Jon Gillock recording

Will Thomas currently serves as the full-time director of music and organist for Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, a 2,500-member parish in Alcoa, Tennessee, of the Knoxville Diocese. Thomas holds the Bachelor of Music degree in sacred music from Carson-Newman College and the Master of Music degree in organ performance from the University of Tennessee Knoxville. His organ teachers have included Michael Velting, Marilyn Keiser, J. Ryan Garber, and John Brock.

June 20–25, 2011 was a week full of high energy and excitement. Selected professional organists from around the U.S. gathered for the first annual Ascension Organ Academy at Manhattan’s Episcopal Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue at Tenth Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village. The academy was centered around the church’s new Manton Memorial Organ, built by Pascal Quoirin of St. Didier, France, which is the first French-built organ to be installed in New York City. Containing approximately 6,183 pipes, 95 stops, 111 ranks, and two consoles, the instrument distinguishes itself as the largest French organ built anywhere in almost 50 years. On this eclectic instrument with widely contrasting color palettes, one can play a wide variety of organ works, using the softest, gentlest flutes to the strongest, most powerful reeds. (See The Diapason, November 2011, cover feature.)

The academy’s theme was French repertoire, ranging from the early Baroque through Messiaen, although other works could be requested. Led by Jon Gillock and Dennis Keene, participants in the academy had the opportunity to receive outstanding coaching on two works they had prepared—one for Gillock’s class, and the other for Keene’s. The Baroque pieces were taught at the 3-manual tracker-action console, the Romantic and modern compositions on the 4-manual, electric-action, movable console. 

Each afternoon and evening was filled with high inspiration as Dr. Gillock led a class from 2:30 to 5:30 and Dr. Keene led another session from 7:00 to 10:00. While trying to teach seven different students playing fourteen different pieces in a daily six-hour time frame for five days may seem like a daunting task for any instructor, both Dr. Keene and Dr. Gillock utilized every moment to the fullest, providing immeasurable amounts of knowledge and creative perspective.

Though sessions at the console were certainly down to business, the dinner break between classes, usually spent together, allowed students and faculty the opportunity to relax and converse. Dr. Gillock autographed copies of his new book, Performing Messiaen’s Organ Music: 66 Masterclasses. With the final session ending at 10:00 p.m. every evening, most participants went on very little sleep, as they rose early for morning practice times. Nonetheless, all players greeted each new day with fire and drive, growing significantly in the development of the advanced repertoire they performed. Ascension and the faculty enthusiastically plan to continue offering this opportunity in a second organ academy in June 2012. Whatever the topic, participants will undoubtedly walk away with a fresh and inspiring mindset that will strengthen their playing.

Participants playing for the academy included Brian Glikes—Messiaen’s Dieu parmi nous and Mendelssohn’s Sonata III; Benjamin Kolodziej—Franck’s Choral in E Major and Prelude, Fugue, and Variation; Arthur Lawrence—Franck’s Choral in A Minor and movements from Couperin’s Mass for the Convents; Karen Schneider-Kirner playing Marchand’s Grand Dialogue in C and Franck’s Final; Lyudmila Sryochkina—Duruflé’s Prelude from the Suite, op. 5, and Franck’s Pièce Héroïque; Eva Sze—Duruflé’s Prelude and Fugue on the Name of Alain, and Messiaen’s Joie et Clarté des Corps Glorieux and Le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité; and Will Thomas playing movements from Couperin’s Mass for the Convents and Alain’s Litanies.

The centenary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) afforded the occasion at the University of Michigan’s 48th Annual Conference on Organ Music last October to gather performers, scholars and friends of Messiaen for a consideration of one of the twentieth century’s most original composers and to hear performed nearly all of his repertoire for organ. At the remove of nearly a quarter century from the premiere in 1986 of his last major work, Le Livre du Saint Sacrement, his legacy continues to influence today’s composers, performers and improvisers.
The Messiaen content of the conference included a lecture called “Visions of Glory,” by Professor Andrew Mead, reminiscences and a masterclass by Almut Rössler, a discography presented by Michael Barone, and performances including L’Ascension (Carolyn Shuster Fournier), Méditations sur la Sainte Trinité (Almut Rössler), La Nativité (students of James Kibbie), Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (University of Michigan students), and Le livre du Saint Sacrement (Jörg Abbing). In addition, various Messiaen compositions were included in a lecture-recital by Wayne Wyrembelski, and in recitals by students of Professors Mead and Mason, and by Naji Hakim.

Four great dramas in Messiaen’s musical life
Almut Rössler, daughter of a German Protestant pastor, knew and worked with the Roman Catholic mystic Olivier Messiaen for 50 years. Marijim Thoene reviewed two of Rössler’s presentations:

