Messiaen's "Gagaku"

Author(s): Luigi Antonio Irlandini

Source: Perspectives of New Music , SUMMER 2010, Vol. 48, No. 2 (SUMMER 2010), pp.
193-207
Published by: Perspectives of New Music

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23076971

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 Messiaen'S Gagaku

Luigi Antonio Irlandini

GAGAKU IS orchestra,
Haïkaï for THE FOURTHwrittenand central
in 1962 after amovement
honeymoon of Messiaen's
trip/concert tour to Japan. Messiaen spoke in interviews about both
his travel and the composition in a natural, unpretentious way, firmly
connecting the piece with a personal and touristic experience. He saw
Japan as a paradise, "a country where everything is noble" (Samuel,
1986). His fascination for the place, culture, and people inspired him
to compose a seven-movement piece in the spirit of illustrations or
postcards. This is evident from the titles of each movement, which are
the names of places he visited. While the first and last movements are
respectively entitled Introduction and Coda, the others have the fol
lowing titles: no.2: Le parc de Nara et les lanternes de pierre, no. 3:
Tamanaka-Cadenza, no. 4: Gagaku, no. 5: Miyajima et le Torti dans
la mer, no. 6: Les oiseaux de Karuizawa. Respectively, they refer to the
park in Nara with its stone lanterns, Yamanaka lake, a live performance
of court music gagaku, the island of Miyajima with its portals in the

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194 Perspectives of New Music

sea, and Karuizawa, a mountain resort at the foothills

The score's subtitle "esquisses Japonaises" emphasiz
tious sketch nature of the work.
Given the haikai in the title, a listener is bound to search for
Japanese haiku elements such as brevity, surprise, lyricism, simplicity,
syllabic structure, and a connection with nature. Instead, Messiaen's
haikai vary from one and a half to five and a half minutes. Although
the sensation of time in music is rather psychological than
chronometrical, these durations—extended for a haiku, and short for a
composer such as Messiaen—not always convey the sense of brevity.
His musical language is cold and inexpressive, leaving no room for the
surprise element (typical of a haiku). The static blocks of dense and
intricate texture lead the listener to experience a feeling of complexity
rather than that of simplicity. Traditional haiku structure pattern of
three lines each with five, seven, and five syllables has no consequence
in Messiaen's pieces, although the absence of this structure finds its
precedent in the short free-form haikai of the Soun school (Stryk,
1981). Notwithstanding the all-pervading bird song transcriptions, a
connection with nature remains available only to those ears able to
recognize them as bird songs, or to those who have a previous
knowledge of Messiaen's love of nature. In fact, his compositional
method or écriture1 and musical aesthetics are incompatible with the
above mentioned characteristics of a haiku.
This disconnection with haiku aesthetics seems to indicate that
Messiaen never really left his own world—that of European music—
and his own self-centeredness. Or would there be a deeper intention
hidden? Most written accounts about Sept Haïkaï never go beyon
reporting the honeymoon trip as Messiaen's only inspiration or reaso
for composing this music. History seems to tell us that Sept Haïkaï
clearly born out of a nostalgic impulse in which the culture an
aesthetics of far-away and "exotic" Japan represent the sublimated an
romanticized condition to which Messiaen yearns to return or connec
to. And his connection is only momentary, as a brief touristic visit
almost accidental, for Sept Haïkaï is the first and only reference to
Japan in the composer's large oeuvre. Except, perhaps, in the opera
Saint François d'Assise, in the way the angel moves: that movement i
based on the slow walking of the actor in Nô theater, aiming to awak
in the public the sensation of something alien, that is not from th
world.2
There is, however, one of the pieces which allows us to pursu
another way of understanding the whole set. Gagaku, the midd
piece, is the one haiku where Messiaen transcends the nostalgi

