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‘Crying Out With Life and Truth’: Simulating Immersion in Messiaen's Des Canyons aux étoiles. . .

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2017

TIMOTHY B. COCHRAN
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Abstract

In Des Canyons aux étoiles. . ., a work commissioned to celebrate the American bicentennial, Olivier Messiaen defines the United States through representations of Utah's birds and canyons. Focusing on the phenomenological power rather than the pictorial intentions of Messiaen's music, this article examines ways that Messiaen uses textural saturation and varied repetition to draw the listener into a musically mediated Bryce Canyon. The music challenges a stable subject/object relationship for the listener by promoting humility and awe within the landscape over more visually oriented touristic encounters. Simulations of immersion serve implicit political and evangelistic goals as city-dwelling listeners are invited to embrace dwelling in the natural environment as a means of revaluing faith and breaking free from what Messiaen perceived as the twin hindrances of mechanized civilization and secularism.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 179 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2017 

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Footnotes

A version of this article was presented at the Hearing Landscape Critically conference at Harvard University in 2015. I wish to thank Aaron Allen, Julian Johnson, Robert Fallon, and Nigel Simeone for comments on various components of my research that made their way into this article.

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