(O-lev-ya’ Mes-se-an’) 1908–92 French composer Messiaen’s music is unmistakably personal, drawn from a wide range of interests rather than influences. A church organist from his twenties, he was aware of the ‘church modes’ (scales used in Western music before the development of the key system) and investigated other modes, including rhythmic ones. He studied Asian and ancient Greek ...
1908–92, French One of France’s greatest twentieth-century composers, Messiaen began writing at the age of seven, and studied at the Paris Conservatoire from the age of 11 under the tutelage of Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel and Marcel Dupré. In 1931 he became the organist at L’Eglise de la Trinité, where he remained until his death. As a ...
telharmonium, the theremin, the ondes martenot and the trautonium, but of these only the ondes martenot enjoyed much notoriety, thanks mainly to composers such as Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) who incorporated it into some of his orchestral pieces. Electric organs, notably the Hammond organ, were developed, too, and electronic mechanisms were now common on ...
Europe until the manufacture of orchestral instruments from 1910, but it has become increasingly popular with composers since the Second World War, especially in the music of Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) and Toru Takemitsu (1930–96). It has a warm and resonant sound, distinct from the drier and more brittle xylophone. Although a relatively new instrument to western classical music ...
Musique concrète (‘concrete music’) was the term coined by Pierre Schaeffer (1910–95) in 1948 to describe his new approach to composition, based on tape recordings of natural and industrial sounds. The term was chosen to distinguish the new genre from pure, abstract music (musique abstrait). Schaeffer was a radio engineer and broadcaster. Having gained a qualification from L’École Polytechnique ...
Star Trek, and its character has lent itself to the soundtrack of countless other science-fiction and horror films. The instrument also found favour among numerous composers, including Olivier Messiaen (1908–92), who used it in his Turangalila Symphonie, Pierre Boulez (b. 1925) and Edgard Varèse (1883–1965). In contemporary music, there has been a resurgence of interest in the ...
Invented by Maurice Martenot in 1928, the ondes martenot or ‘martenot waves’ possesses a keyboard for separate notes, a sliding mechanism for glissando, and a range of seven octaves. It is probably best known for its appearance in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie and Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine. Honegger, who wrote for it in Jeanne d’Arc au ...
Tubular bells, also known as orchestral or symphonic chimes, are a set of tuned steel tubes with a chrome finish, hanging vertically in a stand with a pedal damper. The optimum range for a chromatic set of tubular bells is 11⁄2 octaves rising from middle C (c'–f''), as notes above or below this range are difficult to tune ...
b. 1932 English composer A member of the Manchester New Music Group, Goehr studied also in Paris with Messiaen. He attended the Darmstadt Summer School in 1956, but ultimately found its orthodoxy too dogmatic. Works such as the Little Symphony (1963) instead attempt a synthesis of serial elements with modality and traditional formal models. The music of Johann Sebastian ...
Debussy was one of the father figures of twentieth-century music, often associated with the Impressionist movement. He was not only influential on subsequent French composers such as Ravel and Messiaen, but also on other major European figures, including Stravinsky and Bartók. His early songs experimented with an intimate kind of word-setting, while his piano music developed a ...
b. 1960 English composer Benjamin studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Messiaen and later at Cambridge with Goehr. While still at Cambridge he came to wider public attention with his orchestral piece Ringed by the Flat Horizon (1980). Since then he has composed slowly but fastidiously, forces ranging from solo (Three Miniatures for violin, 2001) and duo (Viola, ...
b. 1960, British George Benjamin is known as a composer who takes his time. His teachers included Olivier Messiaen, who compared his student with Mozart, but Benjamin has always taken time over his work, often taking a number of years to complete works of a few minutes. His first full-scale opera, Written on Skin, became ...
opera Vanessa (1957) he wrote the libretto. Recommended Recording: The Consul, soloists, Spoleto Festival Orchestra (cond) Richard Hickox (Chandos) Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Olivier Messiaen | Modern Era | Classical ...
Domingo, which was presented by the Washington Opera. Introduction | Modern Era | Opera Major Operas | The Consul by Gian Carlo Menotti | Modern Era Personalities | Olivier Messiaen | Modern Era | Opera Houses & Companies | The Birth of the Metropolitan Opera | Turn of the Century | Opera Techniques | Realism, Naturalisme & Verismo | ...
(Yan’-nis Ze-na’-kis) 1922–2001 French/Greek composer Xenakis took up the formal study of music late, having lessons with Honegger, Milhaud and Messiaen in Paris in the early 1950s. He developed a technique in which masses of sound were manipulated according to laws of mathematical probability. This can be clearly heard in the accumulation of overlapping string glissandos in Metastasis (1954), ...
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