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 Messiaen's Gagaku

impulse and redeems his entire set of seven haikai, and he does it by
means of religion.
By 1950 Messiaen already had an established career solidly grounded
in tradition and strongly imbued with Catholic theology. Since his
early orchestral work Les Offrandes Oubliées of 1930, Messiaen meant
to "take the idea of Catholic liturgy away from the stone buildings
destined to worship and install it inside other buildings that seem not
to have been destined to this genre of music" (Perier, 1979;
translation by author). He put his music to the service of the eternal
truths of Catholic faith. This mission pervades his oeuvre until his very
last composition, except for a thirteen-year long interval that could be
called the "avant-garde years," from 1949 to 1960, as will be seen
further ahead.
To the eyes of post-war technocrat European avant-garde—which in
1950s and 1960s France became mainstream—Messiaen would have
been the nostalgic composer par excellence, as religion was not much
favored by its scientist and anti-metaphysical view of art. What could
be more nostalgic than religion, which means to tie back to Godi What
could be more in contradiction with the spirit of positivistic ultra
modernism? How would it not be nostalgic to attempt to tie back to
something that had been dead since Nietzsche's proclamation? For th
avant-garde, nostalgia is a form of weakness, a reactionary impulse. It
does not propel the artist into progress and the future but backwards
towards something the avant-garde considered unreachable and
illusory. Messiaen's place in avant-garde shows a unique example in the
dialectics between nostalgia and innovation. How could a composer of
theological music become accepted by the atheist avant-garde?
Messiaen's openness to non-European musical traditions had earned
him the fame of an eccentric among the Paris Conservatoire academics
The same openness made him also actively interested in the new
generations' ideas. He taught most of the important avant-garde
composers born in the 1920s and became the most prestigious
composition teacher in Europe from 1942 until the 1980s. Messiaen's
"avant-garde years" record an intense exchange with younger
composers, and an increased interest in new composition methods
With the first performance of Réveil des Oiseaux at the 1953
Donaueschingen Festival, Messiaen became officially a senior member
of the avant-garde, as Paul Griffiths put it (Griffiths, 1995).
The period between 1949 to 1962 could be called the composer's
"avant-garde years" because it lacks an exclusive dedication to religious
themes. The only theological compositions in this period are Messe d
la Pentecôte (1949-1950), Verset pour la Fête de la Dédicace (1960)

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196 Perspectives of New Music

and Livre d'orgue (1951), all for solo organ. Livre d'org
pieces for liturgical use, but they are written in a mo
language than the other two compositions. In fact, a pr
non-religious themes is noticeable in his compositio
beginning with Cantéyodjyâ and Quatre Etudes de rythm
emphasis on music based on bird songs since the 1952
Certainly, he did not let go of religion completely, fo
ornithology still belong, for Messiaen, to the realm of
mystical significance of birds as the equivalent on earth
sky completes the connection. Couleurs de la Cité C
marks the return to Catholic theology. This is a striki
that, in order to allow a further progress in his musica
structure to take place, Messiaen's religious interests h
temporarily to an almost exclusively technological appr
with new, more complex compositional methods based o
on rhythm, color, and bird song.
Thanks to this technological move Messiaen establ
among the avant-garde movement renewing his cre
professional role as a composer. His next step was to ret
theology now in-formed by the compositional innovat
his dialogue with the younger generation. As he wa
teacher, Messiaen enjoyed the rare privilege of not suf
from his avant-garde students and colleagues because o
tendencies and the extra-musical contents in his work.
Other than birds, Gagaku is the missing link between positivism and
theology. Sept Haïkaï stands between Chronochromie, of 1960, the last
composition of the "avant-garde years" and Couleurs de la Cité Céleste,
of 1963, which marks the return to Catholic theology. Sept Haïkaï
adopts some of Chronochromie's materials and continues exploration of
its highly complex and systematic new technique dealing with colors
and durations (Johnson, 1975). However, the two years of
compositional rest that separate the two pieces reflects a new step in
Messiaen's artistic path and an important change in his personal life.
The atmosphere of this new compositional moment is that of a new
start in life, a more relaxed attitude towards composition, the intent to
reuse old discoveries instead of looking for new ones, an opening to
indulge with the "exotic paradise" of Japan, and an explicit return
towards religion. Still not yet a religious piece, Sept Haïkaï shows that
the composer's mind had opened to accept this other paradise so much
that he pays homage to it.
The work contains, in its fourth movement Gagaku, theology
revisited in a new scenario, that of Shintoism, briefly replacing

