Messiaen the liturgist: A contextual analysis of the vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus

Abstract

There is little shortage of academic literature on Olivier Messiaen. His music is often performed and naturally invites discourse in the novel techniques and diverse sources he used to create a synthesized and signature language. His role as a pedagogue is perhaps less explored, despite his decades spent conservatory and private classes as compositional luminaries passed under his tutelage. But his ecclesial post as organist at Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris is by far the most neglected by modern scholarship, syphoned off from the storied compositional career that was in fact no less secular. This thesis makes the argument that liturgy, the formulas and traditions practiced and repeated in the weekly rites, seeped into his large-scale religious music, offering a new model for listening and experience. The solo piano cycle Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus (1944) serves as the model for this argument. Examining liturgy is not without its challenges, particularly due to the upheaval of reforms from the Second Vatican Council (1964). Despite the fact that liturgy today is not identical to the practices during the writing of Vingt Regards, many facets can be identified as helpful tools in understanding both the liturgy itself and Messiaen's music. The first facet, sacramentality, offers insight into the abundance of symbolism. This practice recommends worldly items as benefical for moral and spiritual growth, filling believers with the love of God in literal ways as seen in the partaking of the Eucharist. A second facet is recurrence, found in the returning to identical readings, hymns, confessions, and sacraments as instructive in sustaining values against cultural shifts. Third is narrative, in the overarching design of the liturgy which opts for story over dogma located in meta and micro varieties. Fourth is embodiement, the perhaps obvious quality of liturgy that requires bodies present to worship and celebrates the divine body of Christ who was incarnated, died, and resurrected. A final unifying facet is the pedagogy of the liturgy, designed to teach parishioners story and sacrament through regular and embodied habit. Vingt Regards, alongside a large contingent of Messiaen's music, also sustains these facets. Symbolism is ubiquitous in the composer's writing, using imagery, leitmotifs, birdsong, and the so-called "charm of impossibilities", which critically includes the modes of limited transposition and non-retrogradeable scales. These musical devices are dialectically a joy for the composer on their own, and I suggest they lend themselves to a musical sacramentality that uses earthly items in expressing divine truisms. Vingt Regards is also recurrent, not merely repetitive, in stating and restating much musical material in an effort to suspend earthly time and depict deified subjects. Perhaps most obviously is the narrative of the cycle, telling the story of the Nativity, albeit in a disordered and at times abstracted fashion. The embodiment of Vingt Regards is twofold: the music would not have been possible without the virtuosity of pianist Yvonne Loriod, who would become Messiaen's second wife and lifelong collaborative partner. And the embodied narrative of Jesus' birth again bears mention, made musically tangible in moments like Le baiser de l'Enfant-Jésus, which depicts God's theme in the style of a berceuse. Finally, the pedagogy of Vingt Regards is evident in the ample prefatory comments, titles and subtitles of movements, and comments in the score, all faithfully repoduced in the Durand edition. The pianist therefore must serve as more than a performer, but as a kind of priest, acting as an intermediary between the audience and the music. Further liturgical meaning is found in the stations of the liturgy, the various points in which processions, blessings, hymns, prayers, the homily, the Sacrament, and the Concluding Rites are experienced by priest and parishioner alike. The 20 movements of Messiaen's work can be viewed as belonging to one, or in some cases a pair, of stations, with suggestive meanings and programmatic uses. Much of the time, the movements correspond with the sequence of the stations neatly, a few deviations notwithstanding. Examples include Regard du Père (I.) and Regard de l'étoile (II.) acting as the processions and opening rites, Regard de la Vierge (IV.), Regard de la Croix (VII.), and Noël (XIII.) as hymns, Regard du Fils sur le Fils (V.), Regard des Anges (XIV.), and Regard de l'Onction terrible (XVIII.) as Scriptural readings, Par Lui tout a été fait (VI.) and La parole toute-puissante (XII.) as sermons, Regard du temps (IX.), Regard du silence (XVII.), and Je dors, mais mon cœur veille (XIX.) as prayers, Première communion de la Vierge (XI.) and Le baiser de l'Enfant-Jésus (XV.) as the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and Regard de l'Eglise d'amour (XX.) as the final blessing and benediction. This comparison unlocks the larger question of a unifying formal design, enhancing a practical application that might bear meaning before the music of Vingt Regards is even heard, namely the experience many listeners may have already had in Catholic settings or other faiths with similar liturgical designs. The discussion of the liturgical facets and stations of Vingt Regards proves helpful on at least four counts. First, it aligns the careers of Messiaen, suggesting that his tenured ecclesial position must have proven influential over his compositional role beyond religious symbolism alone. Second, it invites a formal comparison and basis for listening and analysis beyond the normative models, while still being accessible and approachable to many. Third, it offers a streamlined analysis of the disparate elements within Messiaen's compositional language, allowing birdsong, modes, and rhythms to function toward a unified end, acting as agents of uplift. Finally, it invites a generative tendency toward performing the work with audience engagement and instruction, tasking the performer to utilize dialogue, poetry, art, media, audience exercises to fully inhabit and understand the purpose of the music. Messiaen himself recognized that his writing was deeply in need of a program and guide, giving lectures, writing commentaries, and suggesting artwork to explain his intent.