Olivier Messiaen

Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus

The Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus ("Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus") is a suite of 20 pieces for solo piano by the French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). The suite is a

Structure#

There are 20 movements:

Thèmes#

Messiaen uses Thèmes or leitmotifs, recurring elements that represent certain ideas. They include: *Thème de Dieu (“Theme of God”) *Thème de l’amour mystique (“Theme of Mystical Love”) *Thème de l’étoile et de la croix (“Theme of the Star and of the Cross”) *Thème d’accords (“Theme of Chords”) For example, Messiaen has written that “The ‘Theme of Chords’ is heard throughout, fragmented, concentrated, surrounded with resonances, combined with itself, modified in both rhythm and register, transformed, transmuted in all sorts of ways: it is a complex of sounds intended for perpetual variation, pre-existing in the abstract like a series, but quite concrete and quite easily recognizable through its colours: a steely grey-blue shot through with red and bright orange, a mauve violet spotted with leather-brown and encircled by bluish-purple.”

References#

*Hill, Peter and Simone, Nigel (2005). Messiaen. New Haven & London: Yale University Press

Composer: Olivier Messiaen