Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception

Focusing on Messiaen's relation to history - both his own and the history he engendered - the Messiaen Perspectives volumes convey the growing understanding of his deep and varied interconnections with his cultural milieux. Messiaen Perspectives 1: Sources and Influences examines the genesis, sources and cultural pressures that shaped Messiaen's music. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception analyses Messiaen's compositional approach and the repercussions of his music. While each book offers a coherent collection in itself, together these complementary volumes elucidate how powerfully Messiaen was embedded in his time and place, and how his music resonates ever more today. Messiaen Perspectives 2: Techniques, Influence and Reception explores Messiaen's imprint on recent musical life. The first part scrutinizes his compositional technique in terms of counterpoint, spectralism and later piano music, while the second charts ways in which Messiaen's influence is manifest in the music and careers of Ohana, Xenakis, Murail and Quebecois composers. The third part includes case studies of Messiaen's reception in Italy, Spain and the USA. The volume also includes an ornithological catalogue of Messiaen's birds, collates information on the numerous 'tombeaux' pieces he inspired, and concludes with a Critical Catalogue of Messiaen's Musical Works.

Christopher Dingle is Reader in Music at Birmingham Conservatoire, UK. He is the author of Messiaen's Final Works (2013), the acclaimed biography, The Life of Messiaen (2007), and co-editor of Olivier Messiaen: Music, Art & Literature (2007). He is also editor of The Cambridge History of Music Criticism (forthcoming). Robert Fallon is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. He writes on contemporary classical music and relationships between music and nature, with a special focus on the work and thought of Olivier Messiaen.

Introduction; 1: Techniques; 1: Sacred Machines: Fear, Mystery and Transfiguration in Messiaen's Mechanical Procedures 1; 2: La Fauvette des jardins and the 'Spectral Attitude'; 3: Aspects of Compositional Organization and Stylistic Innovation in Petites Esquisses d'oiseaux; 4: Messiaen's Counterpoint 1; 1: Intermède 1; 5: A Catalogue of Messiaen's Birds; 2: Influence; 6: Messiaen and Ohana: Parallel Preoccupations or Anxiety of Influence?; 7: The Messiaen-Xenakis Conjunction 1; 8: From France to Quebec: Messiaen's Transatlantic Legacy; 9: Messiaen and the Spectralists; 2: Intermède 2; 10: The Tombeaux of Messiaen: At the Intersection of Influence and Reception; 3: Reception; 11: The Reception of Olivier Messiaen in Italy: A Historical Interpretation 1; 12: Three Decades of Messiaen's Music in Spain: A Brief Survey, 1945-1978; 13: Placing Mount Messiaen 1; 14: Genesis and Reception of Olivier Messiaen's Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d'ornithologie, 1949-1992: Toward a New Reading of the Composer's Writings 1