CMAA Winter Chant Intensive

Ann Labounsky

Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, edited by Jennifer Donelson and Stephen Schloesser. Church Music Association of America, P.O. Box 4344, Roswell, NM 88202 (musicasacra.com), 2014, $40.00, ISBN 978-0-9916452-0-6, 456 pages.

Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen by Stephen Schloesser. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2014, $40.00, ISBN 978-0-8028-0762-5, 572 pages.

 

These two new books present the results of academic research on Charles Tournemire and on the life and works of Olivier Messiaen. Through the efforts of Jennifer Donelson, the guiding light behind the academic outreach of the Church Music Association of America and the managing editor of Sacred Music (the official publication of the CMAA), there have been two conferences on Tournemire, the first in Miami in 2011 and the second in Pittsburgh in 2012. Mystic Modern is a reproduction of the papers given at the Miami and Pittsburgh conferences. Stephen Schloesser, author of Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen, is a Jesuit priest and professor of history at Loyola University, Chicago, and also the author of Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933. 

Mystic Modern was published in the summer of 2014 in time for the annual CMAA Colloquium in Indianapolis. Schloesser’s Messiaen book was also published in July 2014, coinciding with the American Guild of Organists’ national convention in Boston. Beyond the coincidence in publication dates, what is remarkable about the two books is the relationship between Tournemire and Messiaen. Tournemire influenced Messiaen to a much greater extent than is normally assumed; but Messiaen eclipsed his mentor by gaining greater fame during his lifetime. Book after book has been written about Messiaen, while Tournemire has remained in relative obscurity until fairly recently.

A first glance at both of these books reveals that there is much more to understand about Charles Tournemire and Olivier Messiaen than one can know only through a study of their musical scores. This “much more” element encompasses knowledge of the personal lives of the two men and the personal relationship between them. It also focuses on how history, culture, theology, literature, symbolism, and aesthetics affected them both. Mystic Modern and Visions of Amen are a must read not only for scholars or devotees of Tournemire and Messiaen, but for those interested in liturgy, music, and theology. Fortunately both books can be read in small sections, slowly and with the help of excellent indices. In the case of Visions of Amen, Messiaen’s important duo-piano work from 1943, a link to an audio recording of a live performance is included in the text.

Tournemire was certainly a modern composer who influenced Messiaen, Langlais, and many other 20th-century French composers. The extent of his “modernism” led many to dismiss his music as obtuse, and his mysticism certainly was another reason that many dismissed his music as unapproachable. Stephen Schloesser explains Tournemire’s “modernism” in his 2005 book, Jazz Age Catholicism:

Tournemire imagined the musical devices representing ‘passion’—chromaticism, polytonalism, and the perceived resulting ‘dissonance’—as the most appropriate material carriers of the ‘eternal’ and unchanging Latin forms. Images of dress abounded in ancient chants were imagined to be ‘clothed’ in ‘modern’ musical fashions.¹

The main Tournemire scholarship consists of a doctoral dissertation by Ruth Sisson, a picture book of photos by Ianco Pascal, and the notated catalogue of his works by Joël-Marie Fauquet from 1979.² Stephen Schloesser devotes a large part of Jazz Age Catholicism to the study of Tournemire. Lastly, Marie-Louise Langlais has published on the Internet portions of Tournemire’s Memoires that specifically address music (http://ml-langlais.com/Tournemire). The French journal L’Orgue is in the process of issuing the complete Tournemire Memoires. The editors of Mystic Modern had access to the complete version and quoted extensively from it in their essays, The Composer as Commentator: Music and Text in Tournemire’s Symbolist Method and How does Music Speak of God.

