The Reinvention of Religious Music: Olivier Messiaen's Breakthrough Toward the Beyond

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. In June 1991, La Transfiguration was performed in this venue under supervision of conductor Reinbert de Leeuw. Messiaen attended this performance, and his wife, the pianist Yvonne Loriod, played. The March 2000 concert performance of the opera Saint François d’Assise took place under the same supervision. 2. Longinus, On the Sublime, in T. S. Dorsch, Classical Literary Criticism: Aristotle /Horace/Longinus (London: Penguin, 1965), 100. 3. See Chapter 4. 4. Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 144–168. 5. Throughout the book, the question of criteria (such as objective or subjective evidence) is central in order to determine whether or not certain music is religious . The question is prior to its opposite, that is, the question of who (rather than what) authorize(s) the experience of breakthrough. This more Foucauldian question of the relation between power and knowledge will be the subject of future research. 6. In this respect, I agree with Wilhelm Seidel, who observed that the early romantic religion of art possessed certain qualities that might lead to its rejection as ‘‘artificial, false, untrue,’’ but that it also had a core that was totally ‘‘unromantic and deserving of respect,’’ making it certainly relevant for the present topic. Wilhelm Seidel, ‘‘Absolute Musik und Kunstreligion um 1800,’’ in Helga de la Motte-Haber, ed., Musik und Religion, 2nd ed. (Laaber, Germany: Laaber, 2003), 132. 7. See Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 8. Cited in Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 89. 9. Brigitte Massin, Olivier Messiaen: Une poétique du merveilleux (Aix-enProvence : Alinéa, 1989), 178. 10. Olivier Messiaen, Music and Color: Conversations with Claude Samuel (Portland , Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1994), 211. The Augustinian influence is clearly manifested in the epigraphs to Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie (Paris: Leduc, 1994–2002), vol. 5 (parts I and II). See, for the influence of Augustine’s thought on music, Saint Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey Into God, trans. Ewert Cousins (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1978), 74, where the Augustinian theology of music is contained within the ‘‘journey into God.’’ 181 182 Notes to pages – 11. See Martin Heidegger, ‘‘Phenomenology and Theology,’’ in Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 43. 12. Jeremy S. Begbie, Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 3 n. 2; Jon Michael Spencer, Theomusicology (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994). 13. Joyce Irwin, ed., Sacred Sound: Music in Religious Thought and Practice (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983). 14. Albert L. Blackwell, The Sacred in Music (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999). 15. Oskar Söhngen, Theologie der Musik (Kassel, Germany: Johannes Stauda Verlag, 1967); de la Motte-Haber, Musik und Religion. 16. A copious starting point for such a journey is provided by Hans Seidel, Israel Adler, Reinhard Flender, James McKinnon, and Gustav A. Krieg, ‘‘Musik und Religion ,’’ in Horst Balz et al., eds., Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), 23:441–495. 17. Thomas Clifton, Music as Heard: A Study in Applied Phenomenology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); Mikel Dufrenne, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, trans. Edward Casey (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973), especially 249–273. Apart from that, my approach differs from these exemplars in that it is far removed from the empirical orientation of Clifton as well as from the aesthetic approach of Dufrenne. With the latter, music appears to be reduced to an illustration of the general structure of the aesthetic object he proposes. In using the work of Jean-Luc Marion, I will precisely try to evade reducing music to the ‘‘schemes’’ of aesthetics. 18. ‘‘There is no concept or category that leads more directly into what is specific about contemporary theory—or certain aspects of it—than repetition.’’ Samuel Weber, ‘‘Repetition: Kierkegaard, Artaud, Pollock and the Theatre of the Image,’’ transcript of a discussion with Terry Smith, Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, September 16, 1996. 19. For a survey of this debate, see Phillip Blond, ed., Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philosophy and Theology (New York: Routledge, 1998), and Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 1–39. I will in particular be inspired by thinkers coming forth from the (French) phenomenological tradition and who have explored the aforementioned fault lines, such as...