About a big musician!

Hello!!!

In this post, I will talk about a great french musician (one of my favorites composers). He's name is Oliver Messiaen.

Oliver Messiaen was born in 1908, in France, and dead in 1992 at the age of 81. When he was a child, exactly 11 years old, began his musical studies in the conservatory of Paris. Between his teachers were Marcel Dupré (organ) and Charles-Marie Widor (composition). He was organist Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris and he teached harmony and compisition at the Conservatory of Paris until 1978. He had very distinguished students, some for them were Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen (they were important composers of the 20th century). In 1940 he was capturaed at prisoner in the second world war, and then was taken to Görlitz the same year. Where he was, he wrote one of his most important pieces: "Quartet for the end of time". This work was written for musicians, they were at prisioners too.  

In "Quartet for the end of time", for example, he used the modes of limited transposition and rhythms very specials. On one hand, the modes have a particular harmony and you can transpose the mode to limited notes, for example, the first mode you can transposing only to one note; the tirth mode only to three notes. And On other hand, the rhythm  (it he often used) was abstracted of the "gamelan" (music of Bali). He had analysed this music to undertand how function that, and then can write with this new method to compose. For this reason, rhythmically his works are difficult.
And something important about Messiaen is that he transcribed the birdsongs. That's is other important thing in his work. You can se that in different Messians's works, for example, "Catalogue d'oiseaux". In this work, you can find differents birdsongs, in differents ways.
With his "tools" to compose, he could make his own musical lenguage, and with that distinguished betweet the composers in his same time. He wrote the book "the technique of my musical lenguage" in 1944, where you can find how he "run" in his music. That I find notable, because is very dificult for a artist getting a own lenguage, with which one can be most notable between the composers.
I consider this composer very imporant, because he used things, they are around me, for example the birdsongs. That is so daily, that isn't important fr me, but when you pay attention to waht is around you, you could find more interesting things, they could use for a composition, for example. And, because his music is easy how composed it is, it's easy to listen too. His music has a special color for the modes and for the instruments. He used a little bit of his tools to construct a big piece! For example, in the piece "Praise to the eternity of Jesus", he used only one rhythm in the piano over the piece, while the cello plays a beatiful melody.