Nature Rendered at the Keyboard
“Environ” means much the same in English as it does in French, both as a noun (surrounding, vicinity, proximity) and as a verb (to surround, to encompass, to envelop). French composer Olivier Messiaen’s music places the listener in the midst of a unique sound world. The festival is an invitation to explore this world.
Born to Cécile Sauvage, a French surrealist poet, and Pierre Messiaen, an English-language teacher who translated Shakespeare, Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) became one of the most influential creative musicians of the twentieth century. Throughout his life, Messiaen merged musical and religious fervor in his work as a composer, organist, pianist, ornithologist, and teacher.
Messiaen did not just hear sounds, but also saw and felt them as specific colors. In this neurological condition known as synesthesia, stimulation of one particular sense triggers sensation in another. Messiaen’s work reflects this complex “view” of the world, suggesting deep connectivity throughout all of Creation.
Birds hold a prominent place in Messiaen’s sound world. From the 1950s on, Messiaen made intensive use of American Bird Songs, a set of recordings released by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 1942. Messiaen’s interest culminated with his visit to the Lab and his performance in Bailey Hall in the 1970s.
In Cornell’s 150th year, the complete performance of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux at the Sapsucker Woods Observation Lounge celebrates a common page in the history of the Department of Music and the Lab of Ornithology. The Catalogue d’oiseaux is a near-encyclopedic cycle of works for solo piano that features meticulously transcribed birdsongs from all across France.
As a North American counterpoint to Messiaen’s naturalist creative output, special emphasis will be placed on the music of 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams. In Adams’s own words, his deep fascination with natural phenomena “began with birds.” His work songbirdsongs will be performed at the Summer House in the Cornell Plantations along with an installation of his three soundscapes Veils at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.
The festival will prominently feature Messiaen’s favorite musical medium in the process of sonorous translation—namely, the keyboard, including the organ, the piano, and the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument first developed in the 1920s.
Concerts include a program of Messiaen’s organ music showcasing Cornell faculty and graduate students performing on Sage Chapel’s Aeolian-Skinner Organ, a chamber music evening presented by the new-music group Ensemble X in Barnes Hall, and a recital by pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich featuring Messiaen’s Visions de l'Amen and Boulez’s Structures Deux. Aimard will speak about his experience studying and working with both Messiaen and pianist Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen’s wife.
“Environ” means much the same in English as it does in French, both as a noun (surrounding, vicinity, proximity) and as a verb (to surround, to encompass, to envelop). French composer Olivier Messiaen’s music places the listener in the midst of a unique sound world. The festival is an invitation to explore this world.
Born to Cécile Sauvage, a French surrealist poet, and Pierre Messiaen, an English-language teacher who translated Shakespeare, Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) became one of the most influential creative musicians of the twentieth century. Throughout his life, Messiaen merged musical and religious fervor in his work as a composer, organist, pianist, ornithologist, and teacher.
Messiaen did not just hear sounds, but also saw and felt them as specific colors. In this neurological condition known as synesthesia, stimulation of one particular sense triggers sensation in another. Messiaen’s work reflects this complex “view” of the world, suggesting deep connectivity throughout all of Creation.
Birds hold a prominent place in Messiaen’s sound world. From the 1950s on, Messiaen made intensive use of American Bird Songs, a set of recordings released by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 1942. Messiaen’s interest culminated with his visit to the Lab and his performance in Bailey Hall in the 1970s.
In Cornell’s 150th year, the complete performance of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux at the Sapsucker Woods Observation Lounge celebrates a common page in the history of the Department of Music and the Lab of Ornithology. The Catalogue d’oiseaux is a near-encyclopedic cycle of works for solo piano that features meticulously transcribed birdsongs from all across France.
As a North American counterpoint to Messiaen’s naturalist creative output, special emphasis will be placed on the music of 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams. In Adams’s own words, his deep fascination with natural phenomena “began with birds.” His work songbirdsongs will be performed at the Summer House in the Cornell Plantations along with an installation of his three soundscapes Veils at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.
The festival will prominently feature Messiaen’s favorite musical medium in the process of sonorous translation—namely, the keyboard, including the organ, the piano, and the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument first developed in the 1920s.
Concerts include a program of Messiaen’s organ music showcasing Cornell faculty and graduate students performing on Sage Chapel’s Aeolian-Skinner Organ, a chamber music evening presented by the new-music group Ensemble X in Barnes Hall, and a recital by pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich featuring Messiaen’s Visions de l'Amen and Boulez’s Structures Deux. Aimard will speak about his experience studying and working with both Messiaen and pianist Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen’s wife.