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 Messiaen's Gagaku

Catholicism, although Messiaen had made sure to state clearly in an

interview with Claude Samuel, that he had "reproduced this
(jjoijaku's) static, hieratic and sacred atmosphere while trying to give it
a Christian dimension" (Samuel, 1986). This observation demonstrates
how important it was, for him, to avoid any doubts about his
Catholicism: it denies any possible personal identification that
Messiaen might have had with Shintoism, by revealing a quasi
missionary attitude, since, "to give a Christian dimension" to ßußaku's
sacred (shintoist) atmosphere, seems to intend to "correct" it
somehow, and replace it by the only "true faith," the Catholic.
Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to ask the composer what he
had meant to say, or how this Christian dimension would have been
given. However, a tentative answer to this how will be approached
below, after an introduction to the idea of "stylized transcription." For
now, it is necessary to consider other, more fortunate observations
made by Messiaen, which prove the existence of some musical and
aesthetical affinity that made possible the coming together of those
two religions in a work of a composer who had no need whatsoever to
associate himself to any religion different from his own.
Messiaen was aware of the common aesthetic grounds that linked his
music to Japanese jjagaku. He stated it clearly in his interview with
Claude Samuel:

Japanese music is static, and I myself am a static composer because

I believe in the invisible and in the beyond; I believe in eternity.
Now, Orientals are on much closer terms with the beyond than
we are, and that's why their music is static. The music written by
me, a believer, is equally static. This no doubt explains my attrac
tion to Japan.

And speaking about how the Japanese perceive his music, he says:

I believe that the Japanese have understood the role of color in

my music, but also—although they are not Christian—the sense of
ritual, for they have developed this sense within them through
their practice of ancestor worship. . . . The Japanese live a hectic,
even reckless, reality, yet at the same time they cultivate the sphere
of the sacred, the invisible, the static (Samuel, 1986).

In these rather personal, informal, almost naïve words, Messiaen pro

vides his personal answer to the question of the dialectics between
nostalgia and innovation. As mentioned before, his original goal was to

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198 Perspectives of New Music

bring Catholic liturgical music into the concert hall.

solid understanding of the tradition of plainchant, c
personal work as organist in Catholic liturgy at the ch
Trinité in Paris, Messiaen was deeply imbued by the se
stasis contained in Christian sacred music. With the addition of the
influence of Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, Messiaen's musical
language became strongly non-dialectic and static. Not all of his music
is static, but, as this quality matured and found a new impulse and
expression through his "avant-garde years" it became a characteristic of
his style even in those pieces that make no theological reference and
were composed by purely structural considerations.
How does music convey ritual and stasis? There is a blatant
discrepancy between the styles of Japanese gagaku and Messiaen's
Gcißaku. Once the listener overcomes it, it is possible to actually hear
the musical similarity between the two, to the extent that some have
seen in it an act of imitation (Griffiths, 1995), or falsification (Watkins,
1995). However, considering Messiaen's compositional procedures as
a whole, it is the concept of stylized transcription, and not of imitation,
that really takes effect. It is a trademark of his writing, as exemplified
by his orchestral transcriptions of bird songs, his adoption of Greek
meters and Säriigadeva's rhythmic cells (deçi-tâlas) by transcribing,
juxtaposing, and superimposing them into his rhythmic structures, and
his stylization of Indonesian gamelan sounds.
In Gaßaku, there is no note-by-note transcription, but a
transcription of the role of certain instruments in the ensemble, or, in
other words, a transcription of the role of certain musical parts in the
texture; and, finally, a transcription of the mood of Japanese ritual
music. These musical parts are, therefore, "rewritten," transcribed into,
and assimilated by Messiaen's own style, resulting in quite different
melodies and harmonies. As he points out in Sept Haïkaï's score notes:

