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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)

Composer of the Week: Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): Episode 3: Exploring the Music of Peru

Episode 3

Episode 3: Exploring the Music of Peru

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)

Exploring the Music of Peru

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), Exploring the Music of Peru

Donald Macleod focuses on Messiaen's Peruvian-inspired works.

Donald Macleod focuses on Messiaen's Peruvian-inspired works. With Chant des deportes; L'amour de Piroutcha; Cinq rechants; Livre d'orgue (5th-7th mvts).

Donald Macleod journeys through Olivier Messiaen's Peruvian inspired compositions

Olivier Messiaen was the single most important contributor to the organ repertoire in the twentieth century. He took up learning the organ whilst he was a student in Paris, and was fortunate to hear virtuoso organists around the city including Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré. Aged just twenty-two, he succeeded Charles Quef as titular organist at the Sainte-Trinité in Paris. Messiaen remained in this post for over sixty years, composing many solo works for the organ that pushed the instrument to its very limits. He rose to become one of the leading composers in France, and also a worldwide musical celebrity. This week Donald Macleod focuses each day on one specific organ work Messiaen composed, whilst exploring the period in which it was written along with those other instrumental works from the same time.

In the years following World War Two, Olivier Messiaen who up until that point was regarded mainly as a parish organist, found himself propelled into the limelight. He was referred to as the Atomic Bomb of Contemporary Music. In the summer of 1945 he turned his attention to a song cycle called Harawi, exploring themes of Love and Death. These songs may have been inspired by his wife Claire who was now seriously ill, or by a new women in his life, the pianist Yvonne Loriod. Similar to his Peruvian folklore-inspired choral work Cinq Rechants from a few years later, Harawi is in part based on the Quechua language of Peru. By 1947, Messiaen returned to the Paris Conservatoire as a teacher. Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin and even Quincy Jones were all taught by him at some point. Just a few years later, after a gap of some ten years, Messiaen returned to writing music for the organ with his Livre d'orgue. It is a pioneering work which pushes the instruments boundaries to the very limits. In this music Messiaen was keen to abolish our perception of time by employing heterophony, where several musical structures proceed alongside each other without perceptible coordination.

Chant des déportés
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Davis, conductor

L'Amour de Piroutcha (Harawi)
Rachel Yakar, soprano
Yvonne Loriod, piano

Cinq Rechants
RIAS Chamber Choir
Daniel Reuss, director

Livre d'orgue (5th - 7th mvts)
Hans-Ola Ericsson, organ

Producer Luke Whitlock.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod explores the organ music of Olivier Messiaen

Donald Macleod explores the organ music of Olivier Messiaen, who was regarded as the 20th century's most important contributor to the repertoire of that instrument

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Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)

Episode 3: Exploring the Music of Peru

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