Charles Tournemire (1877–1939) died in the same year that I was born, and perhaps for this coincidence, I felt a special connection to this man. My first exposure to the “mystic modern” Tournemire was during the 1950s, in hearing my first organ teacher Paul Sifler play some of Tournemire’s music on several recitals. I remember the music sounded strange and exotic, like the music of Olivier Messiaen that Sifler played, which I, as a teenager, did not understand. It was later, as a pupil of Jean Langlais in Paris during the early 1960s, that I came to know Tournemire’s music in a different way. Langlais often played Tournemire’s music at Sainte-Clotilde on the organ that Tournemire knew and loved and often played the Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani from the Sept Paroles of Tournemire. This blind teacher taught me the first movement and the last movement (Consummatum est) at Sainte-Clotilde during late Wednesday evenings in a dimly lit, empty church with the incomparable sounds of the Cavaillé-Coll organ. And he spoke about Tournemire as someone he knew well—little things about how he taught, how his personality was particularly quirky and unpredictable. He encouraged me to meet Tournemire’s second wife, Mme. Alice Tournemire, in her apartment—the apartment where her late husband had lived and taught. She read portions of his Memoires regarding the Symphonie-Choral, which I was planning to perform at Sainte-Clotilde. The more I played and heard Tournemire’s music, the more fascinated I became with it. His music was not instantly appealing; rather, it permeated my being slowly and compellingly.

 

Mystic Modern

The contents of Mystic Modern are divided into three sections, which develop the theme of Tournemire’s legacy as liturgical commentator, music inventor, and littéraire. In the preface, “Tournemire the Liturgical Commentator,” Donelson discusses Tournemire’s role as organist in the Roman Catholic Church and especially his place in the long line of composers incorporating Gregorian chant into both their composed works and their improvisations. 

 

The liturgical commentator

“The Organ as Liturgical Commentator—Some Thoughts, Magisterial and Otherwise” by Monsignor Andrew R. Wadsworth, begins with Wadsworth’s recollections of Messiaen’s improvisations during a Low Mass at La Trinité and then discusses the liturgical norms with an historical overview of the documents pertaining to them. He implores organists to follow Tournemire’s example in L’Orgue mystique: to improvise on the chants proper to each Sunday’s liturgy.

“Joseph Bonnet as a Catalyst in the Early-Twentieth-Century Gregorian Chant Revival,” by Susan Treacy, explains Bonnet’s decisive role in encouraging Tournemire to write L’Orgue mystique. Through explanations of Bonnet’s work as a liturgical organist in churches where he served, Treacy explains why Bonnet did not write any chant-based organ music. Although Bonnet was an abbot in the Benedictine order and was devoted to the propagation of Gregorian chant, he made a distinct difference between his published secular pieces for recital use and his improvised chant-based pieces for the liturgy. As a pupil of Charles Tournemire and fellow native of Bordeaux, Bonnet’s relationships with Dom Mocquereau and Justine Ward were also important in the founding of the Gregorian Institute. Even Bonnet’s church wedding, with a schola from the Gregorian Institute and with Tournemire as one of the organists, reflected his devotion to the propagation of Gregorian chant.

In “Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique and its Place in the Legacy of the Organ Mass,” Edward Schaefer gives an exhaustive summary of the development of the organ Mass, its specific usage in various countries, and the ecclesiastical documents governing organ Masses. A number of charts give illustrations of the use of the organ at the various parts of the Mass. There is a long list of the ecclesiastical ceremonials governing the use of music in the Mass and a chronological list of organ settings of the Mass. Schaefer concludes that with the renewed interest and practice of the Extraordinary form of the Mass, the practical use of Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique is possible. This was demonstrated during the first Tournemire symposium. Some of the material is based on Schaefer’s dissertation from Catholic University.³

“Liturgy and Gregorian Chant in L’Orgue mystique of Charles Tournemire,” by Robert Sutherland Lord, was originally published in 1984 in The Organ Yearbook, edited by Peter Williams. The seminal importance of this article lies in Lord’s identification of all the chants from L’Orgue mystique and their origin, Tournemire’s original plan for the composition of the work, and the ways in which the composer departed from his plan in the choice of chants. The chants from the Liber Antiphonarius (Solesmes, 1897) were the sources of most of the chants that Tournemire used for the Elevation. This volume of chant is out of print, but Lord obtained a copy from the former assistant organist at Notre Dame, Paris, Pierre Moreau. Lord includes copies of these chants in the article.

In “The Twentieth-Century Franco-Belgian Art of Improvisation: Marcel Dupré, Charles Tournemire, and Flor Peeters,” Ronald Prowse discusses differences in techniques between written compositions and improvisations in the works of Dupré, Tournemire, and Flor Peeters and cites musical examples from the chant Ave Maris Stella. Using works by those three composers, Prowse deftly compares the techniques that all three of them used in treating the same chant. He often cites his own experiences studying improvisation with Pierre Toucheque, who had been a pupil of Peeters. He often quotes Tournemire, from his book on improvisation, Précis d’exécution, de registration et d’improvisation à l’orgue, stating that a master improviser creates illusions.⁴ The issue of the difference between written composition and improvisation echoes throughout this collection of essays and remains in some ways an unanswered question.

