It is indisputable that music is an intensely personal discipline, and music composition is at the top of the pile when it comes to emotional expression. Also, musicians seem to enjoy talking about themselves, especially composers.[1] So, when a composer as public and vocal as Olivier Messiaen was does not ever mention an event as important as the Second World War, one can assume that certain issues are present that preclude complete candor on the part of the man.
In truth, Messiaen had a few very unpleasant experiences through the 1940s. His experiences during the war are well known - legendary, in fact. Also during this time, his first wife, Claire Delbos, was experiencing a mental breakdown that would eventually lead to her death in 1959. Out of this period came three of Messiaen's most famous works, Harawi, chant d¹amour et de la mort, the Turangalîla-symphonie, and Cinq rechants. These three works all concern aspects of the legend of Tristan and Isolde, and are commonly referred to as Messiaen's "Tristan-trilogy." More importantly, however, these three works are the first to make explicit references to the extreme mysticism that would later become the cornerstone of Messiaen's output. What was Messiaen attempting to express with this mysticism? Why is it that this very French composer would choose the legends and myths of cultures half a world away to fulfill his artistic and emotional goals?
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The first member of this Tristan-trilogy is the song cycle Harawi, for "grand soprano dramatique" and piano. It is Messiaen's last work for voice and piano, written long before his death. The title is a word in Quechua, a Peruvian language also spoken in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina. It is a "love song in which the lovers are united in death,"[2] very similar to the European Tristan myth. For this reason, the cycle is subtitled "Chant d¹amour et de la mort."
The texts to all twelve poems were written by Messiaen himself, in a style very close to the French Surrealism of André Breton and Paul Éulard.[3] Disparate symbolic elements are associated with each other in startling contrasts. The third poem in the cycle, "Montagnes," is more a series of brief images than a unified whole:
The fifth poem in the cycle is entitled "L'Amour de Piroutcha." In the Harawi myth, Piroutcha is the equivalent of Isolde. She is the beloved, but, of course, in the end she must die if love is to be fulfilled. And die she does; the heart of the cycle, "Adieu," is a hymn of farewell to the "colombe verte," the mythical green dove of Mayan folklore and the symbol of Piroutcha. Jane Manning says of this song, "[its] grandeur . . . can be compared to the calm progress of a stately ship sailing into harbour. Although it is a farewell lament on the death of Piroutcha, there is an underlying sense of fateful acceptance, and impending release from earthly passion."[6]
Perhaps Messiaen was merely venting his own emotional spleen with this trilogy of love-death works. His first wife, the mother of his son, was in an asylum with a serious mental condition. His collaboration with the young pianist Yvonne Loirod was just beginning; this relationship would, of course, eventually lead to their marriage in 1961.
Perhaps, also, this work is a reaction to the emotional wasteland of the Second World War. Many composers in the early to mid-twentieth century attempted to bring about a higher state of spiritual consciousness in humanity at large. Messiaen utilizes surrealism to supersede the harsh reality of the battlefield and unite the listeners in love and shared experience of the Harawi myth. Messiaen¹s surrealism here
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Cinq rechants, the last work in the Tristan-trilogy, is even deeper ensconced in symbolism, surrealism, and exoticism. The texts of this work, also by Messiaen, are partly in French, and partly in a "language" made up by Messiaen using phonemes and syllables from both Quechua and Sanskrit. The invented words are mostly nonsense, meant to enhance the surrealism of the work. Cinq rechants deals explicitly with Tristan and Isolde, and mentions them by name.
Structurally, the work is relatively simple. There are five movements, each of which has three refrains, or rechants, and two verses, or couplets. The work takes the exoticism and surrealism of Harawi to entirely new heights. The texts, with the exception of names, are written entirely in lowercase, much like the poetry of e.e. cummings, and there is very little punctuation.
The strange imagery of the first song seems to suggest Messiaen's emotional state in relation to his wife, trapped in her mental fancy. This is, admittedly, not explicit in the poetry at all, but it is a possible reading. This is supported in part by the first verse:
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The Turangalîla-symphonie is one of Messiaen's largest works, as well as one of the most well-known and well-liked orchestral works of the twentieth century. It was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation in 1946, shortly before the death of Koussevitzky himself, and was premiered by Leonard Bernstein in 1949.
The title is a compound word in Sanskrit. Turanga is representative of time and movement. According to Messiaen, it is "time that runs, like a galloping horse" and "that flows, like sand in an hourglass."[10] It has overtones of the inexorable, of music and rhythm. Lîla denotes play, sport, or amusement. This is the playfulness of divine action, and the sport of creation and destruction; neither of these subjects was ever far from Messiaen's thoughts. It can also mean 'love' and 'joy.' The two words, compounded together in the title, mean 'a song of love' or 'a hymn to joy.' The joy here is, according to Messiaen, superhuman, overflowing, dazzling, and abandoned. The love is of the fatal persuasion, and irresistible; it is symbolized by Brangäne's love potion in the myth of Tristan and Isolde.[11]
Four cyclic themes pervade the vast, ten movement structure of the Turangalîla. The first, called by Messiaen the "statue theme," represents masculinity, heaviness, brutality, and terror. It appears near the beginning of the first movement on trombones and tuba. Its feminine counterpart, the "flower theme," is heard in the winds. The third cyclic theme is a culmination and combination of the first two. It is the thème d'amour, combining musical and symbolic aspects of both the statue theme and the flower theme into the union of Tristan and Isolde. It appears complete for the first time in the sixth movement, 'Jardin du sommeil d¹amour'. The last cyclic theme has no programmatic connotations. It is the so-called thème d'accords, a series of four sonorities. It associates itself with other motives, sometimes fragmentary and sometimes expanded.[12]
The sixth movement is the one that appears to be the most important, spiritually and emotionally, for Messiaen. The organic develoment of the movement is described surrealistically by Messiaen:
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Messiaen himself wrote and spoke very little of the autobiographical nature of this set of works. The goal here has been to show, with a little amateur psychoanalysis, what could possibly be the underlying motivation for the complex philosophical sentiments found in the Tristan-trilogy.
These works are, in essence, a simple statement about an emotional trauma that Messiaen was experiencing. In spite of that simplicity, or perhaps because of it, he must find a roundabout, convoluted method to express it. Humanity seems to find the expression of its basic emotional state very difficult. One could argue that the root of all human behaviour is the result of this simple desire to express one¹s self, although that particular argument is decidedly beyond the scope of this paper. The microcosm of this, however, is that Messiaen needed the vast soundscape of the Turangalîla, as well as the more modest worlds of Harawi and Cinq rechants, to cope with psychological issues from his war experience, and a troubling situation in his personal life.
Notes: