Messiaen’s epic Twenty Contemplations on the infant Jesus is one of the great 20th‑century pieces for piano. Ahead of a recital, Michael Symmons Roberts explains how its composition at the end of the second world war, and its filmic qualities, inspired his response in poetry to the work
When Olivier Messiaen died in 1992 at the age of 83, my first thought was that I’d missed him. I had long intended to make a pilgrimage to Église de la Saint-Trinité in Paris for Sunday mass. Since his 20s, Messiaen had served as organist there. Reputedly, if the spirit moved him, the organ play-out at the end of Mass would turn into an extended improvisation, a free concert for all-comers by one of the great musicians of the 20th century. But I never got round to it.
Continue reading...
