The organ works

IIll) stained-glass windows magnify the light, one of God's first creations, but the organ brings to the
L1l1lrch something similar to light that yet surpasses it: the music of the Invisible, It is the wondrous
IIvIHture to the Beyond"

,'iI/IIi/ted midway between heaven and earth on the west wall, the organ of Notre-Dame de Paris projects
1I:,';ooorities under the cathedra/'s vaults like a musical extension of the medieval rose window playing
IVIIII (:olours just above it, The image evoked by Olivier Messiaen above assumes its full dimension in
/111, 111i/ce, especially when his organ works, and the Christian message they convey, cause the cathedral
10I,";ound.
II lVI' ,/Iways been amazed in Notre-Dame by the perfect accord between this music, the instrument
I 1/" iowel-case of stone; one has the impression of attending a timeless meeting between all the
,/lId craftsmen who, over the centuries, combined their talents for the edification of all, The
I, Ilion, indeed the ecstasy, which this engenders has given me unforgettable moments of emotion
IH/ll'/iappiness,
I('cording cause others to share these feelings,

Olivier Lalry

Foreword

IIIIIIJ 111 Ihe organ works of Olivier Messiaen at Notre-Dame Cathedral represents the
III1 p/osligious discographic project, deriving its initial rewards from the sumptuous sonority
11'.1111, tile splendour of the instrument and the distinction of the interpreter, Olivier Latry.
, 111111, Iliis concurrency is justified by the obvious mystical and religious significance of the
11'llIllor 1977, Olivier Messiaen gave a lecture at Notre-Dame on sacred music. Canon

) 15
Berrar, then arch-priest of the cathedral, who had invited him to speak, introduced Messiaen as one of
tile most important creators of contemporary music, an indefatigable seeker of new acoustical material:
chords, sonorities, an infinite proliferation of rhythms - but all in the service of a faith and mystical vision
Ilelonging to a "profoundly religious musician, for whom musical beauty is the reflection of essential
IJcauty and proclaims the beauty of transfiguration which is the culmination of all things, the 'end of
lime' with Christ in glory".
II is this transcendental music to which Olivier Messiaen sought to give expression. As he explained "It
I~; true that I place religious music even above liturgical music" (and heaven knows the fidelity of his
'''lIvice to that music at the church of La Trinite, meditating each Sunday and feast-day on the texts of
IIl1l Mass and Office). "For liturgical music is exclusively dependent on worship, whereas religious music
I:xlellcls to all times and all places, it touches on the material as much as the spiritual and Ultimately
111111:.; God everywhere. Liturgical music celebrates God in his church, within his own sacrifice. Religious
l'III~;ic reveals him at all hours and all across our planet Earth, in our mountains and oceans, among the
IllIlis, Ilowers and trees and even in the visible universe of stars that surrounds us."
Ilil/; If; wllat seduces and fascinates us in the organ music of Olivier Messiaen - this extraordinary
YII1l1l)SiS, miXing and organizing the multiple sources of his inspiration, beginning with all the plainchant
II It'll III!> of the liturgy and their great variety of neumes. He admires their "purity, joy and lightness, the
11I"'''1I11isiles of asoul's flight towards the Truth". But all this would count for little were it not totally allied
1111 li IIIcclitation on the most profound mysteries of the dogma of the Holy Scriptures and the great
pllllillil Icachers. One must also mention Messiaen's gift of visionary painting, for evoking certain
IIIJIIIIIIIIB sensations experienced in the presence of nature and coinciding with the words of the
"pl'''I:::'' 111l: abyss uttered its cry, and lifted up its hands." And there is, too, the refinement of his ear
II llill:ll:~ I,im to notice the subtlest birdsongs and integrate them into his works as expressive
I'IIIIIIIS of desire, exultation or divine longing.
I 1I1f, III Iris genius and, especially, his deep faith, all of these sources which might, in another
1i1t"11, IIl1lount to no more than pantheistic impressions, are collected and integrated by Olivier
It'll III fill iluthentically Christian celebration, that of the Incarnation and its richest sacramental
11111, 111l) I-ucharisl. This mystery was the object of his first organ work, Le Banquet celeste of
1I111111ollllrJ culmination 56 years later in the theological and musical summation represented by
"II ,';dilll Sacrament. The text from Thomas a Kempis's Imitation of Christ that he chosc to

) II
accompany this last work is a good resume of the import of his life as a Catholic musician: "I offer and
present to You the gladness of all devout hearts, their ardent affection, their mental raptures, their
supernatural illuminations and heavenly visions." The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris is pleased to
provide the frame for this Ottrande et Alleluia final.
Monsignor Jehan Revert,
Maitre de ChapelIe emeritus of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris
The organ works
What comes from the organ is invisible music: music whose player normally cannot be seen and whose
instrument gives no sign of activity. It is music from elsewhere. In that respect, it suits the recorded
medium, even if that medium leaves us, as listeners, to compensate (or not to) for hearing the organ
outside its native environment: a sacred building,
For Messiaen, the organ belonged in church, and the function of its music, whether as part of the liturgy
or in concert, was to expound and illustrate the tenets of Christian theology. As a practising organist
himself, he, too, belonged in church, at worship. He gave very few recitals, Instead, for more than 60
years, from September 1931 until shortly before his death, he fulfilled the duties of a parish organist al
La Trinite in Paris, home to one of the great Cavailie-Coll instruments (another is at Notre-Dame, heill d
here).
The organ music he wrote during this period arose from his work and from his instrument. It arose, IOfl,
from the religious topics to which he kept returning: the Eucharist (in his first published organ piece ~lld
in the massive volume that came more than half a century later), the divinity of Christ, life after d01l1l1
Those all bear on a theme particularly suited to music, that of contact between the everyday allcl lilt I
oternal. By no means does this concern only Christians: the place of a human life in the infinity 01 Ii II III
is <lmaUer for all. And as Messiaen went on, drawing into his music the songs of birds and the rhyllltll'
oj morlioval IIllji~, modern serialism and the sounds of wind or water, the church in which he was pillyll Iii
110CillliO lho world,
III
Le Banquet celeste (The Heavenly Feast) (1928)
Messiaen was 19, a Conservatoire student, spending the summer holiday on his aunt's farm. What he
wlote was, by his own later account, "a very charming, tender, soft and springlike piece that ha~ nottlinn
I!xlraordinary about it". On that last point, though, opinions may differ. Marked "Very slow, ecstatic", the
NOI k enters a new realm of decelerated time - a realm in which it is at ease, thanks to its harmonic
1.llIljUage, also new. Here Messiaen introduced his second mode (of alternating whole tones alld
,1'lllilones), within which chord progressions hover, or move strangely, The marked key is Fsharp major,
11111 II is the key towards which the music perpetually aspires.
Diptyque (Diptych) (1930)
II: WOI k Messiaen wrote in Paris in the year he completed his Conservatoire studies, and he dedicated
I 'Ii'c1ionately to Marcel Dupre and Paul Dukas, his professors for organ and composition, Its first
11011 i~ particularly a tribute to Dupre, and to his characteristic staccato toccata manner of great
flhl'liIlICC. This music comes to a crisis in canon at the octave, at which point Dupre might have
1111I'd ililo a fugue, Messiaen goes a different way, He makes an exceedingly slow melodic ascent
111'111 Ille vapours of sweet harmonies, the feeling both rapt and wrapped, ecstatic - the principles
, ,"lIliillly as in Le Banquet celeste- and warmly enclosed, (A decade later this movement became
1111,11,· 011110 Quatuor pour la fin du temps.) Messiaen's subtitle prOVides a key: "Essay on earthly life
I ,II ,: ,1!c1 eternity".
parition de l'Eglise eternelle (Vision of the Eternal Church) (1932)
11111116, Messiaen created here a piece in chords that move slowly and with the utmost
1011 Ilill1T1ony aod implacable rhythm together provide an image of the unalterable edifice
II filii 11111 of confusion: "It is the Bride of Christ", according to the composer's poetic epiglapll,
Jill
"Made of heaven's stones, Which are the souls of the Elect". The work is an "enormous and granite-like
crescendo", in which the church comes ever nearer until it blinds us with C major (pure white light,
according to his colour code) long sustained by both manuals and pedals. There is then a corresponding
departure.
L'Ascension (Ascension Day) (1933-34)
While waiting for his biggest orchestral work before Turanga/1/a to be performed, Messiaen transcribed
it for his own instrument, but wrote a new third movement, to replace one form of virtuosity with another.
The first movement's title is explained by the quotation he placed on the score, where the liturgy for
Ascension Day gives Christ the words: "Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify
Thee," The music adapts the corresponding plainsong melody. Turning to those below, the second
movement, inscribed with a prayer for resurrection, alternates a lithe new chant in Messiaen's third mode
(of alternating whole tones and pairs of semitones) with pastoral episodes, and "Transports de joie' is
Messiaen's jubilant answer to a problem he had faced, of finding a fast style as sure and personal as his
adagios had been for several years.
The finale, again headed with words of Christ, seems to answer the first movement's prayer, for its rise 01
chords, foreshadowed there, now climbs ever higher.
La Nativite du Seigneur (The Nativity of Our Lord) (1935)
Coming straight after "Transports de jole", Messiaen's first great organ cycle moves forward into thllllllW
