Le modèle et l'invention: Messiaen et la technique de l'emprunt by Yves Balmer, Thomas Lacôte, and Christopher Brent Murray

Abstract

Reviewed by: Le modèle et l'invention: Messiaen et la technique de l'emprunt by Yves Balmer, Thomas Lacôte, and Christopher Brent Murray Colin Roust Le modèle et l'invention: Messiaen et la technique de l'emprunt. By Yves Balmer, Thomas Lacôte, and Christopher Brent Murray. (Symétrie Recherche, sér. 20–21.) Lyon: Symétrie, 2017. [iv, 62478 p. ISBN 9782364850453 (hardcover), i65.] Music examples, bibliography, index. In French. This monumental work suggests that the essential key to understanding Olivier Messiaen's music lies in an appreciation of how he engaged with and used preexisting music. Scholars have tended to approach his music through his rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic language, encouraged in this pursuit by Messiaen's own theoretical writings, especially Technique de mon langage musical (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1944), translated by John Satterfield as The Technique of My Musical Language (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2001), and the posthumously published Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d'ornithologie: 1949–1992 (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1994). Balmer, Lacôte, and Murray instead suggest that these aspects of his musical language are derived from his study and quotation of music by other composers, music from other cultures, and birdsong. Such quotations have long been noted, both by early critics, who derided them (e.g., Bernard Gavoty and André Hodeir), and by more recent scholars, who frequently mention quotations in various works by Messiaen. The coauthors of this volume, however, argue that such borrowings are, in fact, the foundation on which Messiaen's theoretical and compositional ideas are built. Given the book's encyclopedic aspirations, the introduction plays an essential role in presenting the authors' argument. Several key quotations from manuscripts, including Messiaen's cahiers rouges, the red notebooks in which the composer jotted his ideas, establish the fact that Messiaen often drew inspiration from other composers even at the very earliest stages of a work. These borrowings from other composers, however, were rarely presented in their original forms, instead being "filtered" through the "deforming prism" of Messiaen's musical language. Following the introduction, the bulk of the book is divided into three main sections, each pointedly bearing a verb in the title: "Rereading Olivier Messiaen's Writings," "Collecting the Borrowings," and "Composing with Borrowings." The first of these is the only one intended to be read from start to finish, ideally with a copy of Technique de mon langage musical at hand; the others are catalogs that are more likely to be read piecemeal. In "Rereading Olivier Messiaen's Writing," the authors seek to understand and articulate his techniques of borrowing. To do this, they provide a close reading of several chapters of Technique de mon langage musical and his Traité de rhythme, de couleur, et d'ornithologie. The authors proceed systematically from discussions of melody, to harmony, and finally to rhythm. At each step, they seek to flesh out the composer's enigmatic explanations. Thus, discussion and examples devoted to selections from Messiaen's Technique (pp. 33–37), for example, illustrate how he transforms his models by expanding on the cases given in Messiaen's original text. The chapters on melody and harmony both culminate in concise statements that present a theoretical model for how Messiaen filters his quotations through a "deforming prism" (p. 39). The authors note first that the composer's melodic borrowings essentially boil down to two techniques: either selecting a melody on the basis of its contour but transforming its intervals, or quoting the melodic sequence exactly (pp. 53–54). They then note that [End Page 134] Messiaen's various approaches to harmonic borrowing have one key aspect in common: the harmonies are extracted from the source score as a simple chord progression, erasing all other musical parameters and thus allowing a number of transformations, such as rhythmic, contrapuntal, transposition, or adding notes to the chords (pp. 82–86). The chapter on rhythmic borrowing offers no such pithy theorizing but instead concludes with a postlude that briefly examines how Messiaen's melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic borrowings sometimes intersect and sometimes are disassociated (pp. 106–9). The second main section, "Collecting the Borrowings," seeks, as the subtitle reads, "to enter into Olivier Messiaen's creative...