 

The musical inventor

Prowse’s essay leads logically into the second section, “Tournemire the Musical Inventor,” which deals with Tournemire’s musical language, including his choice and sense of tempo—as well as his compositional process and impact, not merely on the Sainte-Clotilde school, but on modern French organ repertoire in general. 

In his essay “Performance Practice for the Organ Music of Charles Tournemire,” Timothy Tikker describes his lessons with Langlais and Langlais’s reports of his study with Tournemire. Tikker’s account matched what I had learned from Langlais, including the story of Langlais’s meeting with Tournemire and the invitation to become the latter’s successor at Sainte-Clotilde. The two works Tikker analyzes in detail regarding interpretation (No. 7 from L’Orgue mystique, Epiphania Domini, and Mulier, ecce filius tuus, Ecce Mater tua, from Sept Chorals-Poèmes, op. 67) were pieces that I also had studied with Langlais, and I agree with his conclusions. Tikker gives detailed graphs with measure numbers indicated and, in some places, metronome markings. Of particular interest in this essay is Tikker’s extensive discussion of the Sainte-Clotilde organ. Tournemire’s specific registrations in L’Orgue mystique include the use of sub couplers and the term petites mixtures, which indicates soft mutation stops such as gamba with a nazard. It is interesting to note that Tournemire played all of L’Orgue mystique on his nine-stop house organ, regrettably never at Sainte-Clotilde. Tikker quotes this specification from Tournemire’s Précis. One of Tikker’s particularly insightful points is his comparison of German Romantic organs and their influence on the compositions of Reger and Karg-Elert, which used the full organ in the lower registers, and Tournemire’s use of full organ that was based on the “treble-ascendant voicing for its success.”⁵

“Catalogue of Charles Tournemire’s ‘Brouillon’ [Rough Sketches] for L’Orgue mystique BNF, Mus., Ms. 19929,” by Robert Sutherland Lord, is the result of Lord’s studying the 1,282 pages of rough sketches of Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique found in the Bibliothèque Nationale after Lord had written an extensive article on this seminal work of Tournemire. From these sketches Lord was able to determine the exact date of each office and how Tournemire departed from his original plan. Lord’s conclusion stated: 

 

After having completed the manuscript catalogue, we can verify that the “Rough Sketches” document—in sharp contrast to the “Plan” considered in my 1984 study—is far more than a mere framework for L’Orgue mystique. The “Rough Sketches” provide the harmonies, the rhythms, and the paraphrases for forty-two of the fifty-one offices. The BNF Ms. 19929 remains the only evidence we have of Tournemire’s musical preparation for any organ work he composed.⁶

From the harmonic and rhythmic details of Tournemire’s plan for L’Orgue mystique, Bogusław Raba’s article, “Creating a Mystical Musical Eschatology: Diatonic and Chromatic Dialectic in Charles Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique” continues the discussion of the conflict between the diatonic and chromatic dialectic in Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique. Raba uses the term dialectic as follows: 

 

Tournemire’s musical poetics in L’Orgue mystique are constructed by means of a dialectical process of diatonic and chromatic textures. This procedure (along with its symbolic functions) seems to be inherited from the Romantic Liszt-Franck tradition and is used in the service of a large narrative formal structure.⁷

Raba equates diatonicism with “eternal peace” and chromaticism with emotional “passion.” For Raba, the melding of these two elements creates pandiatonic textures, which he believes are Tournemire’s legacy to Messiaen. Finally, Raba confesses that Tournemire’s style goes beyond any structural system, and he calls this a “mystical musical eschatology.” Raba makes interesting parallels between Tournemire’s use of dissonance and that of Scriabin and earlier composers such as Frescobaldi in the Elevations from his organ Masses.