IOllilOIY of rtlylhmic Irregularity and stylistic range. The first performance was given at La Trinite Oil ;,
lolllilory 1936 by throe of Messiaen's friends - Daniel-Lesur, Jean Langlais and Jean-,J:u:qlll"
1111111ol1wnlcl ancl1tlc work was soon recognized as something entirely new in organ music. There 11111111111
plnl:lI::, 1111111111111101 chosen "to hOllour the maternity of the Holy Virgin". The composer's preface 11111111'1
IIxpllllll:i 111111 1110::0 01110 ;110 [ormod ITOm three triptychs, one concerning "our predestination 1I1111111'tI
"II
Ihrough the Incarnation of the Word" (movements III, VII, IX), another "the three births"· ,of hlc Word (IV),
Iho Child (I), and all Christians M- and the last "various personages giving special poetry to the festival
III Christmas" (II, VI, VIII).
(loe of Messiaen's new - and henceforth characteristic - rhythmic techniques is displayed at once in tM
lil:;1 movement: the addition of a small value to unsettle regularity (here a semiquaver [16"'note] addecl to
I liars). The middle section quotes a Christmas plainsong, Puer natus est. Among the others, "Le Verbe"
11.1:, athundering image of descent from heaven in the first part, followed by nine slow phrases of rtlyhllilic
11111 lanai unpredictability, all coming to the same cadence in different harmonizations, In "Jesus accepte
I" ;lIlIffrance", fan-like openings and closings of chords express a grief that is also a triumph, wllile tho
Iliidio is agrand toccata, now wholly Messiaen's, on three subjects: an exultant plunge, atheme expressing
I"v,' lor Christ and a first birdsong impression, seed of so much to come.
Les Corps glorieux (Bodies in Glory) (1939)
,I' "soven brief visions of the life of the resurrected" - brief only in comparison with that life ­
"II' WI illen on the brink of war, and the work's first performance was delayed until November
I ,:invOIl is another sacred number, and this cycle, like its predecessor, contains triptychs: three
"1111''', 01 IIIIl properties of resurrected bodies (I, V, VI), backed by scriptural references, balance
I'xplOiations of the celestial environment - its plenitude of grace (II), its guardian angels (III),
1I111111!III~tc presence of God (VII) - around a massive centrepiece,
III I dllrl lifth movements are monodies. The first, praising the angelic purity of the resurrected,
III III" plainsong Salve Regina, a "homage to the Holy Virgin, queen of the bodies in glory"
Iill"I()III, tile fifth has its monody doubled in octaves, and its repeated-note motif, adapted
1111 1'lIl1all formula heard in "L'Ange aux parfums", hops in sovereign freedom from one
11111011 liolil to another. In the middle movement, a toccata and adagio based on the same
,~" ,nll1ol1 returned to the subject and form of the Diptyque. The sixth is a song of ecstasy in
Ilillllllljor.
111111111101111 unfolds the mystery of the finale. The middle voice is a second-mode cllant willi
III ;1 lIillcfold I(yrie. Below, the pedals move through rhythmic shapes from merlievallndia,
.'"
while the top line is more freely composed. Consistently quiet and marked to sound "distant", the Messiaen took from serialism a cherishing of each note as a separate event, and in the opening monody,
movement brings its cycle to an ending very different from that engineered by "Dieu parmi nous" in lItterly unlike those of Les Corps glorieux, he used "interversion", reading a sequence of 72 notes from the
La Nativite du Seigneur. nnels in (thus: 1,72,2,71, etc.). Notes are thrown every which way, but bizarre registrations make sure some
::Iay identifiable whatever their context. The "Pieces en trio" are further Trinitarian three-part inventions,
dillerent from earlier ones and from each other. The first is dark and pulseless; the second extracts modal
Illnlodies from its serial tissue, and belongs, Messiaen said, among the Alpine glaciers near his summer
Messe de la Pentecote (Pentecost Mass) (1949-50) IlniIiO. Both the more directly picturesque movements present images from the prophets: Habakkuk - "The
.Illy,s littered its cry, and lifted up its hands" - and Ezekiel (the eyed Wheels). The abyss opens in the middle
III "Ius Mains de I'ablme" in the form of a yawning gap between avery low note and avery high one - an
When Messiaen returned to organ composition, after a decade, he was no longer the organist-composer he
Ultl<l 110ard at the end of the open "Communion" of the Messe de la Pentecote. The finale weighs its 64
had been in the 1930s: he had written major concert works, including the Turangal1la symphony, and moved
11111 <Ilions - from demisemiquaver (32"' note) to breve (double whole note) - normally in theform of held
with his Conservatoire pupils into new kinds of musical speculation, notably seriaiism. The Messe de la
Illllills, creating a monumental space within which fantastic birds glide and call.
Pentecote caught up on this history, and was also acontainer, Messiaen noted, for things he had discovered
improvising, while formally it foilowed the five-movement organ masses of Tournemire. As in Toumemire,
music derived from plainsong is often interleaved with freer material: in the "Consecration", for example, the
Pentecost alleluia Veni Sancte Spiritus is adapted to the fourth mode (alternating semitones and minor
thirds), intercut with an Indian rhy1hm in the pedals, to which the manuals add resonance effects. The work
Verset pour la Fete de la Dedicace
also fits its purpose - to be used in the liturgy - in being generaily slow and deliberate. The exception is the (Versicle for the Feast of the Dedication of a Church) (1960)

