About the Book
This groundbreaking biography offers fresh perspectives on the life, ideas and music of French twentieth-century composer, organist and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen. Drawing on previously unexplored sketches and archival material, Robert Sholl seamlessly combines elements of biography, musicology, theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and aesthetics to present a nuanced perspective on Messiaen’s work. This book examines the profound impact of Messiaen’s devout Catholicism, which found expression through his work as a church organist, his engagement with birdsong, his interaction with Surrealism and his influence on major musical figures of the latter twentieth century. Unlike previous biographies, this book also considers the perspectives of Messiaen’s contemporaries and students, providing a comprehensive understanding of his life and artistic legacy.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: 'All the birds of the stars'
Chapter 1: On Beginnings
Chapter 2: On Becoming 'Messiaen', 1927-39
Chapter 3: On Messiaen and the Second World War, 1939-45
Chapter 4: On Surrealism and Experimentation, 1945-51
Chapter 5: On Birdsong, 1952-63
Chapter 6: On Influence
Chapter 7: On the Monumental, 1964-83: Stained-Glass, Snow, Stars and a Saint
Chapter 8: On Final Works and Legacy
References
Select Discography
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
About the Author :
Robert Sholl teaches at the Royal Academy of Music and the University of West London. His publications include Messiaen in Context (2023). He has performed all of Messiaen's organ music, recorded improvisations to film on the organ and piano, and given recitals in London and Paris.
Review :
Robert Sholl’s new biography of Messiaen eschews a day-by-day, what-happened-next approach to chronicling the composer’s life. Instead, Sholl takes a more selective approach, focusing on key people, events and influences in the composer’s world . . . Much of Sholl’s succinct, penetrating commentary is immediately accessible to the general reader . . . Read Sholl to drill down further into the music, where he is undoubtedly an authoritative guide.
Messiaen is a ripe subject for study . . . Now Robert Sholl, a professor of music at the University of West London who also teaches at the Royal Academy of Music has given us a slim, smart and sympathetic volume titled Olivier Messiaen: A Critical Biography . . . [Messiaen’s] classes, like his personality, were unconventional and embraced not only the masterpieces of traditional Western music and the European avant-garde but also Greek meters, Hindu rhythms and birdsong. Mr. Sholl is marvelous on the last of these . . . Once acclimated to Messiaen’s idiosyncratic sound world, readers will find Mr. Sholl’s book a sensitive and knowing companion.
This is a book that manages to say a great deal in relatively few words – and the text is supplemented by an excellent choice of photographs, some of which were completely new to me. Anyone wanting a concise introduction to Messiaen’s fascinating life and music will find much to enjoy here – buoyed by Sholl’s own enthusiasm, which is always in evidence – but this is also a book that includes important new research, lending it a lasting significance to specialists, too. I recommend it most warmly.
Primarily this is a fully comprehensive and rigorously concentrated musicological account of the composer’s development, bringing welcome fresh insights to his varied oeuvre. Technical aspects, inevitably complex, are explained as lucidly as possible . . . Sholl’s assiduous researches draw on wide-ranging source materials, including an extensive bibliography and filmography, conversations with Messiaen, numerous academic articles, contemporary critical commentaries and correspondences.
Robert Sholl’s critical biography is enhanced by his skillful use of musical, theological, philosophical and aesthetic details regarding Messiaen’s life and work, and further enriched by the inclusion of previously unexplored material from Messiaen’s archives. After situating the composer in the cultural milieu of the 1930s, Sholl dedicates chapters to essential elements of Messiaen’s multifarious career as composer, teacher, theologian and ornithologist. Writing with clarity and insight, Sholl has provided a readable and engaging contribution to understanding the complicated life and work of one of the twentieth century’s most important figures. Highly recommended.
Robert Sholl's new biography of Messiaen sheds fresh light on the extraordinary originality of his music. Among the wealth of fascinating detail much comes from the composer himself, as well as from his teachers, contemporaries, pupils and from those who have studied, researched and performed his music. Sholl's commentaries on the music are acutely perceptive – and as a bonus to this rich feast the photographs are marvellous.
Robert Sholl’s book, the fruit of many years of research, undoubtedly has a great future. Its panoramic view of Messiaen’s life constitutes a way of discovering Messiaen for those unfamiliar with his work and offers much to music lovers who will find, through his synthesis of material, unpublished information and photos. This book has allowed me to rediscover the Messiaen that I knew, but also to encounter an unknown Messiaen. May everyone have as much pleasure reading this book as I have!
Robert Sholl has distilled many years of scholarship and contemplation into a book that is compact yet capacious, brimming with information and insight. The crisp narrative provides vivid descriptions of cultural and intellectual contexts, including a breathtaking panoply of influences, both his own mentors as well as those he mentored. Sholl’s trademark intertextual methodology seamlessly interweaves materials drawn from a broad horizon of sources, including history, musicology, literature, visual arts, history, philosophy, theology and psychoanalysis. This brilliant achievement synthesizes scholarship from yesterday and up to the present moment. It is now the point of departure for any future adventures into Messiaen’s idiosyncratic universe.
