Messiaen Cinq Rechants - Movement III Messiaen as Alchemist: Transmuting Ancient Elements into a new Musical Language

Messiaen wrote the Cinq Rechants in 1948, completing a trilogy of works dealing with the Tristan and Isolde legend. The trilogy also included Harawi, a song cycle for soprano and piano, generally interpreted today as an elegy for his first wife, Claire Delbos, who was suffering from a degenerative mental illness; and his Turangalla symphony, a large-scale work for orchestra in ten movements, which Messiaen described as a love song. Cinq Rechants is scored for 12 unaccompanied voices, with each voice effectively a soloist, i.e., SSS AAA TTT BBB. The title, as well as some details of structure, form, and even a rhythmical quote pay tribute to a medieval work, Le Printemps, by Claude le Jean. This piece was a favourite with Messiaen who like to analyze it in his composition classes at the Paris Conservatoire. Le Jeunes work comprises 33 airs mesurs (songs whose rhythms reflect those of French speech) and six chansons. Many of the songs are laid out in a pattern of stanzas and refrains, which Le Jeune calls chants and rechants. Messiaen uses the terminology couplets and rechants, with the couplets retaining the same text but developing in musical complexity. Messiaen wrote the text for the Cinq Rechants in a surrealist style, using very compacted references to literary characters who symbolize Love and Death. Tristan and Isolde tells the story of a fated illegitimate love which could only be realized through death. Other legends include Bluebeard, discovered by his new bride to have been responsible for the murders of his previous wives; Orfeo, whose wife has died and who must descend to the underworld to find her; and Viviane, the fairy who falls in love with Merlin and imprisons him in a bubble of air. The recurring themes point to a rather tragic dilemma in Messiaens personal life: still legally and ethically bound

to his mentally ill wife, he had met Yvonne Loriod, a brilliant pianist who would eventually become his second wife. The central movement of the work is the third movement, which marks the high point of Tristan and Isoldes earthly union. Messiaen uses a blend of his own surrealist poetry in French, with a pseudo-Sanskrit consisting of syllables he selected for their softness or their violence of attack, for their aptitude to stress the musical rhythms.1 This pseudo-Sanskrit is given three different treatments in the movement. It is sung by all voices in the homophonic segments; used as a spoken rhythmic pedal in the mens voices, and later, is used as a spoken descant by the soprano voices in the approach to the climax of the work.

Table 1 gives an outline of the structure of the third movement, which can be summarized as Introduction - 1st couplet - rechant - 2nd couplet - rechant - 3rd couplet - coda. This is similar to an incipient rondo form (ABABA) but Messiaen alters each recurrence of the couplet to extend and develop it (essentially ABABA), and frames it with the introduction and coda.

Translated from the text reprinted in Hommage Olivier Messiaen: Festival Program (Paris: La Recherche artistique, 1978), 57. Quoted in Messiaens Explorations of Love and Death by Siglind Bruhn (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2008)

Measures 1-19 20-32 33-42 42-57 58-66 67-96 97-end

Segment Introduction 1st Couplet (13 bars) Rechant 2nd Couplet (16 bars) Rechant 3rd Couplet (30 bars) Coda

Notes Solo soprano with hummed modal accompaniment. At measure 15, 2 sops in parallel 4ths. Homophonic texture. Mens voices have a rhythmic pedal on spoken text. Ends with a unison motif Toute la beaut paysage neuf Soprano solo + modal accompaniment. As per 1st Couplet but extended by repetition and rhythmic augmentation. This is Messiaens Altered Statement. Exact Restatement of Rechant. Another extended altered statement. Extended by repetition, augmentation, an extended crescendo (m.83) and a 12-voice canon beginning m.86. Measure 94-5 marks the climax of the work. (fff) Initially homophonic texture, finishes with soprano solo over modal chords. Only melismatic line of the movement.

The introduction sets the scene with a soprano solo and hummed chords, using Messiaens second mode of limited transposition. Messiaen defined seven modes based on patterns of tones and semi-tones which could only be transposed a limited number of times before returning the same pitch classes. Mode 1 represents the whole tone scale, believed by Messiaen to have been exhausted by Debussy. The second mode is a scale built on an alternating pattern of tone and semitone. This scale can only be transposed twice before repeating itself, hence, it is said to have 3 modes.
Figure 1

Mode 2 was one of Messiaens preferred modes, and is often used by him to represent divine love. It gives access to a number of Augmented 4th intervals, which Messiaen liked to use in his melodic

lines as a cadence. Here, an augmented 4th is used as the opening melodic interval of the work, and also appears in its descending form as a melodic cadence at the end of the phrase:

Figure 2

In the 1st couplet, Messiaen sets out some important rhythmical devices which are developed as the movement progresses. Figure 3 highlights two of these:
Figure 3

The three basses sing a rhythmic pedal using pseudo-Sanskrit syllables. These are accented ametrically in a pattern of 1-2 1-2-3 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4-5, after which they are joined by the tenors and the pattern repeats. This pattern does not line up with the measure stresses in the upper voices except at one point: the middle beat of the palindrome based on:

Figure 4

This rhythmic motif is borrowed directly from song X of Le Printemps, which, in turn, was influenced by the Greek meters based on short and long beats. Messiaen subjects the motif to his own style of augmentation - a concept originated in the Baroque era but given a twentieth century spin by Messiaen. In Messiaens augmentation, the notes may be elongated disproportionally rather than the Baroque style of doubling or quadrupling the time values. The first augmentation is quoted directly afterwards, in the first couplet, and increases the ratios of the central measure from 1:2:1 to 2:3:2, thus:
Figure 5