Almut Rössler lecture on performing Messiaen’s music
It was a distinct privilege to hear one of the greatest interpreters of Messiaen’s organ music, Almut Rössler, lecture on “Performing Messiaen’s Music.” This was her seventh visit from Düsseldorf, Germany to the University of Michigan to perform works of Messiaen and share her insights on the performance of Messiaen’s music, which is filled with the outpouring of his intense and profound faith in a musical language that is rhythmically complex and drenched in the colors of all creation. Professor Rössler worked closely with Messiaen for many years, playing his music on all types of organs. Her official studies began with him in 1951. She played four recitals of his works at La Trinité in Paris, where he was organist for 60 years. She organized the first Düsseldorf Messiaen Festival in honor of his 60th birthday in 1968 and participated in many other conferences focusing on his music throughout Europe. She was not only his student, but also his friend and confidante. She is the one Messiaen chose first to look at his last organ work, Livre du Saint Sacrement (Book of the Blessed Sacrament), which she premiered in Detroit for the 1986 AGO convention.
Professor Rössler based her lecture on Messiaen’s own description of four dramas in his life as a composer, as written in a parish letter for La Trinité. His description is especially poignant because each drama offers invaluable biographical information as well as insights into how he wished his music to be performed. These four dramas included (1) the religious musician (bringing faith to the atheist), (2) the ornithologist, (3) the synaethesiac, and (4) the rhythmicist. For brevity’s sake I will offer just a glimpse of Messiaen the composer as described by Almut Rössler, which is pertinent to the performance of his organ works.
(1) To play the music of Messiaen, whose devotion to the Roman Catholic Church permeated every fiber of his being, one must have a knowledge of prayer, understand the symbolism of sound, e.g., the Incarnation; one must have a personal faith and a reverence for holy things.
(2) The underlying source of Messiaen’s passion for notating birdsong is expressed by Messiaen himself in his preface to his Quartet for the End of Time: “The abyss is Time, with its sadnesses and weariness. The birds are the opposite of Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant song.” His complicated rhythms are notated precisely, and one must subdivide major beats into 32nd notes and 16th notes, and be able to maintain the pulse of the larger beat and to switch fluently between larger and smaller note values.
(3) Messiaen was a “synaethesiac.” He saw colors when he heard certain sounds. He explains this phenomenon as “an inner vision, a case of the mind’s eye. The colours are wonderful, inexpressible, extraordinarily varied. As the sounds stir, change, move about, these colours move with them through perpetual changes.” (Contributions to the Spiritual World of Olivier Messiaen, by Almut Rössler, Duisburg: Gilles and Francke, 1986, p. 43.) In playing Messiaen’s works, one must always consider the sound that he specifies; the instrument must contain the colors and intensity of power that is required; dynamic power is of utmost importance.
(4) Messiaen’s business cards were printed with his name followed by “composer” plus the term “rhythmicist.” For Messiaen, rhythm is not strict like a marching band, but is the rush of wind and the shape of the seas. He used added time values to break up the regularity of notes. Rössler advised learning his music on the piano, and when all of the nuances are worked out and when it sounds beautiful, then play it on the organ and transfer the subtle treatment of time to the organ. Messiaen does not have metronome markings in his scores because every organ and room is different. There should be a dialogue between the room and the player. In a slow tempo one should not play more slowly in a resonant room. The performer has to produce resonance within himself.

Almut Rössler masterclass on La Nativité
Students of Professor James Kibbie, including Thomas Kean, John Woolsey, Laura Kempa, John Beresford, Andrew Herbruck, Richard Newman, and Diana Saum, played La Nativité du Seigneur, and afterwards Professor Rössler offered comments and suggestions. She congratulated Prof. Kibbie and his students, saying, “the performance was eloquent to the spirit of the work.”
These selected comments reflect Rössler’s keen insights and power to communicate very complex ideas in simple terms: “Don’t play squarely! Remember, if there are no staccato marks, the passage is to be played legato. The performer must have his own vision of eternity. Know the meaning of every word on the page. If staccato chords occur in a slow movement, you must feel like a sculptor who forms things when you release the chords.” In Méditation VII, Jesus accepte la souffrance, she was especially graphic in her comments: “I would like to see your claws. You have to feel like a tiger. The attitude toward the piece must be felt in your body, you must play it with all your force. The cross must sound like a suffering instrument, not a nice cross around your neck.”
Thank you, Almut Rössler, for bringing us the glorious music of Messiaen and sharing with us his vision of the universe.
—Marijim Thoene, DMA

The mystic striving to be
understood
Rössler suggested that, perhaps because his musical language was unconventional and because he wanted to be understood, Messiaen provided many references to biblical, liturgical and theological texts, and he published many explanations. She noted his preoccupation with rhythm. Her advice to students included the paradox that one must observe the durations of notes extremely precisely, yet in a stream of many notes of equal value one must create accents by the subtle management of time. In his music, she learned, birdcalls alone stand outside the strict requirements for durations. This is consistent with his notion that time is an abyss and the sounds of birds are beyond the limits of time.
Alan Knight corroborated Messiaen’s desire to be understood in his review of Rössler’s performance of Le Banquet Céleste and Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité:
In her words of introduction, Marilyn Mason recalled Rössler’s six previous visits to Ann Arbor. Before she played, Rössler commented on the experience of first encountering the piece in Messiaen’s presence. The then “new” composition turned out to be, in her words, “a beautiful piece!”
She described its theological and musical outline as follows. The odd-numbered movements—1, 3, 5, 7 and 9—take up the Trinitarian texts from Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, (as, the Essence of God–mvt. 3, the Attributes of God–mvt. 5, etc.), while the even-numbered movements—2, 4, 6 and 8—musically and theologically amplify and expand upon the preceding odd-numbered movements. The developmental process here, she explained, is comparable to that of Beethoven. The texts for the even-numbered movements were selected from the liturgy and the Scriptures. Movement 8, for instance, deals with both the three Persons and the Oneness of God. Romans is quoted: “O the depths of the richness of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!” God is simple is Messiaen’s primary meditation in this movement, with the chant taken from the Alleluia of All Saints Day. Intermittently, three chords are repeated in varying rhythms to signify that the triune God is eternally One.
With this short explanation and a page of notes on the themes, Rössler’s performance was easy to take in. She played Le Banquet Céleste as a prelude to the cycle. (This was not applauded, creating an ambiance for meditation—a good idea.) From the quiet opening to the end of the recital, one had the pleasing conviction that Messiaen had heard all of this and had commented on it in detail. Ms. Rössler played with marvelous ease, movement, freedom, and sureness.
—Alan Knight, DMA

