I listened to the whole work yesterday, for the first time in some years. I loved it enough once upon a time to buy the full score - fascinating stuff (as both composer and organist myself - though a million steps behind Olivier Messiaen on both counts, I hasten to add!). And yet one's tastes change. After a while, I began to long for a period of 'extended composition', rather than so many short, sharply differentiated episodes separated by pauses, the whole repeated several times to make a movement. It is all so terribly fragmented to my ear these days. At the end of the day, the 'communicable language' and religious quotations are irrelevant to anyone who sits without the score and listens to the work as pure music: and I would contend that any piece of music has to stand up as pure music, no matter what external ideas or designs were used in its composition. I also experienced severe 'note fatigue': "too many tritones, Mr. Messiaen", to paraphrase a famous quote. I really did start to get the impression that in this work, Messiaen's attention to the extra-musical scheme made him lose sight somewhat of the musical content itself. (I say that not just as a listener, but as someone who has written music, organ works included: all too easy to do when writing and all too painfully obvious when it comes to hearing one's music performed). The movement I enjoyed the most was 'la joie de la grace', the only one which is really 'through-composed' - perhaps the epitome of Messiaen's birdsong writing, 'Catalogue d'Oiseau' notwithstanding. (And the very ending of the whole work is staggeringly impressive). But otherwise, I found yesterday's session a very long haul, I have to admit! (I had listened to Meditations sur le Mystere de la Sainte Trinite the previous week, again with the score, and was overwhelmed by it, as I have always been, so it's certainly not that I don't enjoy Messiaen's music any more). Just wondering if anyone else (should they chance upon this comment) feels the same about the present piece. I am a huge admirer of Messiaen, a great master of 20th century music - I even had the pleasure of meeting him in the 1980s (I used to work for his publisher, Edition Leduc, in Paris), but I am not sure Le Livre du Saint Sacrement really is the best of him. Is it??
at first listening it will seem insignificant, but if you try to play these mincemeats ,this melody, I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s such a delight, something eternal, ancient, unchanging, time
Interesting how it develops it sounds like just total trash and dissonance at first but then you start to hear the patterns and the harmonies emerging through the dissonance
Oh, drop, drop, my slow tears of joy as I hear this testacular piece! I feel it as I hear these angels use their voices. Please offer me the answer God!
Vincenzo Maltempo joue sur un piano d'époque !! Ses interprétations d'Alkan sont fantastiques. Merci pour cette publication, cette "esquisse" opus 50 n°2 est tellement peu jouée...
not an organist but i like arranging things from organ/piano - that being said, in no. 16 how are multiple harmonies being played in the melody when only 1 line of music is written? i swear i hear full triads in the melody. whats written in the part to notify the organist of this? how can i as a non organist tell whats being played without having to try and hum the note i hear and use TE Tuner or something?
I am guessing it is probably use of organ stops like mixtura III and IV. The voices are asigned to a key but at an interval (eg. Mixtura III playes a third above). But it's just my guess. Also I don't know the name of the organ voice in other language then polish, it isn't probably mixtura in english.
Found it (probably) here: 1:43:32 it is notated that there should be used voices nazard 2 2/3 and tierce 1 3/5. Those voices have length of a pipe non divisible by 2 thus thay create sound that is not at octave. Also judging by the fact that tierce means third in thrench i think that it may be voice causing that interval you hear
A lovely piece, no doubt - but a touch too fast in this performance. There's another performance, I think by Ivan Davis, but not sure, which is a little slower, which I find better for this piece.
Merci de proposer un enregistrement de Jehan Alain né en 1911 et mort pour la France en 1940 à 29 ans ! Cette oeuvre est incomplète : on ne sait pas si on doit mettre la pédale forte et certaines mesures sont imprécises rythmiquement... Néanmoins ce compositeur mérite notre attention.
