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 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.
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 Olivier Messiaen written by Vincent Benitez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-20 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olivier Messiaen: A Research and Information Guide, Second Edition presents researchers with the most significant and helpful resources on Olivier Messiaen, one of the twentieth century's greatest composers. With multiple indices, this annotated bibliography will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field. The second edition has been fully revised and updated.
Download or read book Messiaen in Context written by Robert Sholl and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rich variety of aesthetic and cultural influences experienced by the French composer Olivier Messiaen helped foster the creativity that gave him a multi-dimensional presence in twentieth-century music. This book explores the ideas that animated Messiaen's thinking, and provides fresh perspectives on the culture that surrounds his music.
Download or read book Messiaen s Final Works written by Christopher Dingle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) completed the vast opera Saint Frans dAssise in 1983, he was mentally and physically exhausted, and believed that this monumental work would be his final compositional statement. In fact, he completed seven further works, and these form the focus of the present study. Christopher Dingle suggests that, following the crisis provoked by the opera, Messiaen's music underwent a discernible change in style. He examines these seven works to identify characteristics of the composer's music, in particular an often overlooked aspect of his technique: harmony. Part I of the book begins with a brief historical survey before discussing Saint Frans dAssise as the work which defines everything that follows. Part II examines the series of miniatures that came after the opera and their links with lairs sur lAu-Del., his final masterpiece. lairs forms the subject of Part III of the book. Each movement is analysed in turn, before the work is considered as a whole and its hidden structure and motivic cohesion is revealed. Finally, Part IV considers the incomplete Concert and key stylistic features of the works of Messiaens final years.
Download or read book Messiaen Perspectives 1 Sources and Influences written by Robert Fallon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on Messiaen’s relation to history - both his own and the history he engendered - the Messiaen Perspectives volumes convey the growing understanding of his deep and varied interconnections with his cultural milieux. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences examines the genesis, sources and cultural pressures that shaped Messiaen’s music. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception analyses Messiaen’s compositional approach and the repercussions of his music. While each book offers a coherent collection in itself, together these complementary volumes elucidate how powerfully Messiaen was embedded in his time and place, and how his music resonates ever more today. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences presents many new primary sources, including discussion of Messiaen’s birdsong cahiers, sketch and archival materials for his Prix de Rome entries and war-time Portique, along with performance practice insights and theological inspiration in works as diverse as Visions de l’Amen, Harawi, Timbres-durées and the organ Méditations. The volume places the composer within a broader historical and cultural framework than has previously been attempted, ranging from specific influences to more general contexts. As a centrepiece, the book includes an examination of the impact of one of the greatest influences upon Messiaen, Yvonne Loriod.
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 Messiaen Perspectives 2 Techniques Influence and Reception written by Robert Fallon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on Messiaen’s relation to history - both his own and the history he engendered - the Messiaen Perspectives volumes convey the growing understanding of his deep and varied interconnections with his cultural milieux. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences examines the genesis, sources and cultural pressures that shaped Messiaen’s music. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception analyses Messiaen’s compositional approach and the repercussions of his music. While each book offers a coherent collection in itself, together these complementary volumes elucidate how powerfully Messiaen was embedded in his time and place, and how his music resonates ever more today. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception explores Messiaen’s imprint on recent musical life. The first part scrutinizes his compositional technique in terms of counterpoint, spectralism and later piano music, while the second charts ways in which Messiaen’s influence is manifest in the music and careers of Ohana, Xenakis, Murail and Quebecois composers. The third part includes case studies of Messiaen’s reception in Italy, Spain and the USA. The volume also includes an ornithological catalogue of Messiaen’s birds, collates information on the numerous ’tombeaux’ pieces he inspired, and concludes with a Critical Catalogue of Messiaen’s Musical Works.