Gagaku is the noble music of seventh century Japan. It is still

practiced at the imperial court. Here are featured the two main
timbres of this music: the Sho (mouth organ), replaced by an
eight-violin ensemble, and the Hichiriki (primitive oboe), replaced
by the trumpet [translated by author].

That the hitiriki is a "primitive oboe" is a common eurocentric mis

conception based on the idea that a worldwide evolutionary process
finds its point of culmination in western culture. At the same time that
Messiaen partook of this outmoded perception, he did not fail to
notice the high sophistication of instrumental ¿jajjaku music, specifi

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 Messiaen's Cagaku

cally that of the tößciku category, which originated in China's Tang

dynasty. The fact that the syô mouth organ is only employed in the
tôgaku ensemble and not in the ensembles of the other two categories
of contemporary gagiiku (Terauchi, 1998) indicates that Messiaen's
interest was turned to tôjjaku music, although he does not mention
this specific term. The other two categories, by the way, are komagaku,
of Korean origin, and the mixed vocal and instrumental mikagura, of
indigenous origin.
Back to the issue of how Messiaen would have given a Christian
dimension to ßagaku's sacred atmosphere, it is possible to speculate
that this would have been accomplished by means of the stylized
transcription, which would have lent to the Japanese model a western
dressing, namely, that of Messiaen's compositional technique and
orchestration, which had for long time been associated, in his music, to
Catholicism. In this sense, the sound of Messiaen's music would always
be Catholic, because of this consistent association between his music
and that religion. Be it as it may, this Christian/Shintoist relationship
was only possible because the sense of ritual and stasis was already
present in both Messiaen's and Japanese music.
The standard tôgaku instrumental ensemble for performance at the
court and at temple ceremonies combines winds (three syô, three
hitiriki oboes, three ryûteki flutes), plucked strings (two biwa and two
koto), and percussion instruments (one of each of the following: kakko
and taiko drums, and the syôko gong). The term ßagaku means
"elegant music" (Malm, 1959).
Here follows a brief description of how Japanese gagaku transmits
the sense of stasis and ritual. It is based on a recording of the
composition Etenraku (Marett, 1990), the most famous piece of the
kanten3 repertory. The melodic line is distributed in heterophony
among all winds instruments, with the syô providing, with its seventeen
bamboo pipes, five- or six-note clusters in the background. This
harmony has no function other than color and its intervallic content is
pentatonic.
The basic melody is performed in the hitiriki with gliding and
microtonal inflexions, while further sophisticated ornamentation is
provided by the ryúteki. Its structural units repeat along the entire
piece and, although they may be recognizable as unchanging motifs,
they seem to fluctuate around the same notes, producing a sensation of
invariance that, at the same time, does not allow the identification of
what is invariant. The melody does not unfold a narrative sound
process, which would be characterized by a beginning structure, a final
structure, and continuous transformations that lead from the former to