evocation of the "rushing, mighty wind" at the end. Pentecost congregations at La Trinite had by now, like

those present at the first Pentecost, heard a host of languages, familiar and abstruse.
1IIIIIII'ilili as atest exercise for Conservatoire students, the piece has verses from plainsong - the alleluia
filiI lilillic:llion mass - modified to fit the third mode and answered by refrains from the song thrush, The
1111 111.1111:;0119 melody reappears unaltered in the second movement of the next work,

Livre d'orgue (Organ Book) (1951)

Ille nvidont creative enjoyment of the last work spilled over. Meditations sur Ie Mystere de la Sainte Trinite
rllis second mid-century volume again includes music for liturgical use: Messiaen suggested tho iwo (Meditations on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity) (1969)
"I'iocos en trio"forTrinity Sunday, "Chants d'oiseaux" for Eastertide, "Les Mains de I'ablme" for peniloollill
I;O~1S01IS and "Les Yeux dans les roues" once more for Pentecest. But the abstract title - though illll(lIll,,1I
InlllllmllC:lle his organ after a rebuilding, Messiaen gave a performance at which he improvised after
111)111 Il(II'Oql II; I ronch organist-composers such as de Grigny - fits a more abstract work, in wtlicli :11111"
lilli'" HOlnlons on the Trinity, From that event came the Meditations, of which he gave the first
i IIIJVl1l1l1l1llR II~O I ;>-Ilole patterns.

