For the Birds.

Peter Hill, Who Recently Finished Recording the Complete Piano

Music of Messiaen, Talks about Performing the French Master's Music

Peter Hill

The Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1819. (Sep., 1994), pp. 552-555.

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Mon Dec 17 10:22:57 2007
-
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- Peter Hill on performing Messiuen
FOR THE BIRDS
Peter Hill, who recently finished recording the complete piano
music of Messiaen, tallts about performing the French master's music
0 n my first visit to Messiaen he began our meeting with a
prepared speech (the only one I ever remember him mak-
ing), ending half-jokingly - 'Though I am a French composer, I am
not a French "impressionist".' As I played to him, the moral of this
for the performer was at once apparent: however turbulent the con-
text, every sound had its place - 'I must hear every note' - even, for
example, in the sweeping avalanche which forms the final gesture
of the 'Regard de l'esprit de joie', and elsewhere in the Vingt
regards, even in what seem to be clouds of sound (marked in the
score 'brouillC de pCdale'), Messiaen actively disliked any undue
blurring of texture.
Messiaen's remark is significant also because it hints at his central
purpose as a composer, so much concerned with sources of inspira-
tion which, however mysterious and indefinable in themselves, he
sought through musical means to bring into the realm of concrete,
tangible experience. This holds good not only in his religious
works, but also in the music (so much of it for the piano) which is
derived from his exhaustive study of birdsong. Rather than the imi-
tations or 'impressions' one might expect, Messiaen's approach is to
translate from nature, inventing parallels or 'metaphors' which have
their own purely musical integrity. As an example from the
Catalogue d'oiseaux one might compare his depictions of 'night':
there are three of these, utterly different, but equally evocative and,
it should be stressed, equally sharply defined as musical structures: a
cadence hypnotically reiterated ('L'alouette lulu' [woodlark]), a
'quasi-serial' passage, utterly systematic, yet producing (paradoxi-
cally) feelings of disorder and disquiet ('La chouette hulotte' [tawny
owl]), or, in 'La rousserolle effarvatte' (reed warbler), a mechanistic
complex whereby circling isorhythms compete with a brittle arith-
metical game ticking in the piano's highest register.
Nonetheless, it is essential for the performer of Messiaen's music
to realise that this 'objective' side of his musical personality
(stressed perhaps to excess in his public explanations of his music) is
far from the whole picture. In my own personal experience of work-
ing with him, Messiaen revealed himself as a passionately instinc-
tive musician; he was certainly no pedant, but concerned above all
that I should understand, and thus be able to communicate, the spirit
of his music. In performance nothing does his music a greater dis-
service than an approach which achieves accuracy (in the literal
The Musical Times
sense) at the expense of imagination, that fails to explore the music
in terms of its meaning and atmosphere, through those nuances of
rhythm and sonority which bring the notes on the page to life.
Moreover, despite its dazzling difficulties, it is true for Messiaen
as for any other music that the ultimate test of virtuosity lies not in
the quantity of notes but in their quality. So, the hardest thing
about ex.la is the unison theme (b.6): calm, remote, simple to the
point of austerity, yet (without the pianist apparently doing any-
thing) imbued with a gripping presence (this, after all, in
Messiaen's theological programme is the music of the 'star and the
cross', the beginning and end of Christ's earthly existence). Much
depends, of course, on how the ground is prepared, in the introduc-
tory ideas, whose difficulties are more obviously technical. The
opening bar should be steely in rhythm and evenly powerful (an
intriguing problem of fingering, incidentally: I have even experi-
mented by reversing Messiaen's pianistic intention by beginning
with the right hand), yet - as a gesture - violent and unstable, and
above all giving no hint of the glacial response to come, this equal-
ly implacable though ppp. The return of the theme, in the second
half (ex.lb) raises another point of importance. marked forte,
Messiaen here implies the most intense possible cantabile: any sug-
gestion of 'triumph' would be inappropriately extrovert, and at once
dissipate its tension (as well as undermining the purpose of the
poignant descant added in the treble). For the pianist it is useful to
bear in mind similar writing for strings (as in the seventh movement
of the Quatuor pour la fin du temps) where the discipline of the
bowing serves to keep the expression 'contained' and inward.
