Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie
Turanga (time) and lîla (love) come together in this epic symphony by a modern master — complete with the mysterious sounds of the ondes Martenot, one of the earliest electronic instruments of the 20th century.
When?
Messiaen begins to write Turangalîla-Symphonie in 1946, the same year that:
- The first meetings of the General Assembly and Security Council of the United Nations take place. There are 51 member states, and the stated aim of the organisation is to ensure that another such conflict as the recently ended World War II can never occur.
- Project Diana, initiated by the US Army Signal Corps, successfully bounces radar signals off the moon. The experiment is the first foray into communication between Earth and outer space, and kickstarts the Space Age.
- The bikini goes on sale in Paris. Its designer, French car engineer and clothes designer Louis Réard, names it after the Bikini Atoll — or rather, after the atomic tests which had just started there, expecting his daringly skimpy swimsuit to cause similar shockwaves among polite society. It will soon be declared ‘sinful’ by the Vatican, and banned in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, along the French Atlantic coast, and in Australia.
- Italian chemist Primo Levi completes his novel Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man), narrating his experiences in Auschwitz.
Fast Facts
- Frenchman Olivier Messiaen was one of the most significant composers of the 20th century. His music draws on a wide range of influences: his Roman Catholic faith; his synaesthesia (a condition in which hearing particular musical notes or harmonies causes a person to see certain colours); music from Japanese and Indonesian cultures; birdsong; and his incarceration in a German prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War.
- Turangalîla is a Sanskrit compound word: turanga — literally the speed of a horse — denotes rhythm or the passage of time, while lîla means sport or play, on a divine, cosmic scale (it can also mean love). Messiaen’s suggested translation was ‘a hymn to love’ — but it’s also possible to translate it as ‘rhythmic games’ or ‘playing with the passage of time’.
- The Turangalîla-symphonie calls for a huge orchestra, with a number of ‘tuned percussion’ instruments including solo piano (a percussion instrument, in that the hammers hit the strings), and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument.
- Comprising ten movements, the work isn’t a symphony in the traditional sense — it doesn’t have a clear linear musical development or argument. Instead, it develops a number of ideas that progress and conflict with one another in a cyclical motion — inspired by non-Western views of time. The cyclical structure is also present in the short motifs that recur throughout.
- Commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Turangalîla-symphonie was premiered in 1949 under the baton of a young Leonard Bernstein.
