Messiaen - La Fauvette des Jardins (The Garden Warbler)

I could be wrong here, but the piano probably isn't the first instrument a composer would think of using when trying to write music based on transcribed birdsong - flute, clarinet, oboe, violin, they're the usual suspects. But for Messiaen, the piano was the main instrument in a huge chunk of the bird-music that he wrote, and to be honest, if you listen to bird song really carefully, then many birds have a quality to their songs that is more percussive than it is lyrical, so Messiaen was probably right going for the piano.

There's a slightly curious thing that when he wrote for piano with orchestra he would include birds from all over the world - like in Exotic Birds and other pieces from the 60s, 70s and 80s. But when he wrote for just solo piano, the selection of birds are always transcribed from his home country. Even though he had such a profound understanding of what a piano could do and how to write for one with such incredible imagination, he nonetheless restricted his choice of birds to the familiar. I have no idea why that is, but it does strike me as being a bit strange.

To really understand Messiaen, birds and the piano, then you have to place his second wife Yvonne Loriod (1924-2010) at the centre of everything he did from the very second that he met her in May 1941. She's regarded without question as one of the greatest pianists of her generation, especially when it came to playing new music. Messiaen was awestruck by what she could do on a piano, and his piano music is as much about writing for her strengths and pushing her technical and musical abilities even further, as it is about writing about birds. There's a nice bit of quirky birdy coincidence here as well, with Loriot being the French name for a Golden Oriole.

The major piece of bird-music that Messiaen wrote for Loriod is the Catalogue of Birds, about three hours of solo piano music depicting 77 different species of birds transcribed throughout France. At some point I'm going to have to have a go at tackling that before this blog dies at the end of the year, but for now I'm avoiding it. It's a combination of laziness and not knowing quite where to start with it.

So here instead is 34 minutes of music about a Garden Warbler (La Fauvette des Jardins), written in 1970 for Loriod, and depicting a Garden Warbler and other birds singing throughout a day from 4am-11pm in late June/early July at Lake Laffrey near Grenoble. Not only the birds, but Messiaen also puts in the landscape, sunlight and the changing colour of the surface of the lake.

These are all the birds in the piece: Garden Warbler, Nightingale, Wren, Quail, Blackbird, Green Woodpecker, Chaffinch, Skylark, Great Reed Warbler, Golden Oriole, Carrion Crow, Red-backed Shrike, Swallow, Black Kite, Yellowhammer, Goldfinch, Blackcap & Tawny Owl. Some are quite obvious to pick out - like the yaffling Green Woodpecker, bullying aggressive rhythmic repetition of Great Reed Warbler and little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheeeeeeeese Yellowhammer - but some others... well, you'll have to use your imagination!

*