In other Messiaen presentations, Michael Barone, a frequent presenter at the U-M conferences, played selected recordings from a discography that he compiled of Messiaen’s recorded organ works up to 1955. The earliest commercial Messiaen recording anywhere was made by the late University of Michigan Professor Robert Noehren, playing La Nativité at Grace Episcopal Church, Sandusky, Ohio, on a historic Johnson organ rebuilt by Schlicker and Noehren. The two earliest recordings of L’Apparition de l’Église éternelle were by Jean Langlais and by the American Richard Ellsasser playing at the Hammond Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Barone played portions of Leopold Stokowski’s recording of Messiaen’s original version of L’Ascension, which Messiaen scored for orchestra. Barone’s summary comment was, “Our experience of Messiaen continues. He helps us look at things in ways we had not imagined.”
Besides bringing a brilliant reading of L’Ascension, Carolyn Shuster Fournier presented Ubi caritas by Jacques Charpentier, written for organ and unison women’s and children’s voices.
The culminating recital, Le Livre du Saint Sacrement, was played by German organist Jörg Abbing, who had studied it with Rössler. Fierce concentration allowed him to play the two-hour program with only two hours of preparation time on the organ. His playing projected conviction, accuracy and stamina. A day earlier he played an entire Bach program on the Wilhelm organ at the Congregational Church, filling in at the last minute, and a day or two later he played a “post-conference” program of Italian music at the Methodist Church—clearly a young performer with depth and energy.
There were excellent presentations that did not feature Messiaen or his music exclusively. Craig Scott Symons, with Sonia Lee, violin, and Elizabeth Wright, soprano, spoke about and put a spotlight on lesser known but deserving works of Sigfrid Karg-Elert. The Ann Arbor AGO chapter sponsored a youth choir festival organized and directed by Dr. Thomas Strode and AGO Dean James Wagner, which attracted an audience of 250 to the opening event of the conference. Accompanist Scott Elsholz delighted his audience with a demonstration of the Hill Auditorium pipe organ using Star Wars themes. Faculty member Michele Johns premiered a new work for organ by Geoffrey Stanton.
Naji Hakim, full of vitality and virtuosity, dedicated the rebuilt organ at Ann Arbor’s Church of St. Thomas the Apostle. In addition to Bach’s E-minor Prelude and Fugue and Franck’s Prière he played Le Vent de l’Esprit from Messiaen’s Pentecost Mass, but he surpassed everything else on the program with the performance of his own compositions, Glenalmond Suite and the Sakskøbing Præludier. Himself a pupil of Langlais, Hakim’s comments earlier to students on improvisation covered an astonishing range of ideas beyond those that simply describe techniques, and they included some thoughts on time. An improvisation exists in real time; therefore it can express what the performer feels instinctively at that moment. A composition, on the other hand, may have been written over the course of three weeks and performed in three minutes. Reasoning plays a larger role in this process. Memory, and by extension time, is an essential ingredient of love, he asserted, because you can’t love something or someone that you don’t recognize or remember. Therefore, to improvise on a theme can be an act of love. When all is said and done, an improvisation should sound like a composed work, and a performance of a composed work should sound improvised. Contrast Hakim’s preference for improvisation, by his own description a spontaneous reaction in the moment, albeit one that has required years of mental and technical preparation, to Messiaen’s preference for written composition, a more enduring construction that relies on the mental processes of reason and reflection, albeit in the service of expressing what is immeasurable.
The University of Michigan Historic Organ Tour, now in its 30th year, is another Marilyn Mason innovation that has fruitfully endured over time. Four organists from the most recent trip to Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, and Prague performed music from their recitals in Prague and Vienna. They were Joanne Vollendorf Clark, Stephen Hoffman, Janice Fehér, Charles Raines and Gale Kramer. In memory of the late Robert Glasgow, Clark and Raines played from A Triptych of Fugues by Gerald Near, which the composer had dedicated to Prof. Glasgow in 1965. Adding a visual component to the organ conference, photographic artist Béla Fehér presented a slide show documenting the sumptuous organs and churches visited on the tour.
“The Triumph of Time” is the subtitle of a forgotten novel that Shakespeare recast as The Winter’s Tale. Considering the special significance of time, both mensural and emotional, in Messiaen’s works, as well as the perspective of time brought by the 48th annual occurrence of the event, the subtext of this conference may aptly have been The Triumph of Time.
Time, the ever-rolling stream, had recently borne away Robert Glasgow, whose performing career and 44 years on the University of Michigan faculty from 1962 to 2006 were remembered by Marilyn Mason. Her own creations have endured through time. Performer, networker, fundraiser, teacher, she presides over the annual Organ Conference, the summer Organ Institute, and the Historic Organ Tour, which continue to educate us and enrich our lives.
Rössler commented that Messiaen lived in his own interior world, and that he was a very calm person. Listening to so much of his music in a few days I realized that it has a few fast outbursts (Transports de joie, Dieu parmi nous) surrounded by long stretches of tempos marked, extremely slow, or very slow or slowly and tenderly. This week of recitals included, probably inevitably, three performances of Le banquet céleste and three of L’Apparition de l’Eglise éternelle. At first I began to anticipate yet another very slow performance, secretly wishing that someone had excised the repetitions in the programs. But by the end I had accepted Messiaen’s perspective on time and I began to appreciate what goes on in the duration of a sound, not just where it is going next.
—Gale Kramer, DMA

Summing up
For the past 47 years, the University of Michigan has presented a conference on organ music of outstanding quality under the able leadership of Marilyn Mason, chairman of the department.
The emphasis of the 48th conference, which began October 5 and continued for three days, was on the music of Olivier Messiaen. Numerous recitals and lectures explored the many complex aspects of his musical language. Headliners Naji Hakim and Carolyn Shuster Fournier from Paris and Almut Rössler from Düsseldorf all knew Messiaen and could interpret his music with enormous insight. Additional lecturers were Michael Barone of Pipedreams fame and Andrew Mead, Professor of Theory at the University of Michigan.
Germany was also given admirable attention. Craig Scott Symons presented a lecture recital on Karg-Elert, and Jörg Abbing of Saarbrücken played an all-Bach program that included chorale settings, three counterpoints from the Art of Fugue, and the Passacaglia and Fugue. It was a stellar performance in technical prowess and aesthetic understanding. The very next evening he played an all-Messiaen program, the Livre du Saint Sacrement!
The organ conference is always a “total immersion” experience, in which participants listen and think about the music being studied with intensity and dedication; several organists remarked that they cherish these days in October each year, since it is an opportunity to come to Ann Arbor and learn from the “best of the best.”
—Linda Pound Coyne

