Listening That Demands Effort: Messiaen
Not all books that are worth reading come easily. Moby Dick is a pillar of literature, but at fifteen years old, I was too immature a reader for it, and I caught none of its greatness. Citizen Kane remains one of the greatest films of all time, but an audience member accustomed to the easy thrills and undemanding exposition of the Marvel universe might find it tedious and cryptic by comparison.
So, too, in music. Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) was a twentieth-century composer and a Christian modernist, and many of his works are now deservedly regarded as masterpieces. But they are not easy listening. I speak from personal experience, because I first encountered Messiaen’s music while I was an undergraduate studying music composition and organ performance. Messiaen’s music intersected with both my areas of study: as a leading member of the twentieth-century avant-garde, he was requisite learning in the composition department. And in the organ department, his pieces represented an indispensable part of the repertoire.
I thoroughly disliked his music at first. In fact, it was more than just a matter of dislike; I thought that his music was part of the same destructive, absurdist, nihilistic strain that characterized the work of so many other modernist composers. I thought that his organ pieces, which sounded like mere cacophony to me at the time, were fruit of the same cultural devolution that I was also hearing from Karlheinz Stockhausen, Milton Babbitt, or John Cage.
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Christopher Hoyt is the organist/choirmaster at Good Shepherd Church in Tyler, Texas, and teaches Sacred Music at Cranmer Theological House (Reformed Episcopal) in Dallas. He was general editor of the hymnal, The Book of Common Praise/Magnify the Lord (2017) and is a composer of hymns and other church music (hoytcomposer.com).
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