If the essence of performance in the 'Regard de 1'Ctoile' is the
most vivid response to the music's drama, this is true equally of
Messiaen's great slow movements, as in the 'Regard du Pbre'
(ex.2) with which Vingt regards opens. In contrast to majority
opinion, my personal view of this is not simply as a timeless medi-
tation, but ideally as a prelude to the whole work, filled with pre-
monition as well as the sense of defining its vast scale. Granted it
is headed by one of Messiaen's most extreme (and controversial)
tempo markings (triplet semiquaver = 60). But, first, such mark-
ings are not absolutes; tempo, as Messiaen was the first to
acknowledge, is both a matter of personal temperament and of cir-
cumstance (the acoustic, the piano, etc). More importantly, the
 PIANO
e l'ktoile et de la-croix)
E x . 1 (~ ~ 8 0 % ~.REGARD
): UE L'ETOILE. B B . l - 9 .wD E X . 1 B (BEI.OU) OD.
idea of extreme slowness is not so much to bring the music to a
standstill, but the reverse, to enhance its sense of expectation, as -
sound-by-sound - the music reveals its meaning. Again it is the
idea (not just the letter) of Messiaen's intention which matters; my
own mental image is of examining some vast and magnificent
sculpture - the west front of Chartres would be appropriate - inch
by inch by torchlight.
Another dimension to the drama lies in the tension that the tempo
brings to the playing. In this two general considerations are
involved: the pulsations in the upper stave are subsidiary and must
occupy a quite distinct musical space. This shadowing of the
dynamic calls for unremitting concentration and finesse - and
indeed the diminuendo which brings the end of the piece to the
edge of silence, on the rare occasions it works to perfection, has the
quality of a miracle. The other point concerns the balance of
chords, a subject on which Messiaen felt strongly, detesting as he
did the gratuitous spotlighting of the top note which is an uncon-
scious habit of many pianists. Messiaen's chords should resonate
from within, any prominence due to the theme taken care of by
8 world of his late style.
September 1994
27-28 0 Editions Diorand S.k!GMP and reproilioced by permission
doublings - though here, I think, some discreet emphasis may be
justified by the low register (again this depends on circumstance).
Even when all this is achieved, however, still the music remains
elusive: one could readily imagine a performance flawless in its
pianism, yet lifeless, without the 'love' that Messiaen calls for.
Yet, frustratingly, if one invests the music with self-conscious emo-
tion (here as also in the stupendous virtuoso passages of the Vingt
regards) the effect is immediately false.
The mention of balance, and the quality of piano sound, brings me
to the heart of what the piano meant to Messiaen, a fascination
which goes some way to explaining its decisive role in his career. It
was the piano, after all, which signalled Messiaen's return to nor-
mality after repatriation from prison camp, in the two-piano Visions
de 1'Amen (1943) (the first work composed under the inspiration of
Yvonne Loriod); to which he assigned his most speculative and per-
sonal thoughts - in the radical music of 1949-50, and in the
Catalogue d'oiseaux - and which put the seal on his birdsong years
in La Fauvette des jardins (1970), set appropriately among the lakes
and mountains which surrounded his summer retreat; and, towards
the end of his life, which her-
alded his return to creative
health after the exhaustion
which followed his comple-
tion of Saint Frangois, in the
Petites esquisses d'oiseaux,
characterised by a grace and
wit not normally associated
with Messiaen, and which are
the gateway to the strangely
luminous, 'weightless' sound
On my early visits Messiaen
(later he was handicapped by
The Musical Tilnes
 Extrkmement l e n t ,rnyst&rieux, avec
Ex.2: 'REGARDDrr PERE'.~ . C1 Editions Durand SA/U\IP and rrproducrd by prrnlission
infirmity) would still come to the piano and demonstrate chordal pas-
sages; it was clear from the way he touched the keyboard that he was
absorbed by the infinitely subtle blendings of sound and colour that
could be obained. Often he would suggest the bringing-out of inner
voices, thus emphasising harmonic characteristics: 7ths, 9ths, the
major or minor quality of triads (he referred constantly to harmony in
tonal terms: the 'dominant', the 'dominant-of-the-dominant', and so
forth). I remember especially the E major triad at the centre of 'Le
loriot' (golden oriole), which distils both the brilliance and the still-
ness of midday, and which in Messiaen's hands had a gorgeous radi-
ance, his timing of the anticipatory grace note making it speak slowly,
majestically, with the 'brassy' quality suggested in the score.
As well as this almost orchestral approach to keyboard colour
Messiaen was acutely sensitive to qualities which are peculiar to the
piano: the gradual, and varying, decay of tone - so that for him the
piano resembled a sort of mighty, 88-keyed gamelan - together
with its capacity for resonance. In the seascapes from the
Catalogue - 'Le merle bleu' (blue rock thrush) and 'Le courlis cen-
drC' (curlew) - Messiaen so revels in the piano's bass percussions
(the boom and crash of the surf) that these become not merely local
effects but the basis for the entire piece, as the medleys of shrill
birdcalls dart and flicker in their reverberations. Ex.3 is from the
other end of the spectrum, an upper resonance at its most delicate
and subtle, taken from the opening to the first of the Pre'ludes
(1929), a work which despite its date (Messiaen was still a student
at the Paris Conservatoire) is far less dependent on Debussy's
example than one might expect (and unaccountably neglected by
pianists). Here, despite the use of sustaining pedal, it is possible for
the upper line of chords to remain clear, but only if played with an
exquisite pianissimo. I remember experimenting endlessly with the
fingering: in Messiaen, as with all music, one hopes to organise the
technique in a way that mirrors the logic of the music. But all too
often the particular demands of his chord-types defeat this ideal, so
that one is forced into a strategy which satisfies either a pattern
(thus aiding the memory) or keyboard convenience and control: as
can be seen, the solution which works for me in this case is the
'illogical' one (non-pianists may imagine fingering has little rele-
5 54 The Musical Times
amour t E des,triolets = 6 0 )
vance to interpretation, whereas in reality its impact on the music is
as decisive as, with string instruments, say, are matters of bowing
and choice of position or string).
This truth is underlined in Messiaen's later piano works which
specify all fingering in the greatest detail, and reveal at least as
much about his intentions as the markings of dynamic and articula-
tion. These indications were not added, as I had previously sup-
posed, by Yvonne Loriod, but come from Messiaen himself (who,
incidentally, composed always in great secrecy and would discuss
nothing of a work in progress, even with his wife).
Virtuosity in the balancing of colour and dynamic becomes still
more critical in the later piano music, from Cante'yodjayb (1949)
onwards. Pianistically the task is to characterise as sharply as
possible the rapid interplay of events; in terms of interpretation
the challenge is to convey these as part of a coherent whole. In
Cante'yodjayB the episodic nature of the music resides in Messiaen
juxtaposing passages of rampant virtuosity with rigorous musical
mechanisms (which call for equally rigorous playing). The music
proceeds almost impulsively, in a way that makes the piece
unique in Messsiaen's output (and which perhaps explains his
later disapproval - 'a virtuoso work of no importance'). In
'Neumes rythmiques' from the Etudes de rythme the process
becomes formalised into clearly differentiated streams: refrains
and episodes. Even with this understanding of its underlying
momentum, 'Neumes rythmiques' invites two opposing strategies
which are not easy to reconcile: whether to 'expound' the piece as
a sort of structural abstraction or to characterise detail for all it is
worth in the hope that the overall sense will somehow emerge. As
a solution to the dilemma, Messiaen's own recording (made in
1951 on a pair of 78s devoted to the Etudes) is ingenious. The
refrains are frankly cool and 'neutral', underplayed one might say;
the pay-off is that they thus form longer paragraphs, kept utterly
distinct from the episodes, which in contrast are fiercely hard-
edged, each fragment exploding into life on the impulse of tiny
rhythmic irregularities.
What makes the Catalogue d'oiseaux the supreme challenge in
Messiaen's piano music is that the essentially simple principle
September 1994
 4 4 5 4 5 4 4 5 4 4 5
2 2 3 2 3 2 2 3 2 2 3
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
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Ex.3: 'La c : o ~ o ~ n rnn.1-2
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underlying the Etudes is here deployed with infinite imaginative
resource. The ideal in each piece is a fluid interplay of differing
degrees of momentum; above all, it is vital that the performance
does not degenerate into a series of 'snapshots'. As in all
Messiaen, the pacing of vast spaces and the timing of moments of
revelation are paramount; and the key to them is in realising that
the relationship between Messiaen's music and the inspiration
from nature finds its most complete expression in the very struc-
ture of the music, not merely in its details. Again I find myself
somewhat at odds with the conventional wisdom: to me
Messiaen's forms are not simply a matter of cunning juxtaposition;
rather there are transformations and evolutions through which the
music truly develops - if it were not so, the Catalogue would
indeed live up to its misleading title.
To the pianist, the ornithological details of the Catalogue, daunting
at first, should help if they encourage a release of the imagi nation -
and it is a work which requires so much dedicated practice that one
may easily become a slave to the text. This appeal to my sense of
fantasy was very much a feature of Messiaen's advice to me. Not
only was he anxious that I understood the 'character' of each birdcall
and the atmosphere of the well-remembered landscape - all of which
he felt so intensely; he urged me constantly to phrase musically and
poetically - and even in the most virtuoso passage 'never like an
etude' was a perpetual injunction. A case in point is the dazzling
flight of the kingfisher (from 'La bouscarle' [Cetti's warbler]), which
was to have the grace and flexibility of Chopin playing - and how
well might the advice be applicable to Messiaen's earlier music: the
cascades in the 'Premiere communion de la Vierge' or the coda to
'Le baiser de 1'Enfant-JCsus': fluid and flexible, never exercises in
finger dexterity. Also interesting, from my conversations with
Messiaen, was the development in his own thinking, through these
birdsong years, which became freer and less literal. Compare, for
example, the garden warbler as it appears in 'Le loriot' - where it is
indeed a pianistic tour-de-force, so rapid as to be simply a texture
(and dependent on breathtaking virtuosity) - to the piece which bears
its name - La fauvette des jardins - which Messiaen added in 1970
September 1994 T h e Musical Times
as a pendant to the Catalogue. Here its musical
function is melodic, inexhaustibly so, yet also har-
monic, and therefore structural; for the piece's
central idea - revealed with great subtlety and ulti-
mately to overwhelming effect - is one of reflec-
tion, so that the harmonies which form cadences in
the bird's song come progressively to be felt as
forming a unity with the harmonies of the great
lake, themselves reflecting the gathering and wan-
ing of the colours of the passing day.
Every performer of contemporary music has
encountered scores so complex in their detail that
they appear as a blueprint not so much a represen-
tation of sounds but a recipe for physical action, a
set of instructions which have only to be followed
(as far as possible) to the letter. Messiaen's oeu-
vre has one piece of this type, the Etude 'Mode de
. . indicative
that this is a work that Messiaen came frankly to
dislike, both as music and for the trailblazing
importance attributed to it (certainly the eccentric-
ities of his 1951 recording suggest that even at the time he had little
faith in it). I think that what, overwhelmingly, was confirmed by my
sessions with Messiaen was that this piece is exceptional: true
enough, in Messiaen's music one starts (conscientiously) with the
text, but in the end what one performs is not notes but meaning.
This raises another facet of modern performance, illuminated
by working with Messiaen, that 'holy grail', the perfect authentic
realisation of a composer's intentions. For some this is an unat-
tainable ideal, for others (like myself) it is both undesirable
(because undermining the creative relationship between compos-
er and performer) and indeed impossible to define. Certainly in
Messiaen's case I can testify that he expected from the performer
an intelligent, questioning response to his scores, just as, when
teaching, it was not obedience but a positive reaction that he
wanted. I was never in any doubt that Messiaen's comments were
advice, not instruction; and the performances (I should empha-
sise) are mine, not his, On a few occasions I found it impossible
to reconcile his view of the music with my own; taking the deci-
sion to go my own way took some courage at the time, though at
this remove it seems right and natural. In fact I came to realise
that his criticisms, though always reflecting the clear-headed
decisiveness which I stressed at the outset, were not dogmatic but
(cunningly, I suspect) angled either to enrich my understanding
or to reinforce my convictions, to encourage me further down a
path which I had already taken. Most of all I am grateful for the
insight I gained into the way Messiaen's mind worked - not so
much what he thought about music (scarcely in doubt in this
much-interviewed composer) but the way he thought in music. It
was the revelation of this, complete and instantaneous, which
occurred when, speeches over, Messiaen began to sing, to gestic-
ulate, to sketch a few notes on the piano, that makes for me those
first minutes of our first meeting an indelible memory.
The Messiaen companion, edited by Peter Hill, will be published
by Faber this autumn