Frank Ferko is a well-established Chicago composer whose musical output has included numerous organ compositions in addition to works for chorus, vocal solo, chamber ensembles, and orchestra. Currently Composer-in-Residence with the Dale Warland Singers, Mr. Ferko spends part of his time each year in the Twin Cities. Mr. Ferko holds a B.M. degree in piano and organ performance from Valparaiso University, an M.M. degree in music theory from Syracuse University, and a D.M. degree in composition from Northwestern University. His teachers have included Philip Gehring and Will O. Headlee (organ), Howard Boatwright (theory), Richard Wienhorst and Alan Stout (composition). His master’s thesis was an analysis of Olivier Messiaen’s piano cycle Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus. As a scholar of the music of Olivier Messiaen, Mr. Ferko has lectured extensively on Messiaen’s organ music and has performed many of Messiaen’s works in concert.

Without a doubt, Olivier Messiaen was the most innovative composer of organ music in the last century. The organ was Messiaen’s own instrument, so he spent much of his life exploring its musical possibilities as related to color and texture, alongside his larger pursuit of a unique musical expression based on personal studies of theology, ornithology, rhythm, modes, and musical structures. Messiaen’s published output for the instrument was significant1: seven multi-movement cycles and five single-movement works (four published during his lifetime, and one published posthumously), totaling approximately 81/2 hours of music. The works range in style from Debussy-influenced, triadic harmony-based works to highly cerebral, academically-influenced works of serial pointillism.

Portrait of the Composer: a Brief Overview

Messiaen’s early works were clearly “the next step” after Impressionism, and they have often been classified by the term post-Impressionistic. After the Second World War Messiaen entered a phase of experimentation with serialism which encompassed the organization of pitches (or sometimes entire harmonic structures as distinct units), rhythms, articulations, and dynamics. Simultaneously, Pierre Boulez experimented with serializing these parameters in his own works, which eventually resulted in the concept of total serialization. Messiaen’s interest in serialization on any level was short-lived, and within a few years he moved on to incorporating notated bird song into his works. The songs of the birds provided an enormous palette of pitch and rhythmic variety--without serialization--which resulted in a seemingly simple, free-flowing kind of music that could be combined with the ever-developing harmonic language rooted in the composer’s earlier works.

During the 1940s Messiaen’s interest in other kinds of composition increased, so that he wrote nothing for the organ between 1940 and 1949, but instead, his attention was turned to piano music, orchestral works, and a certain amount of vocal composition. Exploring the musical possibilities of these media provided the composer with further development of his compositional technique which is not always represented in the organ works that followed. For example, his developmental technique of agrandissement asymétrique can be found rather abundantly in his piano works of the 1940s and 50s but not at all in any of the organ works. Similarly, he explored new and unusual vocal effects in such works as Harawi (1945) and even to some degree in Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine (1944) and even explored electronic composition primarily through his interest in the Ondes Martenot.

The 1950s and 60s provided a time for the new procedures to be incorporated into the composer’s established portfolio of compositional techniques so that the result was fresh and innovative but always recognizable as distinctly that of Messiaen. One such technique developed in his organ cycle of 1969, Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité, was the musical alphabet/grammar system which he called “communicable language.” This technique allowed the composer to write theological statements into the music in order to clarify and intensify the meaning of particular musical passages. The composer was pleased enough with this technique that he used communicable language in the final organ cycle, Livre du Saint Sacrement. In 1983, at the time of the premiere of his opera, Saint François d’Assise, Messiaen announced publicly that he would compose no more; the opera represented a summation of all of the musical techniques used throughout his career, and there was nothing more for him to say. However, in the following year he went on to compose his longest organ cycle ever. In 18 movements (and about two hours of performance time) Livre du Saint Sacrement represents another summation of Messiaen’s thoughts: a summation of his theological beliefs expressed through the vast array of musical techniques and thematic ideas which he had developed over a career spanning nearly 60 years and particularly expressed through the medium of the organ.

The Marathon

It has now been a decade since the death of Olivier Messiaen, and during these past ten years the importance of his contribution to the organ repertoire has steadily increased. Indeed, these works collectively stand as one of the towering achievements in all of organ composition. The sheer intensity and technical difficulty inherent in these works have defied complete performances in public. Although a few artists have recorded the complete organ works during the past 20 years or so, the recordings have been made under controlled conditions and without an audience. Jon Gillock is among the very few organists to present the entire body of Messiaen’s organ works in a live concert setting, and even his presentation occurred over a period of time in a series of separate concerts. It would be almost unthinkable for one person to present them all in a single extended concert.

Enter Paul Jacobs. A quiet, unassuming master’s degree student in his mid-twenties, Paul Jacobs has entered the organ concert circuit doing what some people might consider to be the impossible. Having performed the complete organ works of Bach in two separate series of concerts and then later in a single 18-hour marathon concert, Mr. Jacobs has distinguished himself as the only living organist to have performed all of those works himself in a single, live concert event. After having achieved some notoriety for the accomplishment, Mr. Jacobs turned his sights in an entirely different direction: the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen.

On January 11 at 12:10 p.m., at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, Paul Jacobs set out on an expansive spiritual journey into that mystical, colorful, intensely beautiful sound world of Olivier Messiaen--and he let us go with him. For the next 81/2 hours those of us who were fortunate enough to be there found ourselves transported, from one magnificent region of Messiaen’s sound universe to another, a tour of the aural galaxies. We experienced, at various times, bursts of brilliant nebulas, choruses of ecstatic birds amid the liquid chant of medieval monks, and at other times, towering architectural wonders surrounded by mathematical complexities and occasionally enhanced by mysterious handwriting on the walls. This is a deeply spiritual sound world, a place where one goes for respite, meditation and prayer, but also for the extraordinary experience of an almost unbearable joy, and it was difficult to return.

This concert was the first in a series of six marathon concerts, organized over a period of six months in different cities across the U.S., in which Mr. Jacobs is presenting--at each one--the complete organ works of Messiaen. (January 11, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago; February 22, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, DC; March 9, St. Philip’s Cathedral, Atlanta; March 17, Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; May 9, Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis; and June 14–15, St. James Cathedral, Seattle.) Each marathon (except the last, in Seattle) presents the works in six installments throughout one day: short concerts, each of which includes a small group of pieces or a single, multi-movement cycle. The six segments are separated by short breaks so that the audience (and presumably, the performer) can have a few moments of rest before moving on to the next destination.

Although the Chicago audience was permitted to come and go during the concert, many of us remained for the entire marathon in order to experience the complete journey. The six component concerts of the day were organized as follows:

I. L’Ascension and Messe de la Pentecôte

II. Les Corps Glorieux and Diptyque (offered in this order rather than that printed in the program)

III. Apparition de l’Eglise éternelle, Verset pour la Fête de la Dédicace, and Livre d’Orgue

IV. Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité

V. Le Banquet Céleste and La Nativité du Seigneur

VI. Livre du Saint Sacrement.

The only work not included in this program was the posthumously published Monodie. Each program segment was preceded by a few brief statements by Mr. Jacobs about the music in that portion of the program. There was no extensive commentary nor were there printed program notes to clutter the mind or influence the thinking of the listener. It was the intention of the performer to allow the listeners to hear the music in its pure form as Messiaen wrote it. The only comment which appeared in the program was a general note from the organist, as follows: “It is a tremendous blessing for me to offer these concerts of the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen in honor of the tenth anniversary of the composer’s death. Messiaen, without doubt, is one of the greatest musical minds and souls of the twentieth century and has profoundly affected my life. I am extremely grateful to be able to share his work with you.”

It is not the purpose of this article to provide a detailed critique of the performances of these works, but some general comments are certainly in order for an event of this magnitude. One of the distinctive characteristics of Messiaen’s music is his use of color: harmonic color, instrumental color, and in Messiaen’s own experience, visual color, which he perceived from music through synaesthesia. Harmonic color was achieved, of course, through his complex system of juxtaposing either very simple chordal structures or very dense ones--often derived from impressionistic models-- with pitches from his own modes. In his own personal experience the colors were generated by the resonance in the music. Messiaen’s music never depended completely on the instrument or the acoustics to generate its resonance; he wrote the resonance directly into the harmonies. For this reason in particular, pitch accuracy in the performance of this music has always been of the utmost importance.

All of his organ works were composed for the organ at La Trinité in Paris, an instrument which underwent several changes in tonal design during the 60+ years that Messiaen served there as or-ganist. The composer was quite meticulous in specifying in each score the tone colors that he wanted to be used at any given time within a piece, and each work had stop specifications appropriate to the Trinité organ at the time of the work’s completion. Thus, the later works encompass a wider palette of tone colors than the earlier works. For American performers this frequently presents problems since many American instruments do not come equipped with the required stops for Messiaen’s works, and they often lack the appropriate voicing.

In this particular setting, given the placement of the organ console in relation to the pipework, the performer was faced with the additional challenge of trying to hear balances and colors the way the audience would hear them. Paul Jacobs rose to the challenge effectively and used the 126-rank Aeolian-Skinner organ to its best advantage. Each color was carefully selected to comply with the composer’s demands, and yet the performer was sensitive enough to utilize some variety in his stop selection in order to make the most of the instrument’s available tonal resources. These color nuances were particularly noticeable in quiet passages, such as the closing section of the second movement of L’Ascension, the “Offertoire” movement of Messe de la Pentecôte, and in several of the extended passages of bird song in the two late cycles. Throughout the day I did notice a few departures from the score in Mr. Jacobs’s stop selections, but his intentions always seemed to be in service of the music, and the overall effect of his color palette was quite successful.

For most audiences, the least accessible of Messiaen’s organ works is Livre d’Orgue, dating from 1951. Anyone entering Fourth Presbyterian Church between 2:55 p.m. and about 3:40 p.m. would have been treated to the most complex, disjunct, cerebral, technically difficult--and yet colorful and solidly constructed--music ever conceived for the organ. Mr. Jacobs explained in his verbal comments prior to this portion of the program that “this piece is not about beauty; it’s about time, color and light.” Knowing full well that this work would not be a favorite among most people in the audience, Mr. Jacobs wisely placed it in the middle of the day when, presumably, the attendance level would be relatively low. Although some people did leave during Livre d’Orgue, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many stayed to experience this very challenging music. Their continued presence served as a testament to the music itself and to the confidence with which Mr. Jacobs presented it. 

As the day progressed the music re-turned to the more familiar sounds of works dating from the early years of Messiaen’s career, but then concluded with the composer’s final, crowning achievement in organ composition, Livre du Saint Sacrement. This is the work that truly summarized it all: Messiaen’s thoughts on musical composition, his intense religious beliefs, his admiration for the music of the birds, and the myriad colors which he perceived visually and aurally. What an appropriate and exciting way for our musical odyssey to end! 

Portrait of the Artist: an Interview

So what brought about this phenomenon of performing all of the Messiaen organ works in one concert? Why the marathon? I had the opportunity to discuss this and other matters with Paul Jacobs prior to his concert, and the resulting portrait that I was able to construct of this young musician was most impressive. The marathon, he ex-plained, has a practical side to it. Since he is a full-time student, it would not be possible for him to go out to various cities and present the Messiaen works in a series of multiple concerts in each city, over the course of a full week, before going on to the next city. It would be much more efficient and practical to present them all in one day and then move on. From the standpoint of one in the audience, I would say that the marathon presentation allows the listener really to embark on this magnificent musical journey, to become immersed in Messiaen’s unique sound world without interruption, and also to hear the works comparatively with each other and to experience the musical growth and development of the composer as this vast oeuvre unfolds before us.