Raba’s observations on dissonance from the numinous leads into the next essay, “From the ‘Triomphe de l’Art Modal’ to The Embrace of Fire: Charles Tournemire’s Gregorian Chant Legacy, Received and Refracted by Naji Hakim” by Crista Miller. Miller’s article locates Middle Eastern elements and Arabic improvisation (taqasim) present in Hakim’s organ works with common elements with Tournemire’s Sitio (I thirst) from the Sept Paroles and Hakim’s Embrace of Fire. Miller compares these techniques with Langlais’s Soleil du Soir. She also probes the creative process of these composers. Were they aware of the techniques that they were using? In interviews with Hakim, she explains that Hakim claimed that his process was “subconscious”—in other words, he was not consciously aware that he was using a particular technique, so much was it a part of his psyche.

I had also asked this question regarding synthetic and octatonic scales with both Langlais and Daniel Lesur, both of whom reported that they were unaware that they were using these scales. The question of awareness is one that pervades our study of these composers’ works and is especially relevant to their improvisations. Miller also examines the specialized use of the Vox humana in works by Tournemire, Langlais, and Hakim.

Miller and Vincent E. Rone both discuss the use of octatonic and synthetic scales in their complementary writings. Rone’s essay “From Tournemire to Vatican II: Harmonic Symmetry as Twentieth-Century French Catholic Musical Mysticism, 1928–1970” focuses on the means by which Tournemire, Duruflé, and Langlais expressed Catholic musical mysticism and, in the case of the two younger composers, the ways in which they did so in response to their frustrations during the period of the Vatican II council. Rone concentrates on the use of octatonic and whole-tone scale patterns in the three composers’ music; he uses examples from the final pieces in Tournemire’s Nativitas and Resurrectionis offices. As examples of post-Vatican II disillusionment, Rone cites Duruflé’s Messe ‘Cum Jubilo’ and Langlais’s Imploration pour la croyance, referring to the former as privileging the Ordinary’s “transcendent and eschatological imagery through harmonic symmetry and stasis, combining a synthetic scale with subtle linear unfolding of two whole-tone collections, third-related, and bitonal harmonies.”⁸ In the latter, however, the expression is pure anger. Rone refers to Ruth Sisson’s dissertation and the discussion of the “Tournemire chord,” which employs a C#-major triad with a G-major 6/3 chord over it. The musical examples are particularly helpful to the reader in understanding these compositional and aesthetic concepts. 

 

The littОraire

The final section, “Tournemire the Littéraire,” deals with the literary aspect of Tournemire’s music and dwells on the relationship of the symbolic character of Tourmemire’s musical “commentaries” (and the legacy of this role in Messiaen’s oeuvre). It also includes Charles Tournemire’s obtuse and convoluted language in his biography of Franck. Finally, it analyzes Tournemire and Messiaen’s shared inspiration, drawn from Ernest Hello’s writings and Tournemire’s eschatological reading of history. The editors took great care with the ordering of the essays to provide cohesion to the book, and the end of each essay includes a summary. 

Stephen Schloesser’s first essay, “The Composer as Commentator: Music and Text in Tournemire’s Symbolist Method,” shows the importance of the texts in Dom Guéranger’s L’Année liturgique to Tournemire. So what then is this symbolist method? Schloesser describes it simply as “ . . . an essential relationship between a work and the literary text upon which it is based.”⁹ And he further states: 

 

For the symbolists, realism, naturalism, and positivism evacuated human existence of any mystery, fantasy, imagination, or dream world. In opposition to the positivists’ exclusive privileging of the visible, Symbolists gave pride of place to the invisible.¹⁰

 

As has been stated, Schloesser’s research on Tournemire was first published in Jazz Age Catholicism (2005). As a historian with appealing linguistic, writing, and musical skills, Schloesser has a gift of getting behind the events he is describing and going to the heart of their meaning. Here Schloesser shows how the literary texts in Guéranger’s L’Année liturgique directly inspired L’Orgue mystique. Schloesser hand-copied one example from Guéranger’s work—the Introit for the Feast of the Assumption—to demonstrate this important link between the text and the music. (It is possible to study the entire Guéranger work hand in hand with L’Orgue mystique and easily follow the plan for the entire work.) The important point is that the music is a commentary or a paraphrase of the linguistic text. All the tone painting and symbols that Tournemire uses are related to the texts, and it is important to study the texts first. Lest there be any confusion, Schloesser quotes Tournemire’s preface, which clearly states: “ . . . plainchant is, in sum, freely paraphrased for each piece in the flow of the works forming this collection.”¹¹ 

