tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post112923220420711815..comments2024-03-26T15:57:13.443+00:00Comments on On An Overgrown Path: Messiaen stars in early music festivalUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-1129578903456858362005-10-17T20:55:00.000+01:002005-10-17T20:55:00.000+01:00Garth, I think the news of Messiaen's brief tenure...Garth, I think the news of Messiaen's brief tenure with a Vichy cultural organisation probably comes into the 'composer's trivia' category, no more. (Publishers have to find something to sell books).<BR/><BR/>But the Vichy inspired children's pageant about Joan of Arc is tantalising isn't it? Sounds like a garlic flavoured <I>Horst Wessel Lied</I> to me.Pliablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10616598845886342325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-1129578095607042432005-10-17T20:41:00.000+01:002005-10-17T20:41:00.000+01:00The myth that Messiaen's Quatour pour la Fin du Te...The myth that Messiaen's Quatour pour la Fin du Temps (Quartet for the end of Time)was premiered before an audience of 5000 prisoners of war is new to me. Given that the work was premiered on January 15, 1941, in Gorlitz (now unequally divided between Germany and Poland), I always imagined the work being premiered in a barracks-type environment. <BR/><BR/>According to oliviermessiaen.org:<BR/>"He recalls that at the time he and everybody in the camp were freezing, starving and miserable. The starvation was such that it heightened his 'coloured' dreams and this coupled with the experience of seeing the 'aurora borealis', coloured waves of clouds, led him to compose [the Quartet]."<BR/><BR/>Any role that Messiaen briefly played in the Vichy government in the late winter and spring of 1941, of course, requires further investigation. (He had a four year old son at the time, and his first wife, a violinist and composer, may already have been physically and mentally ill. I will need to read the book.)<BR/><BR/>*<BR/><BR/>(When I visited Gorlitz in 2000, the large tall art nouveau former Synagogue was locked, but the sign on the door said that it was the site of a European Union Photo-Documentation Center for Synagogues in the Southeast German-Polish region.)Garth Trinklhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11084463787729969177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-1129370581584231582005-10-15T11:03:00.000+01:002005-10-15T11:03:00.000+01:00Watch out for the Warner budget re-release of Erat...Watch out for the Warner budget re-release of Erato's recordings packaged as <A HREF="http://www.oliviermessiaen.org/messnews.html" REL="nofollow">the Messiaen Edition.</A><BR/><BR/>18 CDs for around £60 ($105), and including performances by Yvonne Loriot.Pliablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10616598845886342325noreply@blogger.com