Messiaen: Piano Music

Featuring

Ciro Longobardi
Olivier Messiaen

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Compositional Technique

Messiaen's "Mode de valeurs et d'intensités" is historically significant as the first piece to feature total serialism, with predetermined elements of 36 notes, 24 durations, 12 attacks, and 7 dynamics.

Performer Biography

Ciro Longobardi, the pianist, won the Abbiati Prize, Italy's most important critics award, for his complete recording of Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux.

Instruments

Ciro Longobardi performs on a Fazioli F278 mk III piano for this recording.

Compositional Technique

Messiaen used "modes"—sequences of notes similar to scales but with fewer transposition possibilities—for melodic, timbre, and harmonic constructions in his music.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Messiaen systematically studied and transcribed birdsong from the 1950s onward, considering birds his "teachers" and incorporating their songs into his compositions.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Olivier Messiaen, the composer, experienced a form of synesthesia, allowing him to "see inwardly, in [his] mind's eye, colors that move with the music."

Compositional Technique

Messiaen believed rhythm was the "primordial and perhaps essential part of music," existing before melody and harmony, and preferred rhythmic music that scorned repetition and equal divisions.