The Vocal Score for Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise

Abstract

Olivier Messiaen. Saint Francois d'Assise (Scenes Franciscaines): Opera en 3 actes et 8 tableaux. Partition piano et chant. Reduction par Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2007. Volume 1: Acte I: 1er tableau, 2e tableau, 3e tableau. [Personnages, resume de l'action, analyse du premier tableau, 4 p.; analyse du deuxieme tableau, p. 92; analyse du troisieme tableau, p. 149-50; score, p. 1-244. ISMN 979-0-046-29603-1; pub. no. AL 29 603. i72.51.]Olivier Messiaen. Saint Francois d'Assise (Scenes Franciscaines): Opera en 3 actes et 8 tableaux. Partition piano et chant. Reduction par Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2010. Volume 2: Acte II: 4e tableau, 5e tableau. [Personnages, resume de l'action, p. iv-vi, xi-xii; analyse du quatrieme tableau, p. xi-xii; analyse du cinquieme tableau, p. 93-94; score, p. 1-187. ISMN 979-0-046-29604-8; pub. no. AL 29 604. i72.51.]Olivier Messiaen. Saint Francois d'Assise (Scenes Franciscaines): Opera en 3 actes et 8 tableaux. Partition piano et chant. Reduction par Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2011. Volume 3: Acte II: 6e tableau. [Personnages, resume de l'action, p. iv-vi; analyse du sixieme tableau, p. ix-xii; score, p. 1-231. ISMN 979-0-046-29605-5; pub. no. AL 29 605. i72.51.]Olivier Messiaen. Saint Francois d'Assise (Scenes Franciscaines): Opera en 3 actes et 8 tableaux. Partition piano et chant. Reduction par Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2012. Volume 4: Acte III: 7e tableau, 8e tableau. [Personnages, resume de l'action, p. v-vi; analyse du septieme tableau, p. ix-x; analyse du huitieme tableau, p. 107-8; score, p. 1-269. ISMN 979-0-046-29606-2; pub. no. AL 29 606. i72.51.]When I was ten, he [Jehan de Gibon] also gave me a score of Pelleas et Melisande. That was something quite unlike the Estampes! A provincial teacher had placed a veritable bomb in the hands of a mere child (Olivier Messiaen, Music and Color: Conversations with Claude Samuel, trans. E. Thomas Glasow [Portland, OR: Amadeus, 1994], 110). The giftof the vocal score for Pelleas et Melisande is among the most striking of Messiaen's favored anecdotes from his childhood. The opera was less than two decades old and, as Messiaen recalled in 1952, the time it was the height of daring (rather like serial music, or musique concrete, or a sonata by Pierre Boulez nowadays) (Obituary for Jehan de Gibon in L'echo du Pays de Redon, 26 January 1952, cited by Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005], 15). The young Messiaen fell in love with the score, repeatedly playing through it, singing all of the parts, and it became a staple of his classes at the Paris Conservatoire. Nearly a century later, a modern-day Jehan de Gibon could present the vocal score of Messiaen's own opera, Saint Francois d'Assise, though a tenyear-old might buckle under the weight.Saint Francois is a large work in every respect, so it is little surprise that the four volumes of its vocal score collectively tip the scales at eight-and-a-quarter pounds, each coming close to the two-and-a-quarter pounds of the vocal score of Pelleas et Melisande. Using a more conventional measure, the Saint Francois vocal score contains just short of 1,000 pages, the volumes consisting respectively of 244, 187, 231, and 269 pages of music along with the initial identical pages listing the characters and providing a brief synopsis. For comparison, the manuscript full score weighs about twenty-five pounds and contains approximately 2,500 pages, while the printed full score (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1988-92) runs to 1,450 pages not including the 20 or so pages in each of the eight volumes listing characters, costumes, and scenery details along with a synopsis of the opera and Messiaen's analysis of each tableau. The opera contains more than four hours of music, scored for an orchestra of 119 and a choir of 150 in addition to the seven vocal soloists. The sheer magnitude of the orchestra, including many bulky instruments, causes problems in even large opera-house pits. …