WELCOME

The 2008 Messiaen Festival at the Pays de la Meije

Founded in 1998, the Messiaen Festival at the Pays de la Meije celebrates every year Olivier Messian’s attachment to the village of La Grave in the Hautes-Alpes department. For him, this place was a source of inspiration and contemplation. But mostly, he referred to it as a grandiose space to tune in, a place for his concerts : “I have desired an outdoor performance of Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum high in the mountains, in La Grave, right across La Meije’s Glacier, in those powerful and grand landscapes that I consider my homeland.”  Messiaen’s will triggered everything.
In 2008, the musical world is celebrating the great composer’s centennial who was born in Avignon on December 10th 1908. Numerous countries, in the five continents, are getting ready to commemorate his birthday in a big way. This is the most important event dedicated to Messiaen and France has to be at the top of the festivities while setting the Messiaen Festival at the Pays de la  Meije .
The 11th Messiaen Festival at the Pays de la Meije, happening from July 10th to July 20th 2008, will be exceptional in many ways. It will combine several concerts, some outdoors in accordance with Messiaen’s will with the best interpreters of his music, including Myung-Whun Chung who will conduct the Radio-France Philharmonic and the Maîtrise de Radio-France, as well as study days bringing together several witnesses of his life path as a composer and teacher.
We would like also, on the occasion of this centennial, to assert the international potential of the Festival dedicated to a composer, Olivier Messiaen who influenced the world musical history with his work. In 2004, the American composer George Crumb’s words attested it : “I think Messiaen’s most important contribution to the modern composer is his faith in the music’s power to explore their spiritual excitement and their love for the sound’s purest  and most sensual beauty. The exceptional heated power of his music is a strong antidote against the academic dullness and the vain pretences of so many composed music since the middle of the 20th century.”


Jean-Paul Durand                                            Gaëtan Puaud
President of the Association                            Artistic Director of the Messian
Olivier Messian au Pays de la Meije                Festival au Pays de la Meije