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 Perspectives of New Music

the latter (Stoianova, 1976).4 Melodic durations are moderately long

and seem organically ruled by breathing. The listener perceives, in the
melody, a solemn flow of elementary rhythms and pulse, and, at the
same time, does not feel a sensation of rhythm in the traditional sense
of the term, but rather a sensation of durations.
The slow arpeggios in the plucked strings instruments add a slow
agogic accent, in the same way as the basic rhythmic patterns of the
kakko drum and the slow individual strokes in the syôko gong and low
taiko drum. Although the kakko's tremoli start slowly and gradually
accelerate, there is no sense of gradual or not gradual transformation in
them. The tremoli in this slow/fast pattern are repeated without
producing any sense of direction or general agogic change.
Considering it in all of its textural components, the music is
repetitive, although never repeating itself identically. The lack of
change produces an effect of suspended time: the music is static. There
is no teleology, no purposeful direction in a transformation sound
process. There is no development either. The dynamism between the
textural components—the main line and its heterophonic derivations,
the syo's timbrai harmony, the percussion accents and tremoli—once
established, does not change, and is prolonged for the whole duration
of the music, without the components altering their function or
changing themselves. There is no dramatic climax.
I call this set of characteristics circularity, as the music produces the
feeling of staying around a certain situation or mood without
beginning or end except by starting arbitrarily and ceasing to proceed
at a point where a cycle—that would otherwise continue—seems to
allow the sense of conclusion. Circularity produces false movement
and, therefore, a static movement.
Here follows a brief analysis of Messiaen's Gagaku, with the only
purpose of demonstrating the circularity of its compositional processes,
and showing how such circularity produces the sense of stasis and
ritual. Therefore, it is far from an exhaustive analysis.
Messiaen's Gagaku has four different layers of texture. In the first, a
trumpet, doubled by two oboes and English horn play the main
melody in unison, which corresponds to the Japanese hichiriki's role.
The second layer has no corresponding part in the Japanese "model,"
although Robert Sherlaw Johnson has compared it with the ryûtekï1 s
role (Johnson, 1975). In my view, the Japanese model's heterophony
is lost in the transcription when Messiaen chooses in favor of a
polyphony between the two layers. This second layer consists of a
homophony with a piccolo flute and an E flat clarinet loudly playing
dissonant intervals in counterpoint to the main melody. The third layer

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 essiaen's Gagaku

has eight violins assigned to play "almost disagreeable harmonies"

(Messiaen, 1966) on the bridge without vibrato, and loudly. This
corresponds to the syô mouth organ part, but here the pentatonic
sound blocks are transformed into chromatic clusters with eight
different tones The fourth layer consists of a four-part polyphony each
played by one percussionist. Three of them have each a different set of
chromatic metal instruments: cow bells, crotales, and tubular bells,
while the fourth percussionist plays seven metal instruments: two small
Turkish cymbals, two gongs, one Chinese cymbal, and two tam-tams.
Like the other movements in Sept Haïkaï, Gajjaku is a self
contained, non-dramatic, non-teleological, static, circular music time,
comparable to what Karlheinz Stockhausen termed moment form as
applied to his own music. Kramer considers Chronochromie and
Couleurs de la Cité Céleste—the two pieces chronologically adjacent to
Sept Haïkaï-—to be compositions in "practically pure" moment form
(Kramer, 1988). In its whole, but also in each isolated movement, Sept
Haïkaï may be considered in the same way, although it falls in an older
form of a composition or suite in several movements, or, more
precisely, in a form of "composizione a pannelli,'''' to use a term
frequently used by Franco Donatoni, which refers to a suite, in the
sense of consecution, of different panels, each one forming static,
isolated and complete moments.5
Messiaen's écriture constructs the entire movement's suspended, static
time by superimposing and coordinating the three melodic/harmonic
layers of music in a single block formed by three sections: A with four
measures, Β with nine measures, and C with other nine measures in a
symmetrical arrangement: ABCAB. Although this does not create as
self-contained a unit as a typically Messiaen non-retrogradable rhythm
would (such as ABCBA), it still creates a strong sense of self
containment. A and Β are repeated practically identically, with slight
differences in the ornamentation. The sections are not distinguishable
by ear. For example, in the main melody, the existing distinction
between the sections is blurred by the use of very similar motifs
irregularly juxtaposed—in a similar way as in the main melody of
Etenraku—and by the pervading fluctuation around the same tones, Fjj
and Gjt in the lower register, and D and E in the higher register.
The way chords follow each other is also at the service of no
progression, no linearity (Example 2). There are thirteen different pre
fabricated chords/clusters/colors in the violins layer that I have
represented with lower case letters from a to m. As they are also
articulated in three sections and arranged along the melodic layer in
the ABCAB disposition mentioned above, the result is a consecution of

