Messiaen's 'Liebestod' and the Uses of Paraphrase

Author(s): Kevin O'Connell

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 150, No. 1907 (Summer, 2009), pp. 19-26
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25597617
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 KEVIN O'CONNELL
Messiaen's 'Liebestod' and the uses

of paraphrase

I want to cite an example of an overlooked quotation in Messiaen's music,

and to ask what it might tell us about his development as a composer.
The fifth and central movement of Messiaen's organ cycle La nativite
du Seigneur is called 'Les enfants de Dieu'. The piece is in three sections,
the first a jaunty dance in irregular rhythm, the second and middle section a
massive chorale, and the third a quiet coda typical of the young Messiaen's
timeless idiom. There are nine movements in all in La nativite (the number
nine signifying the Blessed Virgin Mary's maternity). The central chorale in
B major of 'Les enfants' (bars 27?38) is therefore the middle section of the
middle piece, which suggests some particular significance for the composer.
The passage has always fascinated me. In the reflective, pastoral world of
Messiaen's Christmas portrayal, it has the magnificent, minatory quality of
Yeats's rough beast slouching towards Jerusalem (ex.i).
The passage's very sublimity suggests something alien. We need to find
an explanation for it. It is as if a closer look at a renaissance nativity scene
were to reveal the outline of the Matterhorn looming incongruously as a
backdrop. What is going on in this passage? The reference it conceals has, I
believe, been protected by its very obviousness (ex.2).
Messiaen's chorale is in fact an almost bar-for-bar reworking of the
climactic final passage of Wagner's 'Liebestod'. The importance of
Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for Messiaen, and of its story, has been too
frequently discussed to need elaboration here.1 I want first to describe the
ways in which the 'Liebestod' is used by Messiaen, and then to speculate as
to why he uses it. Messiaen introduces his passage with a straight borrowing
of Wagner's extraordinary opposing thrust of A#?Cjt in the soprano against
the drop of Fft-E in the bass (bars 26?27) (ex.3). Jt w^ t>e noted that in bar
29,1 privilege the second minim chord as the emphatic one. This is mainly
because the harmonic underpinning in the left hand supports such a reading.
In fact the left hand of both Messiaen's schwerpunkt chords (indicated with
arrows in ex.i) replicates both of Wagner's corresponding chords (ex.4).
It should also be noted that the reading of Messiaen's progression
contained in ex.3 allows for a pattern of auxilliary chords a minor third above
i. See Paul Griffiths: Olivier
and below the emphasis chords, producing a melodic line of interlocking
Messiaen and the music of
time (London, 1985), chapter diminished triads. This melodic cycle is broken by the ascending major
8, 'The Tristan trilogy'. second, B-Cft, at bars 30-31, reactivating the cycle (ex.3).

the musical times Summer 200^ 19

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20 Messiaens 'Liebestod' and the uses of paraphrase

Ex.i: Messiaen: La nativite du Seigneur, 'Les Enfants de Dieu', bars 25?38

(Reproduced by permission of Alphonse Leduc & Cie)

pressez toujours

rail. . ....

/ cresc. sempre

I-1

I _ _ f dim. mo

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Ex.2: Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, conclusion

[isolde]_3_!_3_!

pM-f~~j?l la r pppHp pir r F

wo - gen-den Schwall,_ indemto - nen-denSchall, in des

/^A?glT F F f ~j f Ff F Fff F if I gf F Flf T rf

J - wo/to cresc.

Welt A |JV 11 i '

terns
5"?.-"-^j^.

/ / _ _/

l^i r r i" i
we - - hen - dem All,
(*)??? ---- -j_ ----- -^^: ::^.

ffiAt-*- ? P (^ "Tr r 7 > er - trin - ken, ver -

/ dim_

the musical times Summer 2

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 22 Messiaen's 'Liebestod' and the uses of paraphrase

Both passages continue with a pendulum-swing between chords IV and

I in the key of B, Messiaen's I chord being a first inversion. Like Wagner,
Messiaen allows three swings of this IV?I harmonic pendulum, of which the
third is the wind-down one, signalled in both passages by the introduction
of Glq creating a 'minor IV' sonority. (Messiaen also signals his wind-down
by subtly lengthening the third crotchet of bar 34.) In Wagner, the 'minor
IV chord resolves plagally to the long B major pedal with which the opera
concludes. Messiaen's piece resolves also onto a long B major pedal via the
short progression at bars 37?38. Other aspects of the wind-down gesture in
both passages are worth comparing. Wagner's 'minor IV sonority prepares
the wonderful Ctt appoggiatura which sounds just before Islode's 'hochste',
resolving finally to the tonic of B. Characteristically, Messiaen conflates the
'minor IV and the Ctt appoggiatura into one sonority (bars 35?36). Finally,
we may note the long dominant pedal on Ftt that leads into both passages,
though Messiaen reserves the 'Liebestod' key signature of B major for the
chorale itself.
Messiaen's coda is his recomposition of Wagner's concluding pedal.
The parallels are less immediate than those pertaining to the chorale, but
Messiaen's phrase structure shadows that of Wagner, and each bar of
Messiaen 's coda comes to repose on the Wagnerian added sixth chord.

Is Messiaen's 'Liebestod' a quotation, citation, or variation? In musical

terms, it probably comes nearest to Lisztian paraphrase (Liszt being in so
many respects the real 19th-century godfather of Messiaen). Wagner's
passage has become the basis of a free version which sounds much more
like Messiaen than Wagner. This is a very individual idea of paraphrase.
In its liberal use of auxilliary chords and harmonic conflation, the passage
gives the impression that Messiaen's fingers are doing as much of the
work as his musical ear. The main difference between the two passages is
instructive, too. Messiaen's chorale is leached of the tenebrous polyphonic
cross-hatching of the Liebestod, though the similarity of outline is thereby
rendered all the more stark. Messiaen accomplishes this as one might expect
him to: linear motions in Wagner are projected as vertical chord notes in the
chorale of 'Les enfants'. One can only envy the daring of the 27-year-old
composer who could negotiate this mountain and make it utterly his own. It

2. See Jean Boivin: 'Musical
analysis according to
Messiaen: a critical view of
a most original approach',
in Christopher Dingle &
Nigel Simeone, edd.: Olivier
Messiaen: music, art and
literature (Aldershot, 2007),
pp.137-58.
is as if a young poet were to find his voice by writing a parody of 'To be or
not to be'. When one listens to the passages consecutively, the original even
pays the imitation the compliment of beginning to sound like it.
Musically, the idea of paraphrase here described seems to find
corroboration in Jean Boivin's very interesting description of Messiaen's
improvisatory pianism,2 as his students at the Paris Conservatoire would
have experienced it:

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Ex.2 continued

sin - - ken, un - - - be -

# * c?==

4^Vt? > r rr J ' wusst, hoch ----- ste

Hwff ^,,, JT~~r >FT~Hi p- _, r

1 i ppaolce v^ _^- \ 3 "/

fa. ^ *
(Isolde sinkt, wie erklart, in Brangane's Arm
A ,. unter den Umstehenden.)

ifV _ i _i -==m
Lust! ^____- " 3 -. " ?^^

/ ~_ ?~^f _piu p _ morendo

ififtl - I - 1 - I - I - I =1 (Der Vorhang fallt wahrend der letzten Fermate.)

^_____-___^rallent. g

14?., X_uJf(i^l\^LJ I I - I ?
lUy-i^^N" 1 ? '" I. lr~rT t It
the musical times Summer 2009 23

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24 Messiaen's Liebestod' and the uses of paraphrase
3. This interesting subject
is discussed at length by
Sander van Maas. See
'Forms of love: Messiaen's
aesthetics of eblouissement\
in Robert Sholl, ed.: Messiaen
studies (Cambridge, 2007),
pp.78?100.
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A passage from a Mozart concerto would remind him of a harpsichord piece by Rameau
or some piano writing dear to Ravel. The combination of a peculiar harmony, voicing
and choice of instrumentation would create a sound effect that foresaw Pierre Schaeffer's
musique concrete. Under his expert fingers, the so-called Golaud chord in Pelleas et
Melisande would reappear, in an almost exact inversion, in the Bacchanale of Ravel's
Daphnis et Chloe. Transposed and with some added notes, it would quite suddenly become
Stravinsky's famous horn-accented dissonant aggregate in the Rite of Spring.
Messiaen's pianism in this account takes on a morphological aspect,
as disparate harmonic moments merge into one another, and the musical
canon itself turns into a kind of huge rainbow chord. One can sense this
metamorphic aspect in other of his works, for example in 'Joie et clarte
des corps glorieux', no.6 from the cycle Les corps glorieux, the opening of
which is Messiaen's rehearing (and fingering) of Debussy's piano prelude
'Bruyeres'. But the chorale from 'Les enfants' is, to my knowledge, unique
in its extended recomposition of the climactic passage of Wagner's opera.
The chorale of 'Les enfants' is above all a passage of extraordinary
harmonic power, a typical early-Messiaen manifestation of eblouissement?
This might be the moment for a digression on the role of harmony in his
music generally. Messiaen in the 1930s arrives at and helps define a crucial
moment in the development of Western harmony. This is among the last
music which defines its sound in a specifically harmonic way, harmony here
being meant in the simplest sense of the sound of chords. Messiaen himself
was a major victim of the exhaustion of harmony which he had helped
bring about, as his ascetic works of the late 1940s and early 1950s prove.
These works are fascinating because they are by Messiaen; but clearly the
effort of doing without his early harmonic opulence was a heroic and not
altogether congenial one. This is well illustrated in Messe de la Pentecote,
where the intrusion of the earlier Messiaen in the E major passage on pages
20?21 of the score sits uneasily with the rest of the work. In the massively
austere context of the Messe, the passage sounds like a cabaret singer doing
one of her more salacious numbers for a company of cloistered nuns. The
experimental works illustrate what was, and I think remains, the specific
harmonic difficulty for composers, namely the difficulty of filling in the
chords. Stravinsky's late harmony in works like Abraham and Isaac is
often no more than two-part counterpoint, and it is curious that the most
harmonically telling moments in the music of Birtwistle often consist of
two widely spaced lines without any middle texture at all. La Nativite still
belongs to the enviable dreamtime before this problem became a crisis.
Harmonically and rhythmically, Messiaen in the thirties was assimilating
the influence of Debussy and Stravinsky. He did this as a self-confident
artist usually does: by openly acknowledging his debts. This process must
nonetheless have been difficult for a composer who enjoyed the public
exposure of the young Messiaen. The critical mauling he endured over the
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 Bar: 26 27 28 29
dim. ,
^.---. ,. maj. 2nd

