COMPleTe OrGan WOrKs vOl iv
TiMOThy ByraM-WiGfield
The OrGan Of sT GeOrGe’s ChaPel
WindsOr CasTle
la nativité du seigneur
l’ascension Messe de la Pentecôte
Offrande au saint sacrement
Prélude
diptyque verset pour la fête de la dédicace
(1908-1992)
COMPleTe OrGan WOrKs vOl iv
TiMOThy ByraM-WiGfield
The OrGan Of sT GeOrGe’s ChaPel
WindsOr CasTle
Disc I
La Nativité du Seigneur
1. I. La Vierge et l’Enfant [7:38]
2. II. Les Bergers [7:16]
3. III. Desseins éternels [6:53]
4. IV. Le Verbe [12:56]
5. V. Les Enfants de Dieu [3:28]
6. VI. Les Anges [3:47]
7. VII. Jésus accepte la souffrance [5:13]
8. VIII. Les Mages [8:10]
9. IX. Dieu parmi nous [9:57]
10. Offrande au Saint Sacrement [4:37]
11. Prélude [8:39]
Disc II
L’Ascension
1. I. Majesté du Christ demandant sa gloire à son Père [6:42]
2. II. Alléluias sereins d’une âme qui désire le ciel [5:36]
3. III. Transports de joie d’une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne [5:15]
4. IV. Prière du Christ montant vers son Père [10:32]
5. Diptyque [11:38]
Messe de la Pentecôte
6. I. Entrée (Les langues de feu) [2:33]
7. II. Offertoire (Les choses visibles et invisibles) [12:28]
8. III. Consécration (Le don de Sagesse) [4:08]
Recorded on 11 & 15-17
July 2008 in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle by kind permission of the Dean and Canons of Windsor
Producer: Paul Baxter
Engineer: Beth Baxter
24-bit digital editing: Simon Smith
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Instrument built & maintained by Harrison & Harrison Ltd
Photograph editing: Raymond Parks
Cover image: Messiaen at the organ of La Trinité in 1938 (private collection of Nigel Simeone)
Design: John Christ
Booklet editor: John Fallas
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
NB At the time of recording, St George’s Chapel was cleared of soft furnishings in order for its stonework to be cleaned. This fact is responsible for the extended reverberation time and enhanced frequency response which can be observed on this disc compared to other recordings made in the Chapel.
9. IV. Communion (Les oiseaux et les sources) [5:59]
10. V. Sortie (Le vent de l’Esprit) [3:36]
11. Verset pour la Fête de la Dédicace [11:03]
Total playing time (2 CDs) [2:18:38]
Messiaen had already been studying at the Paris Conservatoire for seven years when he joined Marcel Dupré’s preparatory organ class in autumn 1927, aged eighteen (he turned nineteen in December of that year); he made very rapid progress, moving into the senior class the following academic year and winning a first prize for organ in the summer 1929 concours.
From the autumn of 1929 onwards, Messiaen was the regular deputy for the Trinité’s ailing titulaire Charles Quef, but he wasn’t only earning a living as a church organist. As recently discovered correspondence with his cousin Paul Mergier reveals, Messiaen was also playing the organ in some unlikely venues: he worked at the famous Parisian music-hall L’Olympia as a cinema organist, and for a time in 1930 he was even considered for a permanent job there (the theatre’s administrator wrote to Dupré asking for an opinion, and Messiaen wrote to his cousin that ‘it interests me, but I don’t yet know if anything will come of it’); he also played for movies at the Théâtre Pigalle.1
Early in 1930, during his final year of studies at the Paris Conservatoire, Messiaen gave the premiere of his Diptyque at La Trinité in
1 Anik Lesure and Claude Samuel (ed.), Olivier Messiaen: le livre du centenaire (Lyon: Symétrie, 2008), p. 36.
2 They were noted in the Bulletin semestriel des Amis de l’Orgue, December 1929, p. 2.
one of the concerts organised by Les Amis de l’Orgue. This was an occasion of considerable significance as it was the young Messiaen’s concert debut in Paris. It took place on 20 February 1930, and there is a short biographical note on the young organistcomposer in the programme: ‘Born in 1908, Olivier Messiaen has studied music at the Conservatoire where he won a premier prix for organ (1929), premiers prix in fugue, accompaniment and music history, a deuxième prix for harmony and another for composition. A pupil of M. Marcel Dupré, with whom he continues to study the organ, O. Messiaen gave two organ recitals last summer at Tencin (Isère).’ These concerts, in a small town just to the north-east of Grenoble, were apparently Messiaen’s first public organ recitals anywhere, given on 15 and 22 September 1929.2
The Diptyque is described in the programme as ‘unpublished’ but ‘in preparation from Durand’ – it was issued in May 1930 and was the first music of Messiaen’s to appear in print. The work is described in a short note by Messiaen with the mixture of musical and theological commentary that was to become characteristic: The composer is at present a composition pupil of Paul Dukas. The first part of this work expresses the anguish and useless torment of
life. It is a prelude in C minor containing four statements of the same theme, separated by short developments. The second part takes up the theme of the first and transforms it. An adagio in C major, based on a single serene, ascending phrase, it expresses the peace and charity of Christian paradise.
As a student and during his early years at La Trinité, Messiaen composed several other short organ pieces: some of them remain unpublished, but two have been issued since his death. Offrande au SaintSacrement probably dates from around 1930, and the Prélude perhaps from a little later. The Offrande is a characteristic Messiaen meditation and the composer noted on the manuscript that the music was ‘bien’. The Prélude is a more complex and extended piece, probably written in the early 1930s.
After an energetic campaign – supported by letters of recommendation from Widor, Tournemire and Dupré – Messiaen was appointed to his post at La Trinité in September 1931, and for the next six decades he took his duties there very seriously, but before his appointment Messiaen had to reassure the Curé that he wouldn’t play anything that might alarm the parishioners. In a letter of 8 August 1931 he wrote about ‘dissonant music’:
When I was deputising at the Trinité, I know that I sometimes exhibited tendencies which were a little too modern, and I regret that now. I was only twenty years old when I deputised for the first time; I am now twenty-two-and-a-half, and at this time of life one evolves very quickly. My current view is that music should always search for the new, but in works for chamber ensembles or orchestra, where the imagination can run free. For the organ, especially the organ in church, what matters above all is the liturgy. The environment and the instrument are not well suited to modern music and it is important not to disturb the piety of the faithful by using chords which are too anarchic. […] I can be well-behaved and classical in style. I will adopt this and both you and the parishioners will thus be satisfied. […] I completely share your opinion about the calmness and moderation required in a church service, musically speaking.
The Cavaillé-Coll organ in the church also served as a kind of musical laboratory for the young composer: he was able to try out new ideas, to explore innovative sonorities, and to develop his musical language accordingly. However, three years after his appointment, the organ underwent an extensive restoration. By the time of the premiere of the original orchestral version of L’Ascension (on 9 February 1935) the alternative for organ had already been published and played in public by Messiaen. This transcription had the newlycomposed ‘Transports de joie d’une âme
devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne’, written during 1934, as a replacement for the original orchestral movement, ‘Alléluia sur la trompette, Alléluia sur la cymbale’. Messiaen considered this colourful and decidedly Dukaslike orchestral scherzo unsuitable for the organ, and substituted a new and dazzlingly idiomatic toccata – the first of several such pieces he was to write for organ.
Since the organ at La Trinité was out of commission, the first performance of the organ version, given on 29 January 1935 by Messiaen himself, was at the church of Saint-Antoine-des-Quinze-Vingts (near the Gare de Lyon). The recital was reviewed in Le Ménestrel (3 February 1935) by a critic identified only as ‘M.P.’: ‘Receiving its first performance, M. Messiaen gave us his L’Ascension, a poem in four movements, written in a very refined style with colours which often seem more orchestral than organistic, and of a mystical tendency. This serenity expresses itself sometimes through quite turbulent music which is adjacent to passages of great poetry, of real beauty.’ Félix Raugel in Le Monde musical (28 February 1935), after claiming (incorrectly) that the organ version had been conceived first, went on to describe Messiaen’s achievement in terms that must surely have delighted the composer: ‘Messiaen has planned this symphonic paraphrase on the Gospels in a way which
recalls the broad and luminous work of the master glassmakers in our cathedrals. An ardently religious soul expresses itself in these passionate pieces with a tumultuous daring, but also at times with a delicate sweetness.’
Messiaen played L’Ascension again at La Trinité on 28 May 1935, as part of a recital he shared with Marcel Dupré to inaugurate the newly-restored organ, to which seven new stops had been added while the instrument was out of action.
