La Transfiguration

This work was performed at this year's Proms on Sunday 27th July.

Prom 14: La Transfiguration

Date Sunday 27 July 2008
Time 7.00pm - c8.50pm
Venue Royal Albert Hall
Tickets £6-£35 price band A or Prom for £5
Broadcast Broadcast at 7.30pm on BBC Four. Live on BBC Radio 3, and available as audio on demand for the following week.

Composed in the mid-1960s, La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ marked Olivier Messiaen's return to writing for voices after a break of 17 years.

The work is inspired by Christ's transfiguration as reported in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke: the moment when he is suffused with light, speaks with Moses and Elijah, and is named the Son of God.

This huge score, with seven instrumental soloists, a choir of 200 and a vast orchestra, is one of Messiaen's most imposing and powerful creations, a fervent expression of his passionately held Roman Catholic faith - and highlight of this year's Proms Messiaen centenary celebrations.

Messiaen La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (98 mins)
There will be no interval

Gerard Bouwhuis piano
Adam Walker flute
Julian Bliss clarinet
Sonia Wieder-Atherton cello
Colin Currie xylophone
Adrian Spillett marimba
Richard Benjafield vibraphone
Philharmonia Voices
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC National Chorus of Wales
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Thierry Fischer conductor

Olivier Messiaen (1908–92)
La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1965–9)

First Septenary
1. Récit évangélique [Gospel]
2. Configuratum corpori claritatis suae [To be like his glorified body]
3. Christus Jesus, splendor Patris [Jesus, reflection of the Father]
4. Récit évangélique [Gospel]
5. Quam dilecta tabernacula tua [How lovely are your tabernacles]
6. Candor est lucis aeternae [She is the reflection of eternal light]
7. Choral de la Sainte Montagne [Chorale of the holy mountain]

Second Septenary
8. Récit évangélique [Gospel]
9. Perfecte conscius illius perfectae generationis [Perfectly conscious of that perfect generation]
10. Adoptionem filiorum perfectam [The perfect adoption of sons]
11. Récit évangélique [Gospel]
12. Terribilis est locus este [How awesome is this place]
13. Tota Trinitas apparuit [The whole Trinity appears]
14. Choral de la lumière de Gloire [Chorale of the light of glory]

By the time Messiaen began work on La Transfiguration he was considered the Grand Old Man of French music, with each new work a major cultural event. In 1964–5, his ambitious Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, a state commission to commemorate the dead of both world wars, had been premiered in Chartres Cathedral in the presence of Charles de Gaulle. The newly spacious, bold gestures of that work were taken much further in the massive oratorio La Transfiguration, composed on a commission from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Messiaen scholar Nigel Simeone recently discovered that originally the work had only nine movements, lasting about an hour in total (equating to movements Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 8, 5, 11 and 13 in the final version). Having completed this sketch in 1966, Messiaen wrote to the Gulbenkians asking for more time, commenting that ‘it lacks a development in the centre’ – this became the ninth movement – and adding four further movements to give greater variety of mood and character. The resulting 14 movements were grouped into two sets of seven or ‘septénaires’.

The work includes a substantial piano solo part, originally written for the composer’s wife Yvonne Loriod, which comments upon the musical narrative with flamboyant cadenzas based upon birdsong. Messiaen was a keen ornithologist and this oratorio features many of his vividly characterised transcriptions of varied birdsongs from several continents, assigned to both piano and numerous other instruments. Around this time Mstislav Rostropovich had been asking Messiaen for a cello concerto, so he also incorporated a major solo cello part to provide contrastingly lyrical melodic themes. The other soloists are less prominent than either piano or cello: flute and clarinet solos have the occasional decorative line, and a group of keyed percussion instruments – xylorimba, vibraphone and marimba – make energetic sorties into birdsong-derived toccatas with brilliant flourishes of sonority. And, from time to time, all seven soloists combine in multiple cadenzas.

The large mixed choir sings a Latin text compiled by Messiaen from a variety of sources: the Bible, excerpts from the Mass, and extracts from the Catholic theologian St Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologica. The result is a massive fresco in sound and word attempting to evoke the dazzling, unimaginable radiance of Christ’s Transfiguration. It says much for the colours of Messiaen’s music that by the end we may feel he has succeeded in doing just that. La Transfiguration remained, incidentally, one of the works of which the composer himself was most fond.

First Septenary
1 Gospel
A ritualistic introduction on gongs and tam-tams precedes a short passage of chant setting works from the Gospel of St Matthew, with a focus upon the crucial word ‘transfiguratus’.

2 To be like his glorified body
A leaping figure on the orchestra – evoking an African bird, the Great Indicator – acts as refrain through this movement. In between, the chorus sings lush harmonic settings of Biblical fragments (including the Wisdom of Solomon), interspersed with reflective piano solos. The key of E major is established as the home base of the work.