Schloesser then contrasts Messiaen’s straightforward use of textual references in all his organ works and explains how Messiaen was indebted to Tournemire for this example. Schloesser subsequently refers to numerous recital programs of Tournemire in which the term paraphrase is used in the program. The notion of symbolism, for Schloesser, comes from Tournemire’s models, Claude Debussy and Richard Wagner. Evidence of Tournemire’s deep involvement in the symbolist movement is carefully presented in the next six pages. Schloesser documents examples of Tournemire’s extensive use of the Wagnerian style of leitmotif, with the chant Ego Dormivi, the antiphon from Holy Saturday based on Psalm 3, used in ten of the L’Orgue mystique offices. Schloesser goes beyond what others have previously explained regarding Tournemire’s use of this leitmotif, relating the composer’s decision both to personal and professional circumstances. Schloesser refers to other music programs and cites the texts that Tournemire used to plan those programs. Particularly moving is the intent behind his concert at the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in 1932, which opened with a tribute to Leon Boëllmann, the deceased organist of the church. The program is a good example of Tournemire’s manner of presenting an organ recital; it included three selections from L’Orgue mystique with explanations of the importance of the texts behind them. Tournemire’s choice of works by other composers showed his sense of his place in history alongside Bonnet, a musicologist (Bonnet was editor of the multi-volume set of Historical Organ-Recitals), a symbolist, and a truly modern composer. Also touching was Schloesser’s description of the reasons for Tournemire’s choice of themes for the last office of this great work and his four-year struggle to complete it. It is clear in studying Schloesser’s excellent essay that any serious student of L’Orgue mystique must become intimately acquainted with Guéranger’s 15-volume pivotal work, which is available in several English translations.

Again, acknowledging the superb manner in which this book is organized, it is appropriate that Elizabeth McLain’s Messiaen-oriented essay “Messiaen’s L’Ascension: Musical Illumination of Spiritual Texts After the Model of Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique” follows that of Schloesser, whose discussion of Messiaen’s early life and influences in Visions of Amen is also covered in this review. McLain’s main point is that Tournemire’s use of commentaries on sacred texts in his compositions profoundly influenced Messiaen, but that unlike Tournemire, Messiaen’s quest was to take music inspired by sacred texts out of the church and into the concert hall. McLain’s essay explains that this early opus of Messiaen had its birth as an orchestral work, premiered in Paris before he had arranged it for organ. McLain gives many musical examples from the orchestral version of the work and clear structural and harmonic analyses of the entire work.

“Desperately Seeking Franck: Tournemire and D’Indy as Biographers” by R. J. Stove is the shortest of all the essays, but it is a fascinating comparison between Tournemire and D’Indy’s biographies of Franck. Anyone who has read any of Tournemire’s own writings can certainly agree with Stove’s description of Tournemire’s writing style as an “exotic jungle.” And further, “His high-flown French is a burden to imitate in any other language, let alone a language which lays as much stress on understatement, irony, and clarity as modern English usually does.”¹² Stove’s critical assessment of the two biographers, themselves students of Franck, explains much about the differences in their personalities and a possible jealousy on the part of Tournemire toward D’Indy, on account of the differences in the successes of their respective careers and their relationship to Franck. D’Indy had known Franck for two decades, while Tournemire had known him for only two years.

In her essay, “How Does Music Speak of God? A Dialogue of Ideas between Messiaen, Tournemire, and Hello,” Jennifer Donelson compares in great depth the approaches to addressing God through music in the writings of Tournemire, Messiaen, and the mystic writer from Brittany, Ernest Hello (1828–1885). She explains how the writings of Hello, particularly his 1872 work L’Homme: La Vie—La Science—L’Art, “encapsulates an understanding that was friendly to the Symbolist and anti-positivist tendencies of both composers.”¹³ Hello’s influences on Tournemire are found in Tournemire’s writings, particularly in his unpublished memoirs and correspondence between the two composers. Donelson explains with great care the differences in philosophy between Messiaen, seeking a perfect expression of the Catholic faith, and that of Tournemire. In conclusion she sums up the answer to the title of her essay in quoting Hello:

In a “clear vision of the role of the Catholic faith in art and culture, Hello saw spiritual realities as more real than material (indeed, as their source) and concluded that, for art to be truly beautiful or ‘sincere,’ the artist must have a clear vision of the world as redeemed by God with the Incarnate Christ at the center of God’s plan for salvation.”¹⁴