With so much exciting organ music out there in the world, some of it by composers who are much more popular with audiences than Messiaen, why present Messiaen’s complete organ works? Mr. Jacobs had much to say on this topic, and his comments are summarized as follows: Olivier Messiaen offers a message that no other composer of any era has offered. There is an intense conviction in this music and a relentless joy--all of the time. The seriousness in Messiaen’s music is not based on sorrow or sadness, but rather, it is based on joy. One can be overwhelmingly crushed by the joy in this music, and that makes it extremely attractive.  Messiaen was perfectly sincere and said what he believed, what needed to be said, and he was not concerned with the audience’s reaction. There is no ego in this music. Messiaen’s inspiration came from God, and he saw it as his obligation to use his musical gift to create this sincere and intensely joyful music.  Mr. Jacobs went on to comment that “we need to hear more of Messiaen’s message, especially after September 11th.” 

When asked how difficult it is to prepare a very challenging concert as this, Mr. Jacobs responded that there really is no trick to it. He prepares, in part, by reading about the life and works of the composer, but he refrains from listening to existing recordings of the works which he is about to learn. Successful performance of the music comes from the plain, hard work of dedicated daily practice. For him learning new music has become second nature, and he feels an extreme devotion to it. In further comments about Messiaen, Mr. Jacobs explained that he always believed that Messiaen’s work--and certainly the sincerity of the work--can be appreciated by everyone. The style and the creative process may need some explanation for the audience to get the most out of it, but lengthy explanations are really not necessary. Anyone can grasp and understand the beauties of Messiaen’s music, and people should have the opportunity to hear it.

These artistic beliefs were quite evident in the performance I heard, a performance by a very sincere and dedicated artist. I suppose that as Mr. Jacobs continues to perform this music, his interpretations will undergo some change. That kind of change is part of the process of artistic growth, and that is always a good thing. Mr. Jacobs expressed that he is not interested in “entertaining,” but rather, he is interested in using his own gifts to share this very worthy music with others and to allow them the opportunity to experience what he himself has experienced through hearing it. I wish him well, and I am looking forward to hearing more musical performances by this phenomenally gifted and intelligent young artist.

Notes 1. <www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MG2eIL PcJc> (“Messiaen—a life in color: part 2”). 2. New York Times, April 6, 2008. 3. Clyde Holloway, The Organ Works of Oliver Messiaen and Their Importance in His Total Oeuvre. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1974. 4. Almut Rössler, Contributions to the Spiritual World of Olivier Messiaen. Transl. from the German by Barbara Dagg and Nancy Poland. Duisburg: Gilles und Francke, 1986. 5. Christopher Dingle, The Life of Messiaen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. 6. <www.oliviermessiaen.net&gt;. 7. <www.oliviermessiaen.org&gt;. 8. <www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSWatsi BErU> (“Messiaen on Debussy and Colour”). 9. <www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSH9s Vjpy8g> (“Messiaen organ improvisation”). 10. Claude Samuel, Olivier Messiaen: Music and Color. Conversations with Claude Samuel. Transl. by E. Thomas Glasow. Portland: Amadeus Press, p. 25. 11. Ibid., p. 125. 12. Erato STU 71104 (vinyl). 13. Samuel, Olivier Messiaen, p. 13. 14. Olivier Latry, Notes for Complete Organ Works. CDs, Deutsche Grammophon.

“He connects with me in the same way that Bach does.” So said Jack Bruce, the British singer-composer and bassist with the rock group Cream, when asked about the effect of Messiaen’s music on him, after one of the concerts of the big Southbank Festival in London earlier this year. “I’m not religious, but the spirituality touches me,” he continued. “There is a spirituality about it that you recognize.”1 So grows the impact of Messiaen in this centennial year of his birth, as his unique voice from the last century delivers a message that resonates more and more in the 21st century.
Musicians love to use anniversary observances to generate performances and study of composers’ works. Often, these commemorations serve to bring forward less familiar music: last year, we heard Buxtehude’s music far more than usual. On the other hand, Bach has received three major outpourings in my lifetime: 1950, 1985 and 2000, commemorating either his birth or his death. These festivals simply gave us Bach lovers an excuse to play his music more than we usually do (or did)—which was already a lot.

Messiaen in our time
Coming only 16 years after his death, Messiaen’s 100th anniversary celebrations embrace both outcomes. In one way, performances and studies of his output have never slackened since his death, unlike many composers who go into eclipse. Great Britain has led the way for some time, and now North America is beginning to take Messiaen into the mainstream. Festivals and performances are flourishing all this year, and already are continuing unabated beyond December 10, the day of his birth. The music world, in particular the young, is discovering Messiaen in a big way. Reporting a performance of the Turangalîla-Symphonie, Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times wrote, “A large and noticeably young audience turned up at Carnegie Hall to hear this unorthodox and exhilarating 10-movement work.”2 In another way, the centennial is stimulating performances of works not heard very often, from Harawi to La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ to the opera St. François d’Assise.
Two elements in the music may be part of its growing appeal. Early in his creative career, Messiaen was in tune with the scientific world of our day. Concepts in cosmology, such as time moving at different speeds, found expression in his music—indeed, such ideas are the foundation of his sense of rhythm. The tumultuous whirling palindrome of Regard VI: “Par lui tout a été fait” (Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant-Jésus) makes me think of those marvelous Hubble telescope images of the birth and death of stars, or of scientists’ depictions of black holes, in which huge amounts of matter are sucked in and jets of energy are spewed out over thousands of light years.
Second, Messiaen’s profound respect for creation allies him with the green earth trends of our time. His abhorrence of the city is well documented, as is his admiration for Debussy and his contemplation of nature. Wherever Messiaen traveled, he made time to visit the countryside nearby, taking great pains to notate the songs of the indigenous natural musicians, i.e., the birds. The near-scientific accuracy with which he notated birdsong far surpassed any other composer’s depiction of ideas from nature. In Catalogue d’oiseaux for piano, he gives us the songs of birds of France and sets them musically in their environment. The cycle is an enthralling soundscape as music on its own, but he adds another layer of meaning by indicating in the score the specific birds and the details of the scenery. Birdsong appears in the organ music as early as L’Ascension (1933), but not until Livre du Saint Sacrement (1984) do we encounter both birds and their natural setting together. In VI: “la manne et le Pain de Vie,” Messiaen flings a few incantations of the mourning chat and the desert lark out over the vastness and heat of the Judean desert (represented by the high drone of the Récit Cymbale and the dry trillings of the Positif Clarinette).