3 Jesus, reflection of the Father
A dramatic movement, depicting the light of the Transfiguration as the aural equivalent of a flash of lightning. Brief choral and orchestral fragments gradually coalesce towards a culminating moment of revelatory intensity, when lightning palpably appears to strike.

4 Gospel
Further choral chant narrates the appearance of Old Testament figures Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration.

5 How lovely are your tabernacles
This functions as the slow movement of the oratorio (incidentally setting the same text Brahms used so memorably in his German Requiem). The centre of the movement is a set of variations upon the gentle melody introduced by the cello. The movement is framed by one of Messiaen’s finest inspirations – above what he called a ‘smooth carpet’ of sound from humming choir and strings, the piano floats delicate, high, repeated chords evoking the midnight song of the nightingale.

6 She is the reflection of eternal light
As the sopranos present a simple melodic chant, they are nearly obliterated by a medley of some 20 different birdsongs, from all over the world, on winds, strings and keyed percussion. The movement ends as abruptly as it began.

7 Chorale of the holy mountain
A hushed, serene sequence of chords for chorus and orchestra centring around the home key of E major.

Second Septenary
8 Gospel
The chorus narrates the appearance of a bright cloud around Christ, depicted by dense sliding tones on the strings (a homage by Messiaen to one of his favorite pupils, Iannis Xenakis).

9 Perfectly conscious of that perfect generation
A substantial movement in two similar halves. Each opens with an orchestral tumult featuring high, dense chords and clashing cymbals, followed by low notes on trombones and choral basses evoking the sounds of Tibetan ritual. Both halves resolve on to a long, affirmative melody for choir and orchestra with no harmony at all.

10 The perfect adoption of sons
A miniature cello concerto, varying a short melodic figure heard near the start. Two-thirds of the way through, the movement suddenly moves to a sequence of luminous Alleluias sung by the chorus, against a shimmering orchestral accompaniment.

11 Gospel
A final passage of biblical narrative.

12 How awesome is this place
If No. 5 is the slow movement of La Transfiguration, this delirious movement is its scherzo. Despite the biblical setting of the narrative, the birdsong evokes the French Alps, with dramatic calls across the musical landscape alternating with crashing images of mountain abysses in low brass and percussion. A choral-orchestral rampage in 20 simultaneous parts leads to a final outburst, the loudest passage in the entire work.

13 The whole Trinity appears
This was the original final movement and is also the longest. It brings the music back to E major, and affirms the presence of the Holy Trinity in the Transfiguration. After a long series of unison melodies performed by sopranos, with sharp brass punctuations, the music focuses on a repeated chorale about the Trinity, separated by ecstatic piano solos on the song of the bobolink.

14 Chorale of the light of glory
This last movement parallels No. 7: it is likewise entirely harmonic, though as loud as the other was quiet – a passionate hymn of praise that lands the music safely and soundly in glorious E major. As Messiaen said: ‘Glory dwells in Eternity.’

Note © Julian Anderson
Julian Anderson was Professor of Composition at Harvard University (2004–7) and is currently Senior Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. His second BBC Proms commission, 'Heaven is Shy of Earth', was performed at the Proms in 2006.

Biography

Olivier Messiaen (IPA: [mɛsjɑ̃]; December 10, 1908 – April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and numbered Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré among his teachers. He was appointed organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris in 1931, a post he held until his death. On the fall of France in 1940 Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, and while incarcerated he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the end of time") for the four available instruments, piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners to an audience of inmates and prison guards. Messiaen was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941, and professor of composition in 1966 at the Paris Conservatoire, positions he held until his retirement in 1978. His many distinguished pupils included Pierre Boulez, Yvonne Loriod (who later became Messiaen's second wife), Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis and George Benjamin.

Messiaen's music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources), and is harmonically and melodically based on modes of limited transposition, which were Messiaen's own innovation. Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the marvellous aspects of the faith", drawing on his unshakeable Roman Catholicism. He travelled widely, and he wrote works inspired by such diverse influences as Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah, and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Messiaen experienced a mild form of synaesthesia manifested as a perception of colours when he heard certain harmonies, particularly harmonies built from his modes, and he used combinations of these colours in his compositions. For a short period Messiaen experimented with the parametrization associated with "total serialism", in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many exotic musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan (tuned percussion often features prominently in his orchestral works), and he also championed the ondes Martenot.

Messiaen found birdsong fascinating; he believed birds to be the greatest musicians and considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer. He notated birdsongs worldwide, and he incorporated birdsong transcriptions into a majority of his music. His innovative use of colour, his personal conception of the relationship between time and music, his use of birdsong, and his intent to express profound religious ideas, all combine to make it almost impossible to mistake a composition by Messiaen for the work of any other western composer.