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 Perspectives of New Music

chords/colors that has no sense of direction. Notice that the repetition

of A is identical, while that of Β is almost identical, the only difference,
in the latter, being the insertion of chord g between f and a. As for
section C, the central unit, it consists of two occurrences of the
sequence e-h-i-j-k followed by a different one, e-l-m-f. These chords
"hover" above the melody "as the sky is above the earth," as the
Japanese say, according to Messiaen's observation (Samuel, 1986).
The percussion part is rather complex in itself. Each one of the three

EXAMPLE 1 : GAGAKlf S MAIN MELODY

© COPYRIGHT ALPHONSE LEDUC & CIE, PARIS. USED BY PERMISSION.

A Β
a b c a d e f a d a b defgadabc

EXAMPLE 2 : ORDER OF CHORDS/COLORS IN GAGAKU

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 Messiaen's Gagaku 203

sets of chromatic metallic instruments has a

of durations that range from one thirty-
second notes. These cycles are permutatio
Chronochromie's table of 36 permutati
fourth percussionist's part differs fro
structure and dynamics, as it does not us
thirty-second note durations and has a pia
parts are all pianissimo. The fourth part c
instruments in the same order (two Tu
Chinese cymbal and two tam-tams) in seve
with slight irregularities in the way, a
different way of slowing down its rhythm a
Due to the superposition with the other melodic and
harmonic/timbral layers, the texture of the first three percussion lines
does not separate in the listener's ear from the fourth percussion line in
the same way they would separate were the percussion music to be
heard alone, isolated from the pitch material. The perception of this
four-part polyphony of metallic sounds is global. The ear integrates
them in a statistic field of klangs and reverberations, like a sound mass
of far away bells. Therefore, this is one more timbrai phenomenon,
similar to that of the eight violins. The combination of melodic and
percussion instruments is a music continuously vagrant within its realm
of movement or false movement.
While Messiaen's music had little connection with haiku aesthetics,
it was quite close to the central principles of Gagaku. This consists in
the sense of stasis and ritual conveyed by both. As for the other
movements in Sept Haïkai', they also are all static, but only Gajjaku is
"hieratic, static, sometimes religious and nostalgic, with a slow and
implacable tempo," as Messiaen describes the general character of the
piece in the score (Messiaen 1966).
Why don't the other movements convey the same sense of ritual that
Gagaktt does, even though they are composed in the same static,
repetitive, non-dramatic musical language? It might be just because of
the strength of the suggestion in the title providing the image of ritual
in the listener's mind. It might be because of the slow tempo and the
processional feeling of simple and slow rhythms, and for the fact that,
in Gaßaku, the listener feels a pulse that is not so much perceptible in
the other movements. Maybe it is a consequence of the stylized
transcription, which, in an indeterminate way, is able to convey the
solemn flow of the Japanese model's ritual.
Whatever the reason, moment-form, circularity, and non-teleology
produce, in music, the experience of less movement, making it closer

