Olivier Messiaen’s Analysis Seminar and the Development of Post–War Serial Music

Abstract

In a music history understood as a series of compositional problems, the music of Olivier Messiaen can only be allocated a place with the greatest difE1culty, one exceptional instance withstanding.* This is the piano study Mode de valeurs et d'intensites, written in Darmstadt (of all places) in 1949, whose systematic ordering of durations, dynamics, articulation and pitch values, taken together with Webern's employment of twelve-note technique, are considered decisive for the emergence of serial music around 1950. Since then, the written introduction to the work, in which Messiaen explains the layout of the materials, and the opening page of the score, have both demanded attention in any historical overview of the music of the twentieth century.l The present contribution can do nothing to remedy the relative neglect of other compositions from Messiaen's oeuvre within broadly conceived music histories. Rather, the aim is to provide a more extensive explanation than has been customary in these accounts of the fascination Messiaen held for the post-War generation. This will be accompanied by impressions of Messiaen's Analysis Seminar at the Paris Conservatoire from leading proponents of new music after 1945. Since 1994, Messiaen's analyses have gradually appeared in print,2 but their influence can also be traced indirectly in the theoretical writings of Boulez and Stockhausen and directly in the letters written by Goeyvaerts and Stockhausen during their stays in Paris. The notes Goeyvaerts made in twenty scores during his studies with Messiaen are an important supplementary source, and they receive particular attention here.3 In May 1941, after his return from the concentration camp Stalag VIIIa, where the Quatuor pour la fin du temps was written and successfully premiered, Messiaen was invited to teach at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris. At that time he had to be satisfied with a modest appointment as a lecturer in harmony; however, this did not prevent him from acquainting his students with personal analytical and compositional insights over and above the official remit of his role. From October 1947 Messiaen