As you can see, Messiaen wasn't really fussed about short, catchy titles. And it gets better. Two birds are featured in this piece, written in 1964 to commemorate the dead of the two World Wars. The title of the third movement, featuring a Musician Wren, is:
L'heure vient ou les morts entredont la voix du fils de Dieu (The time comes when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God)
and the fourth movement, featuring a Calandra Lark, is perhaps his very best title:
Ils ressusciteront, gloriuex, avec un nom nouveau - dans le concert joyeux des etoiles et les acclamations de fils du ciel ... (They will rise again in glory, with a new name - and join the blissful concert of the stars and the acclamations of the Son of Heaven...)
So why choose Musician Wren and Calandra Lark? Neither are geographically related (the Wren is South American, and the Lark occurs from south-west Europe to the Middle East), nor do they share anything to link them to the dead of two World Wars. Messiaen's choice of birds in his music is often perplexing, but ultimately everything comes down to Catholicism, a way of interpreting birds through his unfaltering belief that everything in the Bible is the word of God, and therefore true without any need for questioning.
As I wrote earlier this year, when Villa Lobos used the song of a Musician Wren, it was based on a Brazilian folk legend. Messiaen's Musician Wren also taps into another folk legend, that you'll hear the bird's song just before you die - and in Et Expsecto this bird's song symbolises Christ waking the dead.
With the Calandra Lark, Messiaen uses it to symbolise "celestial joy and one of the four qualities of the glorious souls - the gift of agility."
The whole of this incredibly powerful piece is in the video below. The third movement starts at 12:20 and the fourth at 18:26. At one point time stands still during a huge pause - don't worry, your RM Nimbus home computer hasn't crashed.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment