Messian Essay

The Only Way to Cage and to Capture the Divine Is Through Music
Like a rose embower'd

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflower'd,

Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-wingèd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awaken'd flowers—

All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh—thy music doth surpass.
- To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ellington believed in the extension of time in space, as well as placing spiritual songs
into the repertoire canon in order to glorify spiritual music. His music characterizes a large
idea of the Harlem Renaissance—to celebrate the African American culture and history.
The spiritual in Black, Brown, and Beige, “Come Sunday”, has a slow tempo and two
repeated harmonic loop centered throughout the piece. The connotation of this piece is
religious, death, otherworldly. Both he and Messiaen, who is a part of the catholic
renaissance, felt that religion and faith can and should be represented in music. Both
composers were under social and political duress—Ellington facing segregation in the
United States, and Messiaen facing the Third Reich regime in Germany as a prisoner of war
in a camp. Religion is valuable under tough and precarious situations; sometimes a little
faith is all one have to look forward to the next day. Each of the two composers constructs
his music around this all-important yet impalpable idea into lucid and beautiful music. The
titles of Messiaen’s pieces often correlated to the book of Revelations in the Bible/ The
connotations of his pieces, especially the ones with the divine birdcalls, are of the heavens
and the greater power. Both Black Brown and Beige and the Quatour pour la fin du temps
reflect the devout composer’s divine inspiration; they thus become God’s musicians, and
their timeless music represented the eternal existence of God.
The composition of both these pieces was a leap of faith itself; a jazz musician
composing a large scale work? This was one of the most out-of-place ideas that
contemporary audiences have ever heard of. A French Catholic composer writing a piece in
the Nazi prisoner of war camp, to be played by three other non-believers? It’s a miracle the
guards even allowed Messiaen to compose. These unique situations makes these pieces
special; the music supplement each composer’s prayers to God in an overt way—like
missionaries, Messiaen and Ellington chose to gloriously praise the Lord through explicit
references to the Bible, unlike Ravel, who kept everything cryptic and personal.
In Duke Ellington’s Black Brown and Beige, the first movement Black contains Work
Song and a spiritual called Come Sunday. The listener is captivated by the divine music
itself, which connotes church, Holy Spirit, and the Lord. When the Duke Ellington orchestra
played it, it had no lyrics—so the sacred ‘liturgy’ is absent. Most people would have already
heard this spiritual in the form of a song. However, I argue that even without knowledge of
it being a spiritual, a person would be able to personalize faith through this music. It’s pain,
it’s sorrow, it’s everything in the grand spectrum of life—all calling towards the listener
using wah-wah effects of the trombone, the low tremolo of bass brasses and the saxophone
wailing out the tune. The tune itself has a thick gravitational pull to a lower register,
sometimes venturing out of the register only to come back down; it sounds like the piece
depicts the African Americans stuck in this position, like a raisin in the sun, unable to rise
up and meet their full potential. The said tremolo helps keep time out of perception,
making the tune free-formed in rhythm, like a fantasia. The chromatic line down of the
saxophone’s solo exemplifies that ever-depressing feel and that cry out to God when the
sax does reach the higher register.
In Messiaen’s Quatour pour la fin du temps, the birds are used as a symbol of the
divine. Over the years, humans have associated height with God, such as the story of the
tower of Babel. Birds fly up high, and perhaps that is why we associate birds with the
divine. Messiaen was no exception. The first movement is named Liturgie de Cristal and
was written with birds in mind. In his preface to the score, Messiaen wrote “surrounded by
a shimmer of sound, by a halo of trills lost very high in the trees. Transpose this onto a
religious plane and you have the harmonious silence of Heaven”. The cello and the piano
keep the time, while the violin and the clarinet imitate two separate birdcalls. However, the
cello’s and piano’s parts keep rhythm in cycles of 15 chords, and 29 chords, respectively,
giving the sense that it actually never repeats, resulting in a feeling of eternity and
timelessness. Because it is a quartet, the simplest way divide is 2 by 2. The violin and
clarinet is free, flowing, and improvisation-like because they are birds. On the other hand,
the piano and the cello toil on earth repeating cycles of notes in different rhythmic patterns,
playing chords that connote gravity and dissonance, not unlike the humans who cannot
fathom the divine God.
Ravel never spoke outwardly about their faith. It was not something he felt should
be impressed upon others. In fact, Ravel’s music appears secular, because he does not write
in religious forms or titles. Whether or not he was religious, the divine was still an influence
on his music albeit perhaps subconsciously,
"It was [Blacque-Belair] who made me read the Fioretti of St Francis of Assisi. Although
he was a confirmed atheist, he adored this book, and I was so amazed by it that I used to
imagine it being set to music”.
Stravinsky on the other hand, wrote the Psalm Symphony, as well as other pieces with religious
contexts. In class, we discussed how he is, like Ravel, very internal about his religion. However,
I think even his ballets display a sense of unity with God, with many evocations of the Divine.
Composers are affected by the divine in overt and implicit ways. Not only does the time
drone on in Messiaen’s and Ellington’s pieces, but it also signifies a transfiguration of music
itself into the world of the divine.

Messian Essay

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Messian Essay

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Messian Essay

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Only Way to Cage and to Capture the Divine Is Through Music

Like a rose embower'd

You might also like