Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences

Focusing on Messiaen’s relation to history - both his own and the history he engendered - the Messiaen Perspectives volumes convey the growing understanding of his deep and varied interconnections with his cultural milieux. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences examines the genesis, sources and cultural pressures that shaped Messiaen’s music. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception analyses Messiaen’s compositional approach and the repercussions of his music. While each book offers a coherent collection in itself, together these complementary volumes elucidate how powerfully Messiaen was embedded in his time and place, and how his music resonates ever more today. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences presents many new primary sources, including discussion of Messiaen’s birdsong cahiers, sketch and archival materials for his Prix de Rome entries and war-time Portique, along with performance practice insights and theological inspiration in works as diverse as Visions de l’Amen, Harawi, Timbres-durées and the organ Méditations. The volume places the composer within a broader historical and cultural framework than has previously been attempted, ranging from specific influences to more general contexts. As a centrepiece, the book includes an examination of the impact of one of the greatest influences upon Messiaen, Yvonne Loriod.

Christopher Dingle is Reader in Music at Birmingham Conservatoire, UK. He is the author of Messiaen’s Final Works (2013), the acclaimed biography, The Life of Messiaen (2007), and co-editor of Olivier Messiaen: Music, Art & Literature (2007). He is also editor of The Cambridge History of Music Criticism (forthcoming). Robert Fallon is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. He writes on contemporary classical music and relationships between music and nature, with a special focus on the work and thought of Olivier Messiaen.