Biography
Olivier Messiaen was born in Avignon (France) in 1908. His father was an English professor and his mother was the poetess Cécile Sauvage. His famous mother dedicated her poem collection “l’Ame en bourgeon” (“The Soul in the Bud”) to her unborn child. Olivier Messiaen spent the first part of his childhood in Grenoble, but the Dauphiné’s mountains (Hautes-Alpes area) are his home where he wrote most of his pieces during the summer months.
At eleven he entered the Conservatoire de Paris where his professors were Jean and Noël Gallon, George Caussade, Marcel Dupré, Maurice Emmanuel et Paul Dukas. He earned 5 First prizes: counterpoint and fugue, piano accompaniment, organ and improvisation, music history and composition.
On his own he continued his musical studies in other fields. He worked on Hindu rhythm, particularly the “deçi-Talas”, and provincial rhythm of the Ancient India. He worked with the Greek metric, plain chant and theology taking interest in exotic folklore and studying the Time and Length philosophy.
He became a student of sound color, looking constantly for the multiple colors of all the complex possible sounds. He studied ornithology originating a musical composition of all the possible bird sounds. He worked with French bird songs and listed them by habitat and region such as countryside birds, forest birds, high mountain birds, seaside birds, pond birds, marsh birds and wetland birds. It was a huge and endless process.
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Messiaen and La Meije
Olivier Messiaen spent the first part of his childhood in Grenoble and the Dauphiné’s mountains (Hautes-Alpes area) were his home. He liked to portray himself as the “Mountain Frenchman”. His love for the high mountains was faithful to the Haut-Dauphiné region, the Briançonnais and in particular to the Meije, the Infernet and the Romanche River.
In the thirties, Messiaen bought a little house on Lake Laffrey in Petitchet. He would come to work but also to listen to the bird songs. In this region he wrote most of his pieces, which is evident in Messiaen’s work.
Yearly beginning in 1950, Olivier Messiaen would go to La Grave (Hautes-Alpes area) in “pilgrimage”. The first time Messiaen stayed at the Hotel Castillan, composing and proofreading his famous “Turangalila Symphony”. There, he got his ideas for “Mains de l’abîme” from “Livre d’Orgue”. In 1953, he published the score with a photograph of the Tabuchet’s glacier taken from the Terrasse’s church by his wife, Yvonne Loriod as the cover illustration.
Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod hiked to the Refuge Chancel on September 7th 1953 where they spent the night. Also many of his bird songs recorded in notebooks refer to his presence in the region of La Grave. On July 25th 1965 he spent time in the Chazelet oratory and wrote down the songs and calls of the “Chocards” (local bird). He recorded his observations in his notebooks such as, the big mountain stream going towards Les Fréaux that he named “Siegfried”, the contours of the mountains and the glaciers, the slate, the colors of sunsets and sunrises and the curve of the bird’s flight.
The memories that he gathered improved this great musician’s work. “Les Mains de l’Abîme” and the trio piece from the “Livre d’Orgue”, the “Chocard des Alpes” from the bird list, the introduction of “Chronochromie”, and the “Terribilis est locus iste” from the Transfiguration are magnificent illustrations of our landscapes that inspired him.
The ultimate proof of his affinity towards the mountains shows in “Et Expecto Ressurectionem Mortuorum”, a piece ordered by A. Malraux in 1965 and composed contemplating La Meije. About it he says, “I wanted it performed outside in the High Mountains of La Grave, facing La Meije’s glacier, in these powerful and solemn landscapes that I considered my real home.”
His wish has become a reality with the annual festival paying a tribute to this composer.