Messiaen's Turangalila-Symphonie: An Informal Analysis (Preface)

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to try and post my (very) informal analyses for Olivier Messiaen's wild and eccentric Turangalila-Symphonie of 1949. For those unfamiliar with the work, it is a major symphony commissioned by Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitzky (who also commissioned Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3 a few years prior). Koussevitzky essentially gave the young Messiaen a musical blank check and told him that the new piece could be as long as he wanted it to be, for whatever instrumental forces he wanted, and he could take as long as he needed to finish it.

Messiaen certainly took advantage of all of this. The end result was a massive, sprawling, and complex symphony scored for large orchestra (with expanded percussion section), virtuoso piano, and ondes-Martinot. He claimed to have put all of his musical research in the piece and it combines aspects of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Hindu rhythms (often referred to as "talas"), and the "metallic" sounds of the Indonesian gamelan orchestra.

Despite the fact that the symphony was premiered with mixed reviews, it remains a Post-WWII there are two main groups of composers. People like Pierre Boulez were strongly concerned with patterns and formulae in music, whereas people like Ralph Vaughan-Williams were continuing to write purely based on musical instinct. Messiaen manages to do both successfully, yet he is criticized scathingly by both sides (Boulez famously called this piece "brothel music"). The intricate patterns in this piece combined with the sheer thrill of its sound makes it something special.