Olivier Messiaen

Timed to appear in advance of the 2008 Messiaen centenary, these volumes are more celebratory than critical. Nevertheless, they provide invaluable material from which balanced critical assesssment can begin to take its bearings. At the heart of the Music, Art and Literature symposium is an eighty-seven-page tour de force: Philip Weller's translation (printed alongside the original French) of L’Âme en bourgeon, the extraordinary poetic hymn to the yet-to-be-born composer by his mother Cécile Sauvage. Often mentioned by commentators, but rarely read, this can indeed be regarded as a document that determined the composer's creative path—weaknesses as well as strengths, limitations as well as range. Weller's version is a remarkable display of sustained empathy, as true to the spirit of the original as any transformation between two such different languages could be. And that's not all, for Weller adds an extended commentary that, by being provocative as well as perceptive, offers abundant food for thought.

Art · Art history · Literature · Performance art · Poetry · Visual arts · Musicology and Musical Analysis