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 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 Sonic Transformations of Literary Texts written by Siglind Bruhn and published by Pendragon Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Among the possible relationships between art forms that express themselves in different sign systems, the pairing of words and images is the one that is most thoroughly explored. And in fact, the most securely established terminology is found in a field that has experienced a significant revival in recent years: ekphrasis. The literary topos through which a poem (or any other text) addresses itself to the visual arts has received much attention in recent years and been subjected to intense scrutiny."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Visions of Eternity written by Michael R Bundy and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: sions of Eternity is the companion volume to Prophets without Honour (Matador, 2011) which explored the forgotten mélodies of Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne and Charles Tournemire. The present work continues that study but with regard to the largely unknown choral works and operas by these same composers: it also expands upon the mores of Parisian Musical society, 1870-1939, and discusses in greater detail than before the prevalent influences and restrictions, which might have had a bearing on a young composer. Widor’s printed and unpublished works are discussed, as are those of his pupil Louis Vierne alongside a more detailed, and possibly provocative, discussion of the latter’s life and loves, and their relevance to that composer’s compositions. His completely unknown ‘cantate lyrique’ Praxinoë is also revealed. The greater part of Visions of Eternity is given over to a discussion of the influences that affected another of Widor’s pupils, Charles Tournemire, in both temporal and theological terms. His individual musical language, discussing both his use of traditional Latin and Indian chants, quixotic character and amours are also investigated. This is a book of great musical relevance, for it deals with composers and issues which greatly influenced later French musicians, particularly Maurice Duruflé, Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur, Jean Langlais and Olivier Messiaen: these, in turn, passed their knowledge to more contemporary composers. Whilst this book has been researched in great depth, its content is delivered with a light, occasionally humorous touch. This is not a dry, academic work, but one for both the cognoscenti and enthusiast alike.
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 Media inter Media written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary volume explores, analyzes, and celebrates intermedial processes. It investigates the dynamic relations between media in contemporary artistic productions such as digitalized poetry and installations or musical scores by Walter Steffens and Hugh Davies; in texts like Dieter Roth’s diaries, Ror Wolf’s guidebooks, Charles Baudelaire’s art criticism, or Lewis Carroll’s Alice books; and in inherently intermedial pieces like Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés and Augusto de Campos’s poetry. Through distinct and diverse methodological approaches to intermedial inquiry, the contributors probe multiple forms of interaction between media: adaptation, appropriation, transposition, transfer, recycling, grafting, recontextualization, intertextualization, transmedialization, and transcreation. In so doing, they offer perspectives which refine our understanding of the term ‘medium’ and demonstrate ways in which intermedial creations engage their audiences and stimulate creative responses. Written in honor of Claus Clüver, a groundbreaking leader in intermediality studies, the essays participate in and broaden the scope of current discourses in the international forum. The range of their subjects and methodologies will interest literary scholars, art historians, musicologists, scholars of new media as well as those working in intermediality studies, word and image or word and music studies, and anyone whose interests cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Download or read book King Arthur in Music written by Richard W. Barber and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2002 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Between these two extremes, the main body of the book deals largely with opera, from Wagner's 'Tristan' and 'Parsifal' to Harrison Birtwistle's 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. Some works have never been performed, such as Hubert Parry's 'Guenever' and Rutland Boughton's Arthurian cycle, while others have only recently been staged or revived, such as Isaac Albeniz's 'Merlin' and Ernest Chausson's 'Le roi Artus', both striking post-Wagnerian works in very different styles - 'Merlin', for instance, beginning with a passage based on Gregorian chant. The range of music is wider than one might at first suspect."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Classical Music Lover s Companion to Orchestral Music written by Robert Philip and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 969 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An invaluable guide for lovers of classical music designed to enhance their enjoyment of the core orchestral repertoire from 1700 to 1950 Robert Philip, scholar, broadcaster, and musician, has compiled an essential handbook for lovers of classical music, designed to enhance their listening experience to the full. Covering four hundred works by sixty-eight composers from Corelli to Shostakovich, this engaging companion explores and unpacks the most frequently performed works, including symphonies, concertos, overtures, suites, and ballet scores. It offers intriguing details about each piece while avoiding technical terminology that might frustrate the non-specialist reader. Philip identifies key features in each work, as well as subtleties and surprises that await the attentive listener, and he includes enough background and biographical information to illuminate the composer's intentions. Organized alphabetically from Bach to Webern, this compendium will be indispensable for classical music enthusiasts, whether in the concert hall or enjoying recordings at home.
