Guest blog: a previously unheard work at the Proms
Famous for his excursions into the countryside to notate birdsong to incorporate in his music, French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-92) has been featured by NATURAL LIGHT many times. Nearly a quarter of a century after the composer’s death, Messiaen scholar Christopher Dingle describes how he has brought a new bird-song piece to light and prepared it for its premiere in London next week.
photo: Tony Willis http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Twenty-two years ago, as a keen young devotee of the music of Olivier Messiaen, I attended the posthumous UK premiere of his last completed orchestral work, the 11-movement Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà… (1987–91). The thought never remotely crossed my mind then that one day I might play a part in enabling an orchestral movement by the composer to receive its premiere. Even if it had, I would never have guessed then that the piece would have a link with Éclairs. I am thrilled, therefore, that Messiaen’s Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (oiseau Tui) - A bird from the tree of Life (Tui bird) will receive its world premiere at the BBC Proms on 7 August.
Un oiseau des arbres de Vie was originally intended as a movement for Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà... whose ninth movement is called Plusieurs oiseaux des arbres de Vie and whose third, which features his transcription of the Australian lyrebird, was originally to be called Un autre oiseau des arbres de Vie. The new movement is also a transcription of a single bird, the tui, a New Zealand species that Messiaen also evokes in Couleurs de la Cité céleste (1963) and the incomplete Concert à quatre (1991–92).
I found Oiseau Tui to have been fully completed in 3-stave score, Messiaen writing his customary ‘Bien’ along with indications of the desired orchestration. I have realised the orchestration following the sketches, a project generously supported by Birmingham Conservatoire’s French Music Hub and the Faculty of the Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University.
Un oiseau des arbres de Vie was originally intended as a movement for Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà... whose ninth movement is called Plusieurs oiseaux des arbres de Vie and whose third, which features his transcription of the Australian lyrebird, was originally to be called Un autre oiseau des arbres de Vie. The new movement is also a transcription of a single bird, the tui, a New Zealand species that Messiaen also evokes in Couleurs de la Cité céleste (1963) and the incomplete Concert à quatre (1991–92).
I found Oiseau Tui to have been fully completed in 3-stave score, Messiaen writing his customary ‘Bien’ along with indications of the desired orchestration. I have realised the orchestration following the sketches, a project generously supported by Birmingham Conservatoire’s French Music Hub and the Faculty of the Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University.
Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (Oiseau Tui) is likely to be the last mature orchestral statement to emerge from Messiaen’s archive. As such, it is fitting that the music consists entirely of his transcription of birdsong, for birds held a lifelong fascination of the composer. In the works of the 1930s and 1940s, this birdsong-based material was more sophisticated than anything found in earlier composers, with the possible exception of Ravel, but it was stylised, and rarely identified with a specific species. That changed in 1952, when Messiaen sought advice from ornithologists and started to learn how to identify what he was seeing and hearing. From that point on, every single one of his works contains transcribed birdsong, with hundreds of species from across the globe named in his scores. Wherever he went, Messiaen took his cahiers, musical notebooks, and would seek opportunities to transcribe local birds. As we have learnt since his death, he also transcribed numerous birds from recordings.
In his music, the sounds of the birds are filtered through Messiaen’s highly attuned, creative ear. Sometimes they are heard in a direct reflection of nature. This might be in portraits, as in the piano cycle Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956–58), or in the form of grand choruses, as in Réveil des oiseaux - Awakening of the birds - from 1953 or in the opera Saint François d’Assise (1975–83) where the saint preaches to the birds. Elsewhere, Messiaen creates artificial aviaries, bringing together species never heard together in the wild, as in Oiseaux exotiques (1955–56). He uses birdsong as ‘found material’, as symbols and metaphor and even, in the opera, as direct characters participating in the drama. However, it was only with the Lyrebird piece from Éclairs and Oiseau Tui that Messiaen wrote entire orchestral movements using nothing more than the sounds of a single bird.
So why was the tui omitted from Éclairs? We know that late in its gestation, Messiaen moved around several of the key movements of Éclairs, fundamentally altering the balance of the work in terms of both musical and theological structure. In the new layout of movements, Oiseau Tui lacked a clear purpose. However, Messiaen was clearly very attached to the movement as he resisted omitting it until a very late stage in the composition. Had he lived longer, I am certain it would have appeared in the context of another work. The bottom line is that, unlike many of the rediscoveries since his death, this piece finds Messiaen writing at the height of his powers. Moreover it was fully completed by him, just not orchestrated. While it is clearly by Messiaen, it also says something new. As such, it is a reminder that, for all he lived a long life, Messiaen still had much to say.
In his music, the sounds of the birds are filtered through Messiaen’s highly attuned, creative ear. Sometimes they are heard in a direct reflection of nature. This might be in portraits, as in the piano cycle Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956–58), or in the form of grand choruses, as in Réveil des oiseaux - Awakening of the birds - from 1953 or in the opera Saint François d’Assise (1975–83) where the saint preaches to the birds. Elsewhere, Messiaen creates artificial aviaries, bringing together species never heard together in the wild, as in Oiseaux exotiques (1955–56). He uses birdsong as ‘found material’, as symbols and metaphor and even, in the opera, as direct characters participating in the drama. However, it was only with the Lyrebird piece from Éclairs and Oiseau Tui that Messiaen wrote entire orchestral movements using nothing more than the sounds of a single bird.
So why was the tui omitted from Éclairs? We know that late in its gestation, Messiaen moved around several of the key movements of Éclairs, fundamentally altering the balance of the work in terms of both musical and theological structure. In the new layout of movements, Oiseau Tui lacked a clear purpose. However, Messiaen was clearly very attached to the movement as he resisted omitting it until a very late stage in the composition. Had he lived longer, I am certain it would have appeared in the context of another work. The bottom line is that, unlike many of the rediscoveries since his death, this piece finds Messiaen writing at the height of his powers. Moreover it was fully completed by him, just not orchestrated. While it is clearly by Messiaen, it also says something new. As such, it is a reminder that, for all he lived a long life, Messiaen still had much to say.
Christopher Dingle
Christopher Dingle writes about the gestation of Éclairs, including the re-structuring of the work in his book Messiaen's Final Works (Ashgate, 2013). The premiere of Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (Oiseau Tui) will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 on 7 August.
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