Messiaen spent the summer of 1935 in Grenoble, and it was there that he completed La Nativité du Seigneur, his longest and most original work to date. Lasting an hour, it is a series of nine ‘meditations’ on different aspects of the Nativity and the Incarnation, including musical portraits of familiar Christmas images – the Virgin and Child, the shepherds, the Magi and the Angels – but also more abstract theological subjects: God’s predestined plan for us to be his adopted children (‘Desseins éternels’), the Word of God (‘La Verbe’), and the Word made flesh in ‘Dieu parmi nous’, God among us, the climactic piece in the cycle, a blazing toccata based on three ideas that represent God descending from Heaven (the opening chords), His love for Jesus (a slower, gentler theme), and a joyous, leaping tune first heard in octaves. The result is one of Messiaen’s most blazingly affirmative final movements.
For Messiaen, La Nativité was a work of the greatest importance, and the score (published in 1936) has a preface in which the composer chose to publish for the first time an account of the ‘modes of limited transposition’ that he devised as the essential vocabulary for his harmonic and melodic language. This two-page introduction is marks a crucial stage in Messiaen’s musical development. It was also his earliest attempt to explain his compositional technique. But there was much more to his thinking behind La Nativité. At the first performance, each member of the audience was given a small piece of paper in which Messiaen set out his aims:
The emotion, the sincerity of the musical work:
To be at the service of the dogmas of Catholic theology;
To be expressed by melodic and harmonic means: the progressive growth of intervals, the chord on the dominant, pedal notes, embellishments and extended appoggiaturas.
Still more by rhythmic means: rhythms immediately preceded or followed by their augmentation and sometimes increased by a short note-value (half the added value).
And above all by modes of limited transposition: chromatic modes, used harmonically, the strange colour of which derives from the limited number of their possible transpositions (2, 3, 4 and 6 according to the mode).
Theological subject matter? The finest, since it
contains all subjects.
And this abundance of technical means allows the heart to overflow freely.
That final phrase encapsulates Messiaen’s aesthetic position: all the technical procedures and innovations in his compositions were there to expand the emotional range of the music and to enhance its expressive power, to liberate the imagination – ‘to allow the heart to overflow freely’.
Such was the extent of the press coverage of La Nativité that Messiaen prepared a fourpage leaflet containing extracts from reviews, several of them by composers.3 Georges Auric admitted an interesting paradox: while he was reluctant to accept some of Messiaen’s ideas, he had a genuine enthusiasm for the music: ‘It seems to me that on many issues, we would be poles apart. […] So it is a great delight for me to write that some of these pieces are among the most beautiful and the most moving which I have looked at in a long time.’ Another composer, Henri Sauguet, was bowled over:
In this work, comprising nine mystical meditations for organ on the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Olivier Messiaen has achieved a perfect
and brilliant mastery of his art, at the same time as expressing a mystical sensibility of an incomparable nobility and quality. We would like to go into detail about each of these nine pieces, to describe their beauty. They are written in an extremely personal language, using a musical vocabulary which Olivier Messiaen has created himself, using particular modes which he calls ‘modes of limited transposition’. In La Nativité du Seigneur, Olivier Messiaen has reached the highest level of religious expression which music can achieve.4
Messiaen’s later view of La Nativité made it clear just how significant a work it was in his musical development: ‘With the use of Hindu rhythms in La Nativité I produced the proof, at least I believe I did, that it was possible to write music for the organ other than in a post-Franckist aesthetic.’ He added that the work was partly an indirect homage to his composition teacher Dukas – ‘perhaps to his remarkable open-mindedness’.5
La Nativité du Seigneur was first performed complete at a concert given under the auspices of Les Amis de l’Orgue in La Trinité on 27 February 1936, played by three of his friends (Jean Langlais, Jean-Jacques Grunenwald and Daniel-Lesur); three
months later, on 25 May, Line Zilgien gave an all-Messiaen recital at La Trinité including five movements from La Nativité. She was another Dupré pupil, and was Messiaen’s regular deputy until her early death from cancer in 1954 (when she was succeeded by Jean Bonfils). By the mid-1930s Messiaen’s music was being played by other organists: the second complete performance in Paris of La Nativité was given in La Trinité on 23 February 1937 by the brilliant organist of SaintAugustin, André Fleury. The whole cycle was played in public by the composer himself a couple of months earlier, at Rouen Cathedral (on 19 November 1936). Before the outbreak of World War II it was largely through his organ works that Messiaen became known abroad: for example, André Marchal, André Fleury, Noëllie Pierront and the composer himself played his music in London; and Virginie Schildge Bianchini gave a recital in New York (16 May 1938) which ended with four pieces by Messiaen.
For the midday mass, reserved for modern music, I have composed two pieces specially: an offertoire and a sortie. The offertoire comments on the words ‘Les choses visibles et invisibles’ (‘All things visible and invisible’) which we recite each Sunday in the Creed, and which are applied perfectly to the kingdom of the Holy Spirit, an inner kingdom of invisible grace. The sombre colours of the registration, the construction with ‘rhythmic characters’, the alternation of the 16foot bassoon which growls in the extreme bass, with the piccolo and tierce making the sounds of distant bells in an extremely high register, depict the workings of grace. The sortie, entitled ‘Le Vent de l’Esprit’ (‘The Wind of the Spirit’), uses a text from the Acts of the Apostles: ‘A powerful wind from heaven filled the entire house’ (taken from the Epistle of the day). A fortissimo, at first very violent, rises up in rapid swirls, like a chorus of larks as a symbol of joy.6
4 Review for La Revue hebdomadaire, quoted in Extraits de Presse.
5 Brigitte Massin, Olivier Messiaen: Une poétique du merveilleux (Aix-en-Provence: Alinéa, 1989), p. 172.
From 1945 onwards, the pattern of Sunday Masses at La Trinité included a midday Mass reserved for ‘modern music’. On Pentecost Sunday (13 May) 1951, Messiaen gave the first performance of two movements from his new Messe de la Pentecôte. He introduced the work to the congregation in the May issue of the Trinité’s parish magazine:
With the Messe de la Pentecôte, Messiaen set out to preserve and refine some of his most daring improvisations from the years immediately after the end of World War II. He wrote about its origins in Tome IV of the Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie:
The work was written in 1950 but improvised long before then. Here is its history: I became organist of the grand orgue at the Trinité (Paris) in 1930
6 Olivier Messiaen, ‘Orgue’, La Trinité: journal paroissial, May 1951, p.3.
[recte 1931] when I was just 22 years old. My duties required me to play short improvisations on plainsong texts, especially the verses and responses at Vespers. For other services I always played written pieces (Nicolas de Grigny, J.S. Bach, modern music). From 1945 onwards, at the midday Mass, I was allowed to play exclusively modern music, whether it was the works of my contemporaries or pieces I had written myself. I also improvised, in order more fully to become a part of the three great divisions of the Blessed Sacrifice: Offertory, Consecration, Communion; and to put into sharper relief the mysteries of the liturgical year, the grace proper to each mystery, the colour, poetry and particular feeling of each time and each feast; these improvisations gradually became ‘one’ improvisation, always forgotten, always found again, and always repeated: the terrifying groans of the Beast of the Apocalypse alternating with the songs of thrushes and blackbirds, the sounds of the water and of the wind in the trees with the religious meditation and the storms of joy of the Holy Spirit. Hindu rhythms were mixed with the neumes of plainchant, choirs of larks with Tibetan trumpets […] the strangest and the most shimmering sounds were alongside the clearest permutations or rhythmic interversions. The known and the unknown were both to be found there, the visible and the invisible, the world of men and the world of angels. And so it was that the Messe de la Pentecôte was born. Without being my best work, it is without doubt the one which is closest to my true nature, and
the only one intended entirely for my organ at the Trinité (of which it uses all the timbres and their combinations), since it had been improvised many times there, during the years 1948 and 1949. I wrote it down on manuscript paper in 1950. Then I gave up improvising altogether.7
Happily, any abandonment of improvisation was short-lived. But apart from the Messe de la Pentecôte, there is little evidence for what Messiaen’s liturgical improvisations in the late 1940s sounded like. One account, however, is especially evocative: the writer Julien Green made a note in his diary on 18 April 1949 about an improvisation that suggests the kind of blazing originality so characteristic of the Messe de la Pentecôte:
Heard an improvisation by Messiaen on the radio. Music which one could say was composed after the end of the world. It is of monstrous beauty, opening up immense caverns where rivers flow, where mounds of precious stones glitter. We do not know where we are – in India perhaps. The composer was playing on the organ of the Trinité. Never have the vaults of this hideous edifice heard more disturbing sounds. Occasionally I had the impression that hell was opening, suddenly gaping wide. There were cataracts of strange noises that dazzled the ear.8
