen himself initially found work at the Church of La Trinité in Paris, which equally satisfied his need for music and spirituality. It is therefore not surprising that he had an affinity for keyboard instruments, nor that he was involved in musical groups such as "Jeune France," which, from the mid-1930s onwards, defined music in terms of its confessional character, in contrast to detached aestheticism. Messiaen's art had power and his personality had a fascinating charisma, a combination that, from 1941 onwards, helped him achieve a kind of natural authority as a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, guiding many young talents from Stockhausen to Boulez to Xenakis. Olivier Messiaen's musical system is based on his experiences from studying number mysticism, Greek and Indian rhythm, birdsong, and intensive engagement with the works of Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Alban Berg, and Gregorian chant. He researched non-retrogradable rhythms, which are the same in inversion and normal form, "modes" that, similar to twelve-tone music, divide the tonal space into sound relationships, scales made of similarly constructed groups, but also the transfer of natural models such as bird calls to music. Messiaen wrote hundreds of compositions, primarily orchestral works, chamber music, piano works, organ works, and vocal music. Among his most famous pieces are the "Tristan Trilogy," consisting of "Harawi, chant d’amour et des morts" (1945), "Cinq rechants" (1948), and the "Turangalîla-Symphonie" (1949, as a ballet in 1968), the "Catalogue d’oiseaux for piano" (1959), the "Livre d’orgue" (1953), and also the opera "Saint François d’Assise" (1983).