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 Perspectives of New Music

to something outside time, something absolute a priori the time of

phenomenal world, the "beyond," as Messiaen put it. But music is a
phenomenon of time, and it can only "pretend" not to be, meaning, it
can only be a symbol of that which is outside time. When music time
expresses stillness and the lack of movement, it seems closer to
eternity, it carries our imagination out of the world of becoming
(devenir) and of relative phenomena. The spiritual tendency, as
opposed to the materialistic, mechanistic and intellectual, the
experience of the Sacred, is expressed in music by stasis produced by a
circular and non-narrative musical language.
The reader and I have seen how the existence of a common aesthetic
element between Japanese gagaku and Messiaen's Gagaku has granted
the necessary condition to transform the initially nostalgic impulse into
an innovative impulse. This common element is the sense of stasis and
ritual, present in gagaku and, independently already present in the
music of Messiaen. Without this element, Messiaen would never have
overcome the nostalgic impulse.
We have seen also ßagakus's stylistic, superficial elements—more
specifically, the musical materials and the functional roles of
instrumental parts, but also the pitch language, durations, and texture
—going through a transcription that immediately transformed them
into Messiaen's stylistic elements, that which I have called stylized
transcription. The "similarity" effect with Japanese gcißaku became
omnipresent, but difficult to pinpoint with precision.
Therefore, other than that common aesthetic element, there is
Messiaen's écriture performing the decisive and active role in the
transformation of nostalgia into innovation. Active, because in it
resides the power of knowledge and of the material means for
realization: the use of already mentioned techniques manipulating
written signs; the conscious use of the results produced by such
techniques. Writing acts here as a filter, transforming the Japanese
materials of the past into the materials "of the future" or, in better
words, of the avant-garde, making it impossible for the former to be
merely imitated or copied.
This non-imitative relationship between the composition Gagaku
and its Japanese "model" cancels all desire to return to the past or to
"go Japanese/' which, in fact, seems Messiaen never had. Such desires
would have retained the nostalgic and would have resulted in the lost
of artistic and behavior authenticity. It is this non-imitation that makes
Gcißaku a typically French or, in a wider sense, European, piece of
music. By saying this, I do not intend to individuate what is French in
this composition or in Messiaen's style, since, in this period, a

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 Messiaen's Gagaku

European composition was an international rather than national

phenomenon, where French, German, Belgian, Italian composers
exchanged ideas, techniques, and philosophies. Furthermore, the
inclusion of the Japanese element comes in to complicate even more
the identification with whatever would be French in the case. Of
greater interest is to recognize the use of writing, the European
composer's modus operandi, as the creation of musical sounds by
means of written signs that represent sounds. This has constituted, in
the case of Messiaen's Gagaku, the formative element responsible for
the transformation of the initially nostalgic impulse into an innovative
contribution to western music.
The same attitude is repeated in regards to religion. Messiaen, a
deeply Catholic composer, saw in Japanese gagaku an expression of the
sacred. For a moment, he allowed himself to visit the universe of
Shinto religion, but no conversion or influence took place. Messiaen
remained in his own faith and, at the same time, was able to perceive
and recognize, at least for a moment, a common element, a deep
similarity, and perhaps identity, of his own religion's sacredness and
that of traditional Japan's.

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 Perspectives of New Music

Notes

1. The term écriture, commonly used in France as well a

{scrittura), refers to the composer's musical writing. Howe
equivalent term in English, writing, does not seem to h
same weight as the French term. I keep using the term in
not for pedantism, neither to honor Messiaen's French he
but because écriture emphatically connotes Europe's techn
and rationalist choice, which submits the ear to the eye. Th
joins various aspects of western musical creation, ranging
notation and techniques of manipulation of signs that for
musical text to the aesthetics and philosophy that give su
it, including style. In fact, the composer's writing is not limite
to calligraphy or notation, neither to the compositional p
or the musical language. It is a set of attitudes and creative
mative principles and procedures used by the composer dur
poietic process, including notation, techniques, structurin
thetics, language, and interdisciplinary and inter-artistic
associations. Writing is not limited to style, either. Style is a result
of writing: a composer's writing elements can be examined from a
study of style. For a history and philosophy of writing in European
music, see Dufourt, 1991.

2. Messiaen specialist Christopher Dingle brought to me this point

about the angel's movements, in a personal conversation during
the symposium in which I presented this paper.

3. Kargen is the tôjjaku repertory when it does not include dance.

4. Stoianova calls the initial and final structure "entities" (Stoianova,

1976).
5. From my personal conversations with Franco Donatoni.

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 Messiaen's Cagaku

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