57-845 Messiaen and His Contemporaries
9 units, Carnegie Mellon University
While focusing on Messiaens music, this course will not lose sight of the extensive range of nonmusical references that make his work less an oeuvre than a cosmology. We begin with an overview of his four eternal conflicts, namely his harmonic and rhythmic techniques and his natural and supernatural sources of inspiration. We will study not only his Technique of My Musical Language and recent, posthumously published Treatise on Rhythm, Color, and Ornithology, but also his works Huits Prludes, Quartet for the End of Time, Vingt Regards sur lEnfantJsus, Mode de valeurs et dintensits, Oiseaux exotiques, Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, Des Canyons aux toiles.., and Saint Franois dAssise. We will read a new biography by Christopher, an excellent analytical introduction by Robert Sherlaw Johnson, and view the hilarious and provocative film about his early organ piece, Apparition of the Eternal Church. This course asks What accounts for the coherence of this music assembled from disparate sources What relationship do his novel techniques have with earlier composers Bach, Debussy and with his famous students Boulez, Grisey What is the role of religious symbolism in his music What analytical tools are needed to do justice to music that is extremely rationalized yet, in its range of references, centrifugal And what relationship do these competing forces have to the musics expressive power This course can count as music support for graduate students and undergraduate students. Undergraduate students may register with instructor permission if space is available after graduate students have registered.
Prerequisites: none listed
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