Messiaen continues this pattern in the second and third couplet, with the second couplet setting out a pattern of augmentation that increases the ratios from 1:2:1 to 2:3:2 to 3:4:3 in three quotations of the motive, as follows:
Figure 6

The third couplet begins with the final augmentation in a ratio of 4:5:4, and then winds backwards through the rhythms shown in Figure 6 giving the effect of palindromes within a palindrome. The final augmentation is shown below:

Figure 7

This unusual ametrical rhythm (Messian uses the time signature

) is derived from

the Hindu concept of building rhythmic units, or deci-tlas, from the smallest note value and its multiplications, rather than the Western concept of using breves and its divisions of whole notes, half notes, etc, which lends itself to metrical organisation. In the deci-tlas tradition, using a sixteenth note as the smallest value, multiplications could include unusual values such as five sixteenths, or various groupings of other multiplications. 120 such rhythmic cells were documented by the Indian musician Sharngadera in the thirteenth century - it is likely that the rhythms existed long before then. Messiaen was fascinated by these rhythms and the ametrical shift it could give to his music. Messiaen ends the first and second couplets with an angular motif in unison:
Figure 8

This motif has a chromatic descent in the head, wide major 7th leaps and ends with another descending augmented 4th. The unison texture coming after the homophony of the preceding section draws attention to the motif - Messiaen singles this out for particular attention. In both rechants, which are identical, Messiaen delves further into the possibilities offered by the Hindu rhythms. The melodic line features two of the documented deci-tlas.
Figure 9

Measure 1 is documented as Karanayati and the second is Kokilpriya. In the second phrase, Messiaen uses another invented rhythmic device to shift the meter off-balance: augmentation by added value.

Here the crosses show where Messiaen has thrown off an otherwise regular 2/8 rhythm by the addition of an extra sixteenth note. In the fourth measure, the extra time value is shown by a dot, elsewhere an actual additional sixteenth note is used - thus added value. The rechants are accompanied by modal chords hummed by the other voices, as in the introduction. Although these do not conform to Messiaens seven modes of limited transposition, they are based on scales other than diatonic. The third couplet represents the climax of the movement, and more explicitly describes the climax of the sexual union of Tristan and Isolde. Messiaen extends the couplet first by the augmentation of Le Jeunes rhythmic motif as previously discussed, and then by increasing the tension in measures 83 to 85. Here, the soprano voices change to a spoken descant on the pseudo-Sanskrit sari sari while the remaining voices have paired chords that ascend in a rising chromatic figure across three bars with increasing time signatures: 3/4, 4/4 and 5/4. This gives way to a twelve-voiced canon based on the unison motif Toute le beaut paysage neuf. This is a chromatic cascade of voices entering a quarter-note apart, at the tonal distance of a whole tone. Because of the chromatic notes at the head of the motif, the effect of the entries is a chromatic descent from Sopranos down all the voices to the last Bass, with the entry notes of each voice forming the whole tone scale. A sudden four beat silence gives way to the dramatic climax of the piece, a drawn-out yoma marked fff and accompanied by the tenor voices with a pounded rhythm on sari sari.

The coda drops down to an equally dramatic pp : Tous les philtres sont bus ce soir - all the love potions have been drunk tonight. This is a reference again to Tristan and Isolde. All voices sing in homophonic texture, followed by a soprano solo, accompanied by hummed modal chords as in the introduction. The soprano solo is a quote from the love theme from the Turangalla Symphony. In composing the Cinq Rechants, Messiaen threw many older elements into the melting pot. Beginning with instrumentation, he used only the most ancient instrument of all - human voices. This is the only work of his mature period which uses no instruments. However, in doing so he turned choral writing on its head and the work marks a turning point in the genre. For his harmonic language, as well as favouring a cadence based on an augmented 4th, he returned to the old idea of modes, but rather than using the Church or Greek modes, he created his own modes based on the idea of limited transpositions. Using characters from literature and legend, he wrote his own lyrics using surrealist techniques. He created new percussive syllables based on a 4th century Indian language to best serve his idea of existing words being unable to properly express great love. Finally, in using ancient Hindu rhythmic cells, he created his own rhythmic language and devices so that his new western music could be coloured by the ametrical rhythms of the East.

ine Mulvey

BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Bruhn, Siglind. Messiaens Explorations of Love and Death. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2008. ________. Messiaens Language of Mystical Love. New York and London, Garland Publishing, Inc, 1998. Hill, Peter. The Messiaen Companion. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1995. Hill, Peter & Nigel Simeone. Messiaen. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005. Johnson, Robert Sherlaw. Messiaen. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975. Messiaen, Olivier. The Technique of my Musical Language Vols I & II. Paris: ditions Musicales, 1956. Trans. John Satterfield. ________. Cinq Rechants pour douze voix mixtes. Paris: ditions Salabert, 2001

Recordings Polyphonies Jeune France, Sequenza 9.3 Catherine Simonpietri. Alpha 112, 2006 Messiaen Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps, Cinq Rechant, Solistes des choeurs de LO.R.T.F., Marcel Couraud, 1968 La Jeune France, The Sixteen, Harry Christophers. Coro, 2004