https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOiBBmlZ404

This past spring break I visited New York City where I saw Jean-Yves Thibaudet perform the Turangalîla Symphonie with the New York Philharmonic. It premiered in 1919 by the famous conductor Leonard Bernstein, who also composed the music for “West Side Story.” The symphony, however, was composed by the French composer Oliver Messiaen. So, if you’re interested in music or just wanted to go down a rabbit hole of something you never thought about, why not learn about Messiaen and his masterpiece?

Oliver Messiaen was somewhat of a prodigy, for he was able to teach himself to play piano and was accepted into the Paris Conservatory at just age eleven. The conservatory produced some of the most well-known composers and players of the Romantic era, such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Camille Saint-Saëns, Erik Satie, and Pablo de Sarasate. In its time, it was the forefront of new music. Debussy and Ravel pioneered Impressionism—which exchanges melody for harmony to paint “colors”—in classical music, and likewise Messiaen was at the forefront of a new type of music: microtonal. This makes use of notes in between the familiar 12 (A, A#, B, C, C#…) that have been used for centuries. Thus, it has a very unique sound. One of Messiaen’s most famous works that makes use of this is called “Quartet For the End of Time.” The frightening work was composed while Messiaen was confined in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II and was first  played at the camp with himself at the piano.

Turangalîla was written as a love song and was inspired by the pentatonic and octatonic scale of Indian music. The piece makes use of a large orchestra, a piano, and a unique instrument: the ondes Martenot. This instrument has a sort of spooky, whistley, electric sound and is often used in a horror context. It uses a keyboard and a ring, but it’s better explained by this video. The symphony lasts about an hour and twenty minutes (long even for a symphony) and the chaos is even lulling, yet one still gets the feeling that there is a story being told. 

“Joie du Sang des Étoiles” is probably the most famous movement, and it contains the most clear message of joy. It literally means “Joy of the Blood of Stars.” The name of the symphony derives from two Sanskrit words, although he says the true meaning is untranslatable. Messiaen wrote, “Turangalîa means, all at the same time, song of love, hymn to joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death.” Messiaen’s symphony, in its own unique way, successfully portrays the goal of music: emotion.