Peter Bannister’s essay, “Charles Tournemire and the ‘Bureau of Eschatology’” explains the meaning of eschatology in the historical context of the first half of the twentieth century in France. Bannister quotes frequently from the 20th-century Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. The author’s reference to “Bureau of Eschatology” refers to Balthasar’s quote from Troeltsch’s dictum, “The bureau of eschatology is usually closed,” explaining that “this was true enough of the liberalism of the nineteenth century, but since the turn of the century the office has been working overtime.”¹⁵ Bannister explains the notion of life as a progression from darkness to light, often quoting from Léon Bloy, the French agnostic who converted to a strict form of Roman Catholicism, and Tournemire’s unpublished memoirs, and symphonies. Bannister laments the paucity of writings about Tournemire, citing the lack of primary source material. Bannister does not mention that this problem will soon be rectified; a forthcoming issue of the French review L’Orgue will be devoted to the difficult and highly secretive diary of Tournemire, Memoires.

I, for one, am not as pessimistic as Bannister when he states: “The likelihood is that for years to come, Tournemire will sadly continue to be regarded as an obscure figure outside the (dwindling) organ world . . . ”¹⁶ The two Tournemire conferences and these essays belie his conclusion. Consider that such composers as Bach, Mendelssohn, Rheinberger, and Langlais were less appreciated during their lifetimes than after their deaths, and certainly today they are not considered as “obscure figures.” 

Tennille Shuster’s cover, a surrealistic picture of the front of the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde with dramatic reddish-brown clouds in the background, reflects the book’s mystical nature. The typeface and illustrations are exquisitely reproduced. 

Drs. Donelson and Schloesser are to be commended on the physical beauty of the book and the depth of scholarship that the book represents.

 

Visions of Amen

Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen is an esoteric, extremely difficult seven-movement work for two pianists at two separate pianos, and its difficulty lies both in its technical demands (requiring extremes in dynamic range and tessitura) and in its obscure symbolism (which deals with astrology, theology, angels, saints, and birds). In the biographical aspect of this latest book on the early life of Messiaen, Stephen Schloesser develops the themes surrounding the composer’s connections with the mystic Charles Tournemire. 

The driving force behind the book came from Schloesser’s collaboration with pianists Hyesook Kim (Calvin College) and Stéphane Lemelin (University of Ottawa), with whom Schloesser received a $5,000 grant from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship for a project entitled “Olivier Messiaen’s Religious Perspective and Performance of Visions of l’Amen.” In 2004–2005 the two pianists performed the work at a number of locations in the U.S. and Canada, with Schloesser giving lecture notes on the work and Messiaen’s life. Their original plan was to produce a compact disc with liner notes written by Schloesser. The Messiaen centennial in 2008, however, yielded a plethora of new material for Schloesser, and the project subsequently grew into the present book format, with a link to the audio recording on the Internet. A detailed analysis of the work with timings from the recording makes it possible to follow the work without the score.

The title of the book leads one to believe that Schloesser focuses on the early life and music of this composer. But the extent and depth of the material goes far beyond a discussion of Messiaen’s early years. Schloesser examines Messiaen’s entire life, giving explanations of literary, symbolist, surrealist, mystical, and theological forces that inspired his compositions. In many of Messiaen’s biographies and his own writings, the writers Paul Éluard, Dom Columba Marmion, and Ernest Hello are mentioned, but Schloesser goes farther with extensive quotations from these authors, showing their influence on Messiaen’s music. For example, in the discussion of Messiaen’s Nativity of the Lord (1935), Messiaen frequently quotes Marmion’s book Christ in His Mysteries:

 

But the main reason for keeping alive such feelings within us is our status as children of God. The Divine Sonship of the Father’s only-begotten is of the essence and eternal. But, in an infinitely free act of love, the Father has willed to add a sonship, a childship, of grace.¹⁷ 

Schloesser divides the book into four sections. The first, dealing with Messiaen’s parents, Pierre Messiaen and Cécile Sauvage, covers 1883–1930. This section can be read by itself without reference to Messiaen’s compositions as an introduction to the psychological underpinnings of his personality. Part two, “Budding Rhythmician, Surrealist Composer, Mystical Commentator: 1927–1932,” continues this psychological approach and discusses in some detail his earliest works. The third part, “Theological Order, Glorified Bodies, Apocalyptic Epoch, 1932–1943,” delves into a detailed description and analysis of Visions of Amen. For musicians, a study of Messiaen’s score is helpful, but even without the score, Schloesser gives a detailed analysis of each movement, with timings from the recording in an appendix. Part four, “Legacy, 1943–1992,” includes a discussion of Messiaen’s last work: Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum. Throughout the book, Schloesser’s use of extensive footnotes on the same page as the text is helpful. The appendix of scriptural references is logical and welcomed.

