Download or read book Olivier Messiaen and the Tristan Myth written by Audrey Ekdahl Davidson and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2001-09-30 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a close examination of one of the greatest achievements of twentieth-century music--the trilogy of works by composer Olivier Messiaen based on the Tristan myth--and analyzes it both thematically and musically.
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 542 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.
Download or read book Olivier Messiaen written by Richard D E Burton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 20th century French composer Olivier Messiaen was a devout Roman Catholic and notably claimed that his music was an expression of his faith. Unsurprisingly, many performers and listeners consider Messiaen's strong religiosity central to their appreciation of the composer's music. Music scholars have devoted much energy to exploring how Messiaen's music was an extension of his religious beliefs. Yet, these works tend to discuss Messiaen's Catholicism solely in terms of personal religious identity and ignore the composer's broader connections to the cultural landscape of Roman Catholicism in France. In Olivier Messiaen: Texts, Contexts, and Intertexts (1937-1948) the late French literature scholar Richard Burton examines nine of Messiaen's works in the context of the broader French Catholic intellectual tradition. Drawing on an expansive knowledge of the Catholic literature and the surrealist tradition, Burton reveals that Messiaen's middle-period compositions are filled with intertextual references to the Bible and other theological writings, which Messiaen, given his reputation for falsifying facts, may have gone to great lengths to obscure. As a Catholic, Messiaen is presented as somewhat removed from the ethos of his time and place, taking no part in the social side of Catholicism that found expression in the Pétainist litany of 'Patrie, Famille, Travail'. Rather, Messiaen regarded himself as having a 'vertical' relationship with God, which could make him seem unworldly and even uncaring. With insights into the artistic careers of Messiaen's notable contemporaries and historical perspectives on the breakdown of French politics during World War II, Burton creates a vivid picture of the previously unexamined spiritual and philosophical inspirations behind Messiaen's pivotal mid-century compositions.
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.
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 211 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 M tations sur le myst de la Sainte Trinit or 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.
Download or read book Olivier Messiaen s Turangal la symphonie written by Andrew Shenton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-30 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of only a few pieces not primarily inspired by Messiaen's Catholic faith, but by human love as described in the romance of Tristan and Isolde and elsewhere, the Turangalîla-symphonie is contextualized in Messiaen's oeuvre and as a genre piece. Using previously untranslated information from Messiaen's own description of the work in his Traité, close analysis of the music seeks to demystify some of the complex innovations he made to his musical language, especially in the areas of rhythm and orchestration. This Element pays special attention to the fragmentary and elusive program which is explained with reference to Messiaen's fascination with surrealism at this time. Information is included on the commission and composition of the piece, its premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, its revision by Messiaen in 1990, and its reception history in both live and recorded performances.
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.
Download or read book Hans Werner Henze Tristan 1973 written by Stephen Downes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hans Werner Henze is a prolific and internationally famous composer of the post-Second World War period. He is amongst the most frequently performed and recorded composers of his generation, and has been the subject of numerous festivals in several continents. But he is also a composer of controversy. His music has stimulated a critical polemic of notable vigour. Tristan (1973), Henze's large-scale work for piano, full orchestra and electronic tape explores Henze's creative stance with regard to Wagner. The work represents a powerful contribution to the 'tradition' of Tristan-alluding twentieth-century works, those by Berg and Messiaen being amongst the best known. Tristan has been heard as a piano concerto and as a symphonic poem, and is a fine example of how a single piece can interrogate the styles, expressions, genres and aesthetics of major, often conflictual, trends in European culture. In this book, Stephen Downes begins by placing Henze's Tristan in its wider context and in the context of Henze's compositional output and writings. He considers Henze's description of the genesis of the work by examining row tables and sketches, draft and annotated parts, and a full score with corrections and conductor's annotations. This analysis of form raises issues of genre, harmony and melody, temporality, unity and intertextuality, and places the work in the formal aesthetics characteristic of romanticism, modernism and 'postmodernism'. Key concepts in the critical legacy of Tristan are discussed and the book concludes by considering Henze's later works, placing the techniques and aesthetics of Tristan in the context of the composer's subsequent developments. The book is accompanied by a CD containing the 1975 DG recording of Tristan conducted by Henze.
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.
Download or read book Messiaen s Musical Techniques The Composer s View and Beyond written by Gareth Healey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite Messiaen's position as one of the greatest technical innovators of the twentieth century, his musical language has not been comprehensively defined and investigated. The composer's 1944 theoretical study, The Technique of My Musical Language, expounds only its initial stages, and while his posthumously published Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d'ornithologie contains detailed explanations of selected techniques, in most cases the reader is left to define these more precisely by observing them in the context of Messiaen's analyses of his own works. Technical processes are nevertheless in many cases the primary components of a work or movement. For instance, personnages dominate 'Joie du sang des étoiles' from the Turangalîla-symphonie, and in certain cases, such as 'L'échange' from the Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, the process (asymmetric augmentation) is the only structuring element present. Given this reliance on idiosyncratic techniques, clear comprehension of the music is impossible without a detailed knowledge of Messiaen's methods. Gareth Healey charts their development and interconnections, considers their relationship with formal structures, and applies them in refined and extended form to works for which Messiaen himself left no published analysis.
