Customer Reviews:
 Greatly aided my comprehension of the music November 14, 2008
It took me some years and several listenings to get to grips with my first Messiaen work, Quartet for the End of Time, until eventually the scales fell from my ears, and the door opened to an unguessed realm of beauty. Following that the Tarangulila Symphony clicked for me on first hearing, and I realised that a new name had entered my pantheon of favourite composers. I then decided to get to know Messiaen much better and purchased Messiaen Edition, an 18 disc box set of mostly piano music. This has sat on my shelf for about a year, with a few tentative forays, until a couple of months ago, since when I have immersed myself in these sometimes difficult but always profoundly rewarding works, listening to them intensively.
If, like me, you feel that an appreciation of the composer's development and the state of mind at the writing of particular works adds to their comprehension, then this is just the book required. I have read this book in conjunction with my listening and it's helped my understanding no end.
It is not an analytic text, there is no music in the book. It is rather a pure biography. It charts Messiaen's development from childhood through to his final days. It details the influences, from his student days of Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky, and above all Debussy. It describes how the development of his unique rhythmic language arose from his readings of Indian and Arabic musical texts. And then finally he left all human influences behind and became completely absorbed in birdsong. Not just the melodies of birdsong but a musical interpretation of their habitats and environments based on a highly individual conception of the realtionship between chord construction and colour.
Messian's family life is detailed, including his tragic first marriage to fellow composer Clare Dubois, who succumbed to a long slow decline from a ghastly form of dementia, and his eventual love with his student and arch interpreter, the formidable pianist, Yvonne Loriod. Being a good Catholic Messiaen stayed entirely faithful to Clare until her eventual death, even though he and Loriod travelled the world, giving concerts together for many years, before eventually they were able to marry.
We are told the circumstances that surrounded the writing of each of the works which does, in many cases, add to their poignancy, especially given the tragic romantic circumstances of Clare's decline and death. We hear of Messiaen's teaching activities and the generations of students that adored him, Boulez and Stockhausen being among the most notable.
Above all, we learn what a truly wonderful man Messiaen was. Always kind, generous and humble, all of which qualities flowed from profound religious conviction of the very best sort. Despite the difficulties of his life his faith was never broken, and it is evident that the man was above all a mystic who wrote music in order to show people worlds beyond the mundane. As such, the book is more than just a dry account of names, dates and places. It attempts to take us into Messiaen's inner world and provides essential insight for anyone who wants to really penetrate to the heart of Messian's music.
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