The music for organ
The organ music represents every period of his creative output. Organists were among the earliest to program Messiaen in recital, and there are several tributes this year: Gail Archer (New York), Jon Gillock (Pittsburgh), Paul Jacobs (New York and New Haven), John Scott (New York), Patrick Wedd (complete works in Montreal), and Dame Gillian Weir (Chicago), to cite a few.
For organists who have dipped their foot into the Messiaen pond, or who are interested in doing so, this article offers thoughts about getting to know this extraordinary body of music, especially the organ cycles and pieces.
First of all, there is much to read. All his life, Messiaen spoke at great length about his music—its ideas, its structure and the faith it sprang from. Others followed in biographies and studies during his lifetime. Organists will want to know Clyde Holloway’s dissertation3 and Almut Rössler’s conversations with Messiaen.4 Since then, more and more writers have jumped in enthusiastically, in books and articles on many different aspects of his output. Two engrossing biographies alone have appeared since 2005.5
Releases of recordings fill the catalogues, including reissues of earlier ones packaged for the anniversary year. In the organ repertoire, must-haves for me are the sets by Hans-Ola Ericsson, Olivier Latry, and Dame Gillian Weir, in addition to those recorded by Messiaen himself.
When all is said and done about recordings, hearing a live performance is the surest way to feel its impact. And there are many in the U.S. and Canada this year, as two websites show. Boston University’s Messiaen Project,6 edited by Andrew Shenton, offers a calendar of performances and conferences going on around the world. The site is also a major source of scholarly articles, list of recordings, films, and Internet resources, among others. Percussionist Malcolm Ball has set up a similarly wide-ranging site.7 Admittedly most performances will have already occurred by the time this article appears, but they continue on into the 101st year, as Ball’s and Shenton’s calendars show. YouTube presents some treasures, as well. For example, a video clip from Messiaen’s class in 1953 transmits his enthusiasm for discovery and for passing it on to the young.8

Messiaen and improvisation
Another shows him improvising at La Trinité,9 and proffers telling insights into the link between his own improvisations over more than 60 years at La Trinité and his compositions. The freedom and inspiration of the moment evident in these extemporizations can teach a great deal about performance of similar pieces in his output. In interviews, he spoke often of his improvisations: how he vowed never to waste so much energy again after summing them up in Messe de la Pentecôte,10 and how improvisations at La Trinité accompanying a sermon in 1967 on the Holy Trinity led to the Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité.11 The YouTube video gives an example of an improvisation that shows clearly the origin of some of his compositions. While choosing stops, he announces the liturgical theme on which he will improvise. Then comes a high pedal tone on the Cymbale of the Récit (representing the Star seen by the Magi), followed by triads in one of his modes of transposition, and the Gregorian chant for Christmas, “Puer natus est nobis.” The piece reminds one of movement V (titled “Puer nobis est natus”) from the Livre du Saint Sacrement. It also brings to mind other movements of the Livre as well, especially movement VI (“la manne et le Pain de Vie”) characterized by sustained chords on Récit Cymbale, making us feel the intense heat of the desert of Judea.
In 1979, Messiaen recorded a reading of L’âme en bourgeon (The Soul in Bud) by Gisele Casadesus, with his own improvisations recorded at La Trinité as interludes and commentary.12 This cycle of poems written by his mother, the poet Cécile Sauvage, when she was pregnant with him, had a lifelong influence on him.13 Messiaen improvises using at least two musical ideas from both earlier and future works. One of them is a favorite melody on the Cornet (first written for Cantéyodjaya, and later incorporated into the Offertoire of the Messe de la Pentecôte). The other idea, a chromatic, turbulently ascending passage on the fonds d’orgue, forecasts the opening of movement XI (“L’apparition du Christ ressuscité à Marie-Madeleine”) of the Livre du Saint Sacrement. Music given genesis by his mother’s poetry written exactly 100 years ago is particularly moving to hear in this centennial year.