Download or read book Olivier Messiaen s Opera Saint Fran ois d Assise written by Vincent Perez Benitez and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive study of Olivier Messiaen's magnum opus, Saint François d'Assise, Vincent Perez Benitez examines the opera from both theological and musical-analytical perspectives to ask how Messiaen expresses his Catholic theology through his work. Benitez combines a close reading of the opera score with accounts from Messiaen's associates, studies of Messiaen's birdsong notebooks and other primary documents, and an examination of the religious, musical, poetic, and visual arts literature with which the composer was familiar to explore how the opera's harmonic language and sound-color relationships motivate its musical meaning and expression. Through his analysis of these diverse sources and comparisons of Saint François d'Assise with other works such as Berg's Wozzeck and Wagner's Parsifal, Benitez places Messiaen's compositional practice within larger musical perspectives and historical contexts.
Download or read book Crisis Music written by John Caps and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-27 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Story-like chapters profile six twentieth-century reactive composers; not the most famous pillars of the period but lesser-known, perhaps more approachable, characters whose stories span that 1900-2000 period from decadent fin-de-siècle Vienna (Alban Berg, Alexander Zemlinsky) to war-torn Paris (Olivier Messiaen, Arthur Honegger) to the Cold War tensions of East vs. West (Tōru Takemitsu) and late-century Communism (Arvo Pärt). Their stories were all very different crises, and they produced very different kinds of music; each very telling of their composers life and times. Crisis Music presents each brief biography almost like a detective story looking for motives, then spotlights one particular piece of music from each composer that emerged directly out of hard times maybe a political crisis at the time of composition (Hitler marching into Paris or later Communist crack-downs); or some personal angst such as illness or scandal and how that music contains and expresses crisis. In short, the subject for discussion is how context influences content. Such troubled and especially vivid composition, crisis music, can often be most compelling and meaningful for its composer and for its time. Indeed, their music also seems to have a special resonance to share with our own crisis-prone times. And meanwhile, Western music history played-out its own story from late-romantic style to Serialism and Minimalism to the anything-goes Pluralism we hear today. Crisis Music sparks the discussion about how history, biography and music intersects. At the behest of music teachers at secondary and tertiary levels, Crisis Music contains substantive Discussion Questions geared for classroom use.
Download or read book A History of Western Choral Music Volume 2 written by Chester L. Alwes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Western Choral Music explores the various genres, key composers, and influential works essential to the development of the western choral tradition. Volume II examines the major genres common to the Classical and Romantic eras and offers a thorough exploration of the array of styles and approaches developed over the course of the twentieth century, from Impressionism to the Avant-Garde.
Download or read book Hans Werner Henze written by Stephen C. Downes and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CD-ROM contains a performance of Tristan.
Download or read book Understanding Music written by Roger Scruton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Understanding Music and The Aesthetics of Music (1997) Roger Scruton set a new standard of rigour and seriousness in the philosophy of music. This collection of wide-ranging essays covers all aspects of the theory and practice of music, showing the significance of music as an expression of the moral life. The book is split into two parts, the first is devoted to the aesthetics and theory of music and the second consists of critical studies of individual composers, thinkers and works including essays on Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven's Ninth, Janácek & Schoenberg, Szymanowski and Adorno. Understanding Music will appeal to specialists in philosophy and musicology and also to music lovers who wish to find deeper meaning in this mysterious art. The Bloomsbury Revelations edition includes a new preface from the author.
Download or read book Olivier Messiaen written by Robert Sholl and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2024-06-12 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a range of sources and fields, the rich life story of this polymathic composer. This groundbreaking biography offers fresh perspectives on the life, ideas, and music of French twentieth-century composer, organist, and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen. Drawing from previously unexplored sketches and archival material, the book seamlessly combines elements of biography, musicology, theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics to present a nuanced perspective on Messiaen’s work. Robert Sholl explores the profound impact of Messiaen’s devout Catholicism, which found expression through his work as a church organist, his engagement with birdsong, his interaction with Surrealism, and his profound influence on major musical figures of the latter twentieth century. Unlike previous biographies, this book also considers the perspectives of Messiaen’s contemporaries and students, providing a comprehensive understanding of his life and artistic legacy.
Download or read book A History of Western Choral Music written by Chester Lee Alwes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive history of western choral music from the Medieval era, to the begginings of the Romantic period. Unique in its detailed analysis and breadth of Western choral music and key composers. Ample musical examples to supplement discussion. In-depth discussions of historical connections.