7 Olivier Messiaen, Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, Tome IV (Paris: Leduc, 1997), p. 83.
8 From Julien Green, Journal (Paris: Plon, 1951). Vol 5: ‘Le Revenant (1946-1949)’.
Plainsong inspired many of Messiaen’s improvisations, and he turned to it again when he wrote Verset pour la Fête de la Dédicace, based on a plainsong Alleluia set against a chorus of birdsong (the song thrush). Despite its title, this short work was not written for the dedication of a church but as a test piece for the Paris Conservatoire. The organ concours for which it was composed took place on 13 June 1961, and the Lebanese organist Raffi Ourgandjian was among those to win a premier prix
Messiaen was fiercely loyal to La Trinité over six decades. In the church’s parish magazine for March 1991, a year before his death, there was an interview to celebrate his sixty years as organist there. Aptly titled ‘Le musicien de la joie’, it included a question about whether all of his works were written to the glory of God. The composer gave a touching and modest reply: ‘I have written pure music (for the purposes of technical experimentation), and music of a secular character. I sometimes regret that a little. Music composed to sing the mysteries of my faith seems more useful for my contemporaries. Perhaps they will be grateful to me for that.’
© 2009 Nigel Simeone
Nigel Simeone is Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Sheffield. He is co-author with Peter Hill of the biography Messiaen (Yale University Press, 2005). The revised French edition of this book (Olivier Messiaen, Fayard, 2008) was awarded the Prix René Dumesnil by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 2008.
Chapel, Windsor Castle
Harrison & Harrison of Durham, 1965/2002
Pedal organ 20 stops
1. Sub Bourdon 32
2. Open Diapason 16
3. Bourdon 16
4. Dulciana 16
5. Quintadena (from Swell) 16
6. Principal (18 from no. 2) 8
7. Flute (18 from no. 3) 8
8. Dulciana (18 from no. 4) 8
9. Fifteenth 4
10. Röhrflöte 4
11. Open Flute 2
12. Mixture (19. 22. 26. 29) IV ranks
13. Double Trombone (18 from no. 14) 32
14. Trombone 16
15. Fagotto 16
16. Tromba (18 from no. 14) 8
17. Bassoon (18 from no. 15) 8
18. Octave Tromba (18 from no. 16) 4
19. Schalmei 4
20. Kornet 2
i. Choir to Pedal
ii. Great to Pedal
iii. Swell to Pedal
iv. Solo to Pedal
Choir organ 15 stops
21. Quintadena 8
22. Gedackt 8
23. Principal 4
24. Spitzflöte 4
25. Wald Flute 2
26. Sesquialtera (12. 17.) II ranks
27. Cimbel (29. 33. 36.) III ranks
28. Krummhorn 8
v. Tremulant On the Screen
29. Diapason 8
30. Lieblichflöte 8
31. Octave 4
32. Lieblichflöte 4
33. Super Octave 2
34. Mixture (19. 22. 26. 29.) IV ranks
35. Trompette 8
vi. Swell to Choir
vii. Solo to Choir
Great organ 13 stops
36. Double Diapason 16
37. Open Diapason I 8
38. Open Diapason II 8
39. Stopped Diapason 8
40. Principal 4
41. Open Flute 4
42. Fifteenth 2
43. Block Flute 2
44. Cornet II–V ranks
45. Mixture (19. 22. 26. 29.) IV ranks
46. Double Trumpet 16
47. Trumpet 8
48. Clarion 4
viii. Choir to Great
ix. Swell to Great
x. Solo to Great
xi. Great Reeds on Pedal xii. Screen Choir on Great
Swell organ 16 stops
49. Quintadena 16
50. Violin Diapason 8
51. Lieblich Gedackt 8
52. Echo Gamba 8
53. Voix Celestes (from ten. c.) 8
54. Principal 4
55. Rohr Flöte 4
56. Nazard 2 2/3
57. Fifteenth 2
58. Tierce 13/5
59. Mixture (22. 26. 29. 33.) IV ranks
60. Oboe 8
61. Vox Humana 8
62. Contra Fagotto 16
63. Cornopean 8
64. Clarion 4
xiii. Tremulant
xiv. Octave
xv. Solo to Swell
Solo organ 8 stops
65. Cor de Nuit 8
66. Concert Flute 4
67. Viole d’Orchestre 8
68. Viole Celeste 8
69. Corno di Bassetto 8
70. Orchestral Oboe 8
xvi. Tremulant
71. Orchestral Trumpet (unenclosed) 8
72. Orchestral Clarion (unenclosed) 4
xvii. Octave
xviii. Sub Octave xix. Unison Off
Eight toe pistons to the Pedal Organ
Ten thumb pistons to the Choir Organ
Eight thumb pistons to the Great Organ Eight thumb pistons to the Swell Organ
Eight toe pistons to the Swell Organ
Six thumb pistons to the Solo Organ
Eight thumb General Pistons, duplicated by transfer on to Swell toe pistons
Two adjustable pistons for all the couplers
Eight lockable memories to the Divisional Pistons
Thirty-two lockable memories to the General Pistons
Stepper thumb and toe pistons (forward and reverse)
Reversible pistons to Great to Pedal (thumb and toe), Swell to Pedal, Swell to Great (thumb and toe), Choir to Pedal, Solo to Pedal, Solo to Great, Choir to Great, Swell to Choir, Solo to Choir, Solo to Swell General cancel piston
© 2005 St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle
All rights reserved
Timothy Byram-Wigfield is Director of Music at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, an appointment he has held since January 2004. In this capacity he directs the famous choir of men and boys in its schedule of daily services, as well as providing music for occasions of royal and national significance. As well as directing music for the annual service of the Knights of the Garter, he was privileged to direct the music for the Blessing service following the marriage of HRH Prince Charles and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall in 2005. More recently, the Choir has taken part in events to mark HM The Queen’s eightieth birthday, and sung at the wedding of Peter Philips and Autumn Kelly. The Choir has also made a number of recordings on the Delphian and Naxos labels.
As a choral conductor, Timothy Byram-Wigfield has worked with a number of large-scale and symphony choruses. From 1993 to 1998 he trained the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus, preparing works for performances conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, Ivor Bolton, Nicholas Kraemer, and Markus Stenz, amongst others. Alongside his work in Cambridge from 1999, as Director of Music at Jesus College, he was Conductor of the Northampton Bach Choir.
He has deputised for rehearsals of many other choruses, including the London Bach Choir. He has recently been appointed the Associate Director of the Oxford Bach Choir.
As an organist he has given recitals in many cathedrals in the UK, and toured to the USA, France and the Netherlands. A regular recording artist for Delphian Records, his recordings have consistently met with critical acclaim, including a disc of transcribed overtures from the celebrated Lewis organ in the Kelvingrove Hall, Glasgow (DCD34004), and a disc of music by the Edwardian Alfred Hollins (DCD34044). In 2009 he will record a second volume of overtures for Delphian, at the organ of Rochdale Town Hall.
He is also active as a pianist, singer, composer and choral arranger. He teaches piano and organ at Eton College, and is a regular examiner for the diploma examinations presented by the Royal College of Organists.
Messiaen organ music on Delphian
Olivier Messiaen: Organ Works Vol I
Les Corps glorieux, Le Banquet céleste & Apparition de l’Eglise éternelle
Timothy Byram-Wigfield
The Organ of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle DCD34024
Timothy Byram-Wigfield presents Messiaen’s ground-breaking Les Corps glorieux on the organ of St George’s Chapel, with its protean personality. Byram-Wigfield is an ideal exponent of this work and its extremities: from his sensitive approach to its spiritual narrative, to his thrilling handling of its gargantuan climaxes, the listener cannot fail to be drawn into Messiaen’s world of colour. This volume inaugurates Delphian’s survey of Messiaen’s complete published organ music, in which the early music is performed by Byram-Wigfield and the late works by Michael Bonaventure.
Olivier Messiaen: Organ Works Vol III
Le Livre du Saint Sacrement
Michael Bonaventure
The Rieger Organ of St Giles’ Cathedral Edinburgh DCD34076 (2 discs)
The seeds for Messiaen’s final organ work were sown during an inspirational trip to Israel in 1984. Over the course of the following twelve months, Messiaen found improvisation leading him back to composition after the exhausting labours that had produced his mighty opera Saint François d’Assise. The Livre du Saint Sacrement became Messiaen’s grand farewell to his own instrument, and Michael Bonaventure performs it from memory here on the Rieger instrument at St Giles’ Cathedral, an organ of immense range and apocalyptic power.
‘a magnificent achievement … utterly compelling’ — BBC Music Magazine Instrumental Choice, Proms 2008 edition