The recording by pianists Kim and Lemelin is of high quality, with a wide range of dynamics and tessituras. This is a work that Messiaen and his second wife Yvonne Loriod played together frequently, and it is dedicated to her. Much of Messiaen’s piano music is extremely difficult technically and demands the utmost in coordination between the two performers here on two pianos. One could wish that a compact disc had been included with the book, so that one could listen to the performance without using a computer.

But even if the reader has no interest in this difficult piano work, composed during the darkest period of World War II when Paris was occupied by the Nazis, there is more than enough material about Messiaen’s personal life and that of his parents to engage the reader. It is well known that Messiaen’s mother was a poetesse; the drama of her life and the struggles she endured with her husband Pierre is explained in great detail. In the introduction, Schloesser explains his approach as a “history of emotion.” In this age of a “confessional” approach to biography, it is impressive how Schloesser combines very personal material with scholarly writing.

Visions of Amen can be read on two levels: first, theological—the birth of creation, the passion of Christ, angels, saints, birdsong, judgment; and second, as a personal statement of Messiaen’s love for Yvonne Loriod. In general, “Amen” signifies “So be it,” but for Messiaen and other French composers, it was also a code name for an expression of love. This code reference using his second mode of limited transposition is also found frequently in Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony and throughout Messiaen’s oeuvre. 

 

Notes

1. Stephen Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 281.

2. Ruth Sisson, “The Symphonic Organ Works of Charles Arnould Tournemire” (Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State University, 1984). Ianco Pascal, Charles Tournemire ou le mythe de Tristan (Geneva, Editions Papillon, 2001). Pascal knew Madame Odile Weber, the niece of Tournemire’s second wife Alice Tournemire, who shared many of her photographs with him. Joël Marie Fauquet, Catalogue de l’œuvre de Charles Tournemire (Geneva, Minkoff, 1979).

3. Edward Schaefer, “The Relationship Between the Liturgy of the Roman Rite and the Italian Organ Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1985).

4. Charles Tournemire, Précis d’exécution, de registration et d’improvisation à l’orgue (Paris, LeMoine, 1936).

5. Tikker, in Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, edited by Jennifer Donelson and Stephen Schloesser (Church Music Association of America, 2014), 131. 

6. Lord, in Mystic Modern, 137.

7. Raba, in Mystic Modern, 186.

8. Rone, in Mystic Modern, 230.

9. Schloesser, in Mystic Modern, 266.

10. Ibid., 267.

11. Ibid., 257.

12. Stove, in Mystic Modern, 312.

13. Donelson, in Mystic Modern, 317.

14. Ibid., 318.

15. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Some Points of Eschatology” in Explorations in Theology, Vol. I: The Word Made Flesh (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1964), p. 255, translated by Bannister. 

16. Bannister, in Mystic Modern, p. 352.

17. Stephen Schloesser, Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), p. 230.

 

Ann Labounsky earned a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.Mus. from the University of Michigan studying with Marilyn Mason, and a B.Mus. from the Eastman School of Music, studying with David Craighead. She studied in Paris with André Marchal and Jean Langlais on a Fulbright Grant and holds diplomas from the Schola Cantorum and Ecole Normale. Author of the biography Jean Langlais: the Man and His Music (Amadeus Press, 2000), she recorded the complete organ works of Jean Langlais for the Musical Heritage Society (reissued on the Voix du Vent label) and narrated and performed in a DVD of his life based on this biography, a project sponsored by the Los Angeles AGO Chapter. Labounsky is chair of organ and sacred music at Duquesne University, active in the American Guild of Organists, the National Pastoral Musicians, and the Church Music Association of America, and serves as organ artist in residence at First Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh.