Expectation, Emancipation, Eternity: Exploring Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen

My program notes for a discussion-performance featuring the music of Schoenberg, Debussy, and Messiaen that I presented at Greenwich Music House on April 29, 2022:

There is scarcely a composer whose breadth of curiosity and technical command parallels that of Olivier Messiaen. His musical consciousness spanned the entire history of Western music, through Greek antiquity, extending across the musics of the Middle and Far East, into America, and no less into nature, notably in the music of birds.

Messiaen came of age within the afterglow of fin-de-siècle Europe, in whose musical environment, largely under the spell of Wagner, tonal expectation had been prolonged to such an extent that the notion of its fulfillment had been forgone, and forgotten even. Inheriting this state of generalized dissonance, both Schoenberg and Debussy forged unique sound worlds on whose surface classical tonal syntax appeared to be suspended. While Schoenberg did this by avoiding any trace of a tonal center in his compositions, Debussy, instead, focused his ear on sonority and the richness of the sound spectrum.

​The evening’s discussion-performance will begin by shedding light on the similarity between Schoenberg’s and Debussy’s approaches, in spite of their vastly different musical languages. Establishing such a unity will steer listeners’ focus to the dynamic forces supporting their music, born of the indefinite prolongation of traditional expectations, and engendering a language in which dissonance had been emancipated from the shackles of resolution. From this the presentation’s focus will shift to Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen, showing how his uniquely personal language, with all its sonic multiplicities, harnessed these very same dynamic forces in service of an expression of eternity, a reflection of his Catholic faith.