The music for other instruments
For organists, getting to know Messiaen’s music for other performing media can be exhilarating, if not at least informative. During my own odyssey in discovering it, hearing pianist Robert Sherlaw Johnson play Catalogue d’oiseaux in 1978 was a revelation. For one thing, this window on Messiaen’s sound-world embodied successfully both music and instrument. The dry acoustics prevalent in North American churches veiled for me the sense of big space in the music. Another revealing approach to the organ pieces comes through acquaintance with companion works of the same period. For example, if one is learning the Méditations, listening to La Transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, the massive work for orchestra and chorus that immediately preceded it, will greatly deepen understanding. Many of the elements new to his language at that time are common to both: Gregorian chant quoted in its literal form (not channeled through the prism of his own modes), thick dissonant chords dissolving into pure triads, birdsong in profusion, and chorale-like movements—all of which take us into the sublime in a way at once more simply and yet powerfully than he had achieved previously. In another example, the Livre du Saint Sacrement (1984) becomes more understandable through familiarity with the opera St. François. In the latter, elements of narrative complement the central purpose of contemplation on the growth of grace in Francis. In the eleventh movement of the Livre, we experience the disbelief and then the overwhelming joy of Mary Magdalene as she sees the risen Christ. This passage of narrative is a first in the organ oeuvre, and calls for an appropriately dramatic interpretation.
Since Messiaen’s death, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, the composer’s widow, has labored tirelessly in gathering manuscripts together and seeing them through to publication. Messiaen was never able to find time to make his lecture notes available in a treatise, as he spoke of often in interviews. Loriod has collected and edited these notes from over forty years of teaching, on everything from Gregorian chant to Wagner’s Tristan, and published them over the years 1994–2002, in the seven-volume work, Traité de rhythme, de couleur and d’ornithologie. Among Messiaen’s other manuscripts, she discovered three organ pieces that offer worthy additions to the repertoire: Offrande au Saint Sacrement (probably written in 1928). As Olivier Latry points out in his editorial notes, it is an improvisation reminiscent of those of Tournemire. The Monodie dates from 1963, written for his assistant Jean Bonfils.14 The Prélude, probably written in 1929, derives from Dupré’s style, as Latry observes. All are published by Leduc.
“The only real music for the organ is by Bach and Messiaen,” is a remark attributed to Alun Hoddinnott, the Welsh composer who died earlier this year. Although Messiaen played Bach and taught analysis of the B-minor Mass and St. Matthew Passion, he didn’t regard himself as an heir to Bach. Yet their music, in its expression of faith through highly structured and uncompromising musical languages, unites them. Bach never ceases to awe listeners, both experienced and new. In his centennial year, Messiaen is flourishing as a parallel and potent spiritual voice in a crowded, secular world.

Martin Goldray is on the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, where he teaches music history, theory, and piano, and has conducted the orchestra. Milton Babbitt wrote “Tutte le Corde” for him, and his many piano recordings include music by Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Philip Glass, in whose ensemble he performed for 16 years. As an organist, he has attended the Haarlem Summer Academy and has studied with Christopher Wells and Kimberly Marshall.

The second annual Ascension Organ Academy took place June 11–15, 2012, at the Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue and 10th Street in New York City. This week of masterclasses was instituted in June of 2011 to celebrate the inauguration earlier that year of the Manton Memorial Organ, a magnificent two-console organ built by Pascal Quoirin. (See The Diapason, November 2011.) This 95-stop, 111-rank instrument was designed to play as much of the repertory as possible, with its three-manual mechanical-action console and four-manual electric-action console. A particular source for the timbral world of the organ was Messiaen’s organ at the Église de Sainte-Trinité in Paris. 

The eight students in the masterclass worked with two teachers: Dennis Keene, titular organist of the new instrument and the conductor for many years of the Voices of Ascension Chorus and Orchestra, and Jon Gillock, one of the foremost interpreters of the music of Messiaen and author of the recently published book Performing Messiaen’s Organ Music: 66 Masterclasses.

The masterclasses were organized in ideal fashion. Each of the eight students played every day in one of the two classes, in either Gillock’s afternoon class on the electric console or Keene’s evening class on the mechanical console. Gillock’s class focused on the 19th-century French repertory and the music of Messiaen, Keene’s class on Bach and the French Baroque. A schedule was generated each day for the following day’s class, and each student had almost an hour in the morning to prepare for that day’s class on either of the two consoles. Just knowing what and when you were going to play in advance and having practice time each day was a luxurious change from other masterclasses I’ve participated in. 

The other advantage of such a modestly sized class was that we really got to know each other and each other’s playing. Part of the pleasure was getting to know the other students and sharing our experiences, something made possible by the all-day format with dinner breaks, and the small group made it possible to agree on restaurants and to find tables large enough to accommodate all of us. The participants in the class, who came from all over the U.S., were Chris Dekker, Brian Glikes, Benjamin Kolodziej, Chad Levitt, Ryan Murphy, Eva Sze, Will Thomas, and myself.

Another benefit of the small class and daily performances by each of us was that we could observe each other’s progress from class to class. I’ve found that the first encounter between student and teacher in a masterclass can be valuable, but it’s relatively easy for the teacher to be impressive and for the student to hear attractive new ideas without really changing; only in continuing to work together can you really assess the responsiveness of the student and the ability of the teacher to transform the playing. It would be impossible to describe the range of ideas that were presented in the classes throughout the week but in briefest summary. 

Dennis Keene’s experience as a choral conductor was always evident in his attempts to get the performances to sing and breathe, and to more keenly reflect the dramatic shape of the music. The sound he produced on the mechanical action console was varied and beautiful, and almost piano-like in its range. Jon Gillock’s attention to the emotional and transcendent content of the music, his understanding of Messiaen’s compositional techniques and how to translate them into effective performance, and his ability to enter into the musical world of the student in an empathetic way were wonderful. Having the two classes on the different consoles was a great way to keep our ears fresh and to display the full capabilities of the Quoirin organ. 

The repertory ranged from preludes and fugues, trio sonatas, and organ chorales by Bach to music by Couperin,
de Grigny, Mendelssohn, Franck, Vierne, and Messiaen. All of this music was realized, to my ears, in ways entirely appropriate to the various styles, with a range of timbre and texture that was fresh, beautiful, and exciting. And a not insignificant aspect of the week and the performances was the physical beauty of the organ and the church, with its 1888 LaFarge mural over the altar and its Tiffany stained glass windows.

The third Ascension Organ Academy is scheduled for June 10–14, 2013. In the meantime, the Manton Memorial Organ can be heard every Sunday and in concerts by distinguished guest artists. On January 23, John Scott performed, and on March 5 Jon Gillock continues his series of concerts of major works of Messiaen with the Livre du Saint Sacrement. Gillock is also in the process of recording Messiaen on the Quoirin organ, and these highly anticipated recordings will be available soon.