Joseaugusto Mejia
SUNY: Stony Brook University, Music, Graduate Student
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Messiaen’s piano cycle Catalogue d’Ossiaux is an exploration of the world of birds in which each piece represents a bird and its environment. One of the most interesting explorations is found in the second piece of book 5 L’Alouette... more
Messiaen’s piano cycle Catalogue d’Ossiaux is an exploration of the world of birds in which each piece represents a bird and its environment. One of the most interesting explorations is found in the second piece of book 5 L’Alouette Calandrelle as it displays Messiaen’s writing ability at “its most astringent and economical.”
The purpose of this essay is to explore which are the compositional elements that Messiaen uses in this piece, which conceptualization supports them and how these elements come together in an antidiscursive
manner that suggests an element of contemplation with results that are expressive, meaningful, and particularly adequate to carry out Messiaen’s theological and aesthetic thought in his music. Taking into consideration Kantian philosophical notions of “The thing in itself” and “Phenomena” the essay will be divided in two sections that are presented -for the sake of clarity in exposition- in two diverging strands. This divergence is an attempt to express two aspects of perception in Messiaen’s work, understanding that the totality of his music gravitates between two large poles of tension: the humanistic (the work of art, the musical artifact, the compositional elements, and the auditory phenomena) and the philosophical-mystical (the meaning of the music, the interpretation of nature, and the faith in noumenal reality). Visualizing these poles and considering them in their interaction is essential for an integral comprehension of this music, and for an understanding of the implications of this tension that is resolved, in the broader level of aesthetics, in a third moment that totalizes the musical experience.
The purpose of this essay is to explore which are the compositional elements that Messiaen uses in this piece, which conceptualization supports them and how these elements come together in an antidiscursive
manner that suggests an element of contemplation with results that are expressive, meaningful, and particularly adequate to carry out Messiaen’s theological and aesthetic thought in his music. Taking into consideration Kantian philosophical notions of “The thing in itself” and “Phenomena” the essay will be divided in two sections that are presented -for the sake of clarity in exposition- in two diverging strands. This divergence is an attempt to express two aspects of perception in Messiaen’s work, understanding that the totality of his music gravitates between two large poles of tension: the humanistic (the work of art, the musical artifact, the compositional elements, and the auditory phenomena) and the philosophical-mystical (the meaning of the music, the interpretation of nature, and the faith in noumenal reality). Visualizing these poles and considering them in their interaction is essential for an integral comprehension of this music, and for an understanding of the implications of this tension that is resolved, in the broader level of aesthetics, in a third moment that totalizes the musical experience.
Research Interests:
Aesthetic dissidence has been a motor in the history of creative movements. In the recent history of the Classical Guitar, the emergence of Julian Bream as the great other that defied Andres Segovia’s hegemony as the Grandmaster of the... more
Aesthetic dissidence has been a motor in the history of creative movements. In the recent history of the Classical Guitar, the emergence of Julian Bream as the great other that defied Andres Segovia’s hegemony as the Grandmaster of the guitar, meant a serious divergence from the mainstream of the then perceived only one possible tradition. Through the programming of a series of pieces that lead towards his territory, I explore, in the way of extensive programe notes, how this music can depict an alternative praxis that enacts a different view of the guitar, its capabilities, its somehow neglected present and its probable future.