223
performance at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D. C., on 29 March 1972.
Words are still present in the work - not only because it is theological commentary, like so much of Messiaen's
music, but because phrases are transcribed with the use of notes for letters and themes for the three
persons of God. Along with these bursts of "communicable language" (in movements I, III and VII) come
features from Messiaen's earlier organ music:
slow harmonic processions, toccatas in dense chords, triple counterpoints, plainsong themes, weird stops,
birdsongs.The new work is unusual, though, in that the nine movements are not clearly distinguished. Each
is a grouping of images with longer ones functioning as refrains'. Each is another twist in the same
kaleidoscope.
Three movements are devoted to the three persons: the Father (I), the Son (VI) and the Holy Spirit (VII).
Others concern the divine attributes: holiness (II), infinitude, eternity, changelessness, omnipotence and
love (V), simplicity (VIII). Finally there are three definitions of God: in musically transliterated Aquinas (III), in
evidently suitable for liturgical use, and one could even see the whole book as an extended organ mass,
moving from introit to egress through the act of faith in which communicants admit their unworthiness (IV),
agospel of the Last Supper and Resurrection (VIII- XI), and a Communion triptych (XIV - XVI). And just as
the church's liturgy finds room for parallels from the prophets, so Messiaen points to pre-echoes of the
mmmunion wafer in the manna that fed the Jews in their wanderings (VI) or the two walls of water into
Wllich Moses split the Red Sea (XIII), an instance of the immense force that is the divine presence in the
vUlld, the presence multiplied (XVII) in every church. Yet its length, its nature and indeed its stature make
11111 IJook a liturgy all by itself, a promise and a challenge unlimited by church walls.
Offrande au Saint Sacrement (Offering to the Holy Sacrament) (1930)

a tremendous image of God's passing before Moses crying "I am!" (IV), and in a culmination to the whole Prelude (1930)

cycle (IX). Four movements, including the last two, end with major chords against which the song of a Monodie (1963)

yellowhammer picks out discordant notes, leaving the possibility that more is yet to be said - or perhaps
suggesting the sublime indifference of nature, which, being close to God, has no need of explanation. 1111 ()/{liInde probably belongs to the early 1930s, the Prelude to the time of La Nativite: neither was
'1IIIi,II/lei until after the composer's death. The Monodie, which he wrote in 1963 for a treatise by his
I LUll Jean BonfHs, looks back through the Livre d'orgue towards Les Corps glorieux.

Paul Griffiths
Le Livre du Saint Sacrement

(Book of the Holy Sacrament) (1984)

LJuring most of the decade or so after the Meditations Messiaen was occupied with his opera Saint Fral1vol.':
iI'Assise (1975- 83), but then in 1984 he rapidly produced awhole new organ cycle, bigger than any 11101
hacl gone hefore. There was a commission, from Detroit. The more important stimulus, though, must lIuvl'
Gome 1rom what he had continued to discover while improvising at mass at La Trinite, from his ceaselo: ...
IfI~cill:ltioli wilh his instrument and its potentialities, and from his desire to bring to the organ -In 11111
CIIlIlCI1, 1I1crcfore - what he had found in the opera house and concert hall. Le Livre du Saint Sac/oil II 'II/
II;, w; 1I111el1 as Ihe Mlirlifalions, a summation, including such favourite notions as the Dedication alluliliol
(IJlIIVIIIIIIHlln III anel XIV), 12-nllte mechanisms (making interversion an image of transubstantiatioll. 1111
I I1:11 IlIh III 01 1I11):Jcl illill 111(; 110dy of Chri~t) and, of course, various birdsongs. Many of the pioco:, "II

"I 225