Turangalîla-Symphonie
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The ''Turangalîla-Symphonie'' is the only symphony by Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). It was written for an orchestra of large forces from 1946 to 1948 on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Along with the '' Quatuor pour la fin du temps'', the symphony is one of the composer's most notable works.
Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein ( ; born Louis Bernstein; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was th ...
conducted the premiere in Boston on 2 December 1949, followed by the New York premiere on 10 December. The December 1949 performances included an intermission after the fifth movement; it was the only work on the program. The commission did not specify the duration, orchestral requirements or style of the piece, leaving the decisions to the composer. Koussevitzky was scheduled to conduct the premiere, but fell ill, and the task fell to Bernstein, who never conducted the work again. Yvonne Loriod, who later became Messiaen's second wife, was the piano soloist, and Ginette Martenot played the
ondes Martenot The ondes Martenot ( ; , ) or ondes musicales () is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a lateral-vibrato Keyboard instrument, keyboard or by moving a ring tied to a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin. D ...
for the first and several subsequent performances. From 1953 on, Yvonne's sister Jeanne Loriod was the ondes Martenot player in many performances and recordings.Full score, pub, Durand.


Concept

While most of Messiaen's compositions are religious in inspiration, at the time of writing the symphony the composer was fascinated by the myth of Tristan and Isolde, and the Turangalîla Symphony forms the central work in his trilogy of compositions concerned with the themes of romantic love and death; the other pieces are '' Harawi'' for piano with
soprano A soprano () is a type of classical singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hertz, Hz to A5 in Choir, choral ...
and ''Cinq rechants'' for unaccompanied trios of soprani, alti, tenors, and basses. It is considered one of the greatest musical compositions of the 20th century; being described by its commissioner as 'the most important piece of classical music ever written since
Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...
's ''
The Rite of Spring ''The Rite of Spring'' () is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky ...
'''. A typical performance runs around 80 minutes in length. Messiaen famously summarised the entire symphony as being "a love song; a hymn to joy." Although the concept of a rhythmic scale corresponding to the chromatic scale of pitches occurs in Messiaen's work as early as 1944, in the '' Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus'' (a work Messiaen quotes in the fourth movement), the arrangement of such durations into a fixed series occurs for the first time in the opening episode of the movement "Turangalîla 2" in this work, and is an important historical step toward the concept of integral serialism. The title of the work, and those of its movements, were a late addition to the project, chosen after Messiaen made a list of the work's movements. He described the name in his letters from 1947 to 1948. He derived the title from two
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
words, () and (), which he explained thus:; :" Lîla" literally means play – but play in the sense of the divine action upon the cosmos, the play of creation, destruction, reconstruction, the play of life and death. "Lila" is also love. "Turanga": this is the time that runs, like a galloping horse; this is time that flows, like sand in an hourglass. "Turanga" is movement and rhythm. "Turangalîla" therefore means all at once love song, hymn to joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death. Messiaen described the joy of Turangalîla as "superhuman, overflowing, blinding, unlimited". He revised the work's orchestration in 1990.


Instrumentation

The piece is scored for a large orchestra with a particularly large percussion section: :Solo piano :
Ondes Martenot The ondes Martenot ( ; , ) or ondes musicales () is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a lateral-vibrato Keyboard instrument, keyboard or by moving a ring tied to a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin. D ...
Woodwinds : 1 piccolo : 2
flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...
s : 2
oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double-reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...
s : 1
cor anglais The cor anglais (, or original ; plural: ''cors anglais''), or English horn (mainly North America), is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, making it essentially ...
: 2
clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...
s : 1
bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common Soprano clarinet, soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays no ...
: 3
bassoon The bassoon is a musical instrument in the woodwind family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuosity ...
s
Brass Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...
: 4 horns : 3 trumpets : 1 trumpet in D : 1 cornet : 3
trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...
s : 1
tuba The tuba (; ) is the largest and lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibrationa buzzinto a mouthpiece (brass), mouthpiece. It first appeared in th ...
Percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...
(12 percussionists) :
Vibraphone The vibraphone (also called the vibraharp) is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using Percussion mallet, mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone ...
: Keyed or mallet
glockenspiel The glockenspiel ( ; or , : bells and : play) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a Musical keyboard, keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the v ...
s :
Triangle A triangle is a polygon with three corners and three sides, one of the basic shapes in geometry. The corners, also called ''vertices'', are zero-dimensional points while the sides connecting them, also called ''edges'', are one-dimension ...
: Temple blocks : Wood block :
Cymbal A cymbal is a common percussion instrument. Often used in pairs, cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys. The majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs sou ...
s (crash and three types of suspended) : Tam tam : Tambourine : Maracas :
Snare drum The snare drum (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often u ...
: Provençal tabor :
Bass drum The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter usually greater than its depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. The head ...
: Tubular bells : Celesta Strings : 32
violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
s : 14
viola The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the ...
s : 12
cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...
s : 10
double bass The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...
es The demanding piano part includes several solo cadenzas.


Cyclic themes

In writing about the work, Messiaen identified four cyclic themes that reappear throughout; there are other themes specific to each movement. In the score the themes are numbered, but in later writings he gave them names to make them easier to identify, without intending the names to have any other, literary meaning.


Structure

The work is in ten movements, linked by the common themes identified above, and other musical ideas: The composer's initial plan was for a symphony in the conventional four movements, which eventually became numbers 1, 4, 6, and 10. Next, he added the three ''Turangalîla'' movements, which he originally called '' tâlas'', a reference to the use of rhythm in
Indian classical music Indian classical music is the art music, classical music of the Indian subcontinent. It is generally described using terms like ''Shastriya Sangeet'' and ''Marg Sangeet''. It has two major traditions: the North Indian classical music known as ...
. Finally, the 2nd, 5th, and 8th movements were inserted.Hill 2005, 171 Early on, Messiaen authorized separate performance of movements 3, 4, and 5, as ''Three tâlas'' (not to be confused with the original use of the term for the three Turangalîla movements), but later came to disapprove of the performance of extracts.


Recordings

No recording was made of the world premiere, and Bernstein himself did not return to the work in either concert performance or in the recording studio, but a recording exists of part of the rehearsals for the premiere in Boston, featuring the fifth and sixth movements. It was released in 2013 as part of a set of previously unissued Bernstein recordings (Music and Arts WHRA-6048).


See also

* Classic 100 Music of France (ABC) * Leela (Futurama) (character named after the Turangalila-Symphonie)


Notes


References


Further reading

*


External links


Turangalîla-Symphonie
The Philharmonia Orchestra's Olivier Messiaen Website. Featuring films, photos, documents and much more. An interview with Esa-Pekka Salonen, a look at the percussion used and a visit to the site of the premiere in Boston.
Programme notes for the Turangalîla-Symphonie
by Ronald Gallman
About the ondes Martenot : facts, videos, pictures, recordings, players...Audio excerpts from all 10 movements of the Symphonie
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turangalila-Symphonie Orchestral compositions by Olivier Messiaen Messiaen, Olivier Turangalia 1948 compositions Concertante symphonies Music commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra Music commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky or the Koussevitzky Music Foundation