Ex.3: Messiaen:
nativite du Seigneur, La 1(\fa*h
*) ft? =" ^#
'Les Enfants de Dieu', < -g. -g.
IV-I progression with J .- ^ a t^- -ft% t^~
auxilliary chords \ ^ ft tfj v_?
B major: IV-lb

Ex.4: Wagner: Tristan t?

kW Isolde, main chords -?

indebtedness of Troispetites liturgies to Les Noces would have finished many

a less determined composer, especially after Stravinsky himself craftily
repeated the charge.4 But Messiaen understood the nature of influence
better than his critics. Live in the borrowed garb long enough, he knew,
and it starts to assume your own shape. The Messiaen 'Liebestod' brilliantly
demonstrates this.

Strikingly, Messiaen's use of paraphrase in 'Les enfants' is literary. The

4. See Matthew Shellhorn:
lLes Noces and Trois petites
liturgies: an assessment
of Stravinsky's influence
on Messiaen', in Dingle
& Simeone, edd.: Olivier
Messiaen, pp. 3 3-62.
My main question remains unanswered. Why the 'Liebestod',
5. This subject is treated
in detail in Messiaen's
programme note to the work,
which is reproduced in full
in the liner notes to Jennifer
Bate's recording for Unicorn
Kanchana, RRC2052-A.
'Liebestod' brings a new reference into the frame, which we are asked to
decode in its new context. This idea of paraphrase should not surprise us
in a composer both of whose parents were writers, and whose own nativity
was being celebrated in a long maternal eulogy even before he was born.
Indeed, the idea of musical notes as words carrying a semantic freight never
left Messiaen. Witness his eccentric take on integral serialism in an organ
work of 1969, Meditations sur le mystere de la Sainte Trinite, where the
sequences of notes spell out actual words, and even a system of cases.5 As
the encyclopedic Traite has now made clear, the Messiaen Gesamtkunstwerk
was almost as much literary as it was musical, and his original and often
eccentric way of explaining music was as synthetic as his compositional
style. Clearly, Messiaen saw himself in the composer-scholar tradition so
dear to France. One thinks of Rameau and d'Indy, whose own large Cours
de composition musicale foreshadows Messiaen's treatise.
and why at this point in La Nativite? As Messiaen's citations from
scripture at the head of the score of 'Les enfants' make clear, he
is concerned in this piece with the effects of the intervention of the Word
upon men. (Meditation on the Word Himself is the subject of the previous
piece, 'Le Verbe'.) The chorale section appears to represent the phrase from

the musical times Summer 200^ 25

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 26 Messiaen's Liebestod' and the uses of paraphrase
6. Paul Griffiths {Olivier
Messiaen, pp.64?65) remarks
on the E major bias of the
cycle, which comes to anchor
in that key at the end of
'Dieu parmi nous'. It could
therefore be argued that
the B major chorale of 'Les
enfants' is also the (tonally)
dominant fulcrum of the
entire cycle.
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Galatians: 'And God sent into their hearts the spirit of his Son, who cried,
Father, Father!' This reading is reinforced by Messiaen's general preface
to La Nativite, where he says that 'Les enfants' represents what he terms
the 'third birth', the spiritual birth of Christians. Our spiritual birth, then,
makes us children of God. Tristan and Isolde represent for Messiaen a vital
aspect of the children of God, as his subsequent cycle of works on the theme
shows. Their love will be fulfilled in death, as will the infant Christ's. In
fact, the 'Liebestod' paraphrase in 'Les enfants' has tilted my understanding
of La Nativite in the direction of our human involvement in the drama.
This wonderful music is no longer simply a picturesque evocation of the
nativity. By placing Wagner's erring lovers at the sublime centre of his work,
Messiaen is invoking the full redemptive power of the nativity, a power that
is made fully explicit only in the last piece of the cycle, 'Dieu parmi nous'.
Christ came for us.6
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