Traces of a Thomistic De musica in the Compositions of Olivier Messiaen

In the year of his centennial, Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) is widely acknowledged as not only one of the leading French composers of the twentieth century, but as a voice of timeless significance within Western music. In addition to his love for music with its "colors" and rhythms, he felt passionately about two other areas in which he became an erudite scholar: theology and ornithology. A devout Catholic, he owned and diligently read a large collection of theological books; an avid bird lover, he studied their song so thoroughly that his contributions to the field are now considered invaluable even to specialists. A third field to which Messiaen devoted a cluster of compositions is that of idealized human love. As he knew, all love derives from God's love for humankind. The human love of God may be but an awkward and flawed response to the divine gift, but even the love of one human for another, provided it is true and strong, must be regarded as a reflection—albeit a pale reflection—of God's love.¹

Messiaen began reading books on theology already as a teenager. Mystics like John of Ruusbroec, Thomas à Kempis, and Thomas Merton as well as saints like Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Catherine of Siena, and Thérèse de Lisieux were of crucial importance for his devotion. His reflections, and above all the contemplations on which he was to base specific compositions, were additionally shaped by spiritual authors like Ernest Hello and Columba Marmion and by theologians like Romano Guardini and Hans Urs von Balthasar. The dominating influence on his understanding of Christian doctrine, however, was Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologica (ST) he owned in a French translation and kept studying all through his life.² While he admits that he may not have read every single page of the extensive treatise, he refers regularly and increasingly to passages that address questions of faith he felt impelled to ponder.

This article addresses two aspects of Messiaen's reception of Thomistic texts: on the one hand, his implicit translation of Thomas's thoughts on the role of music in the life of a Christian and on music's possible spiritual content into the components of his musical material; on the other hand, his explicit quotation of Thomistic sentences addressing purely theological subject matter. The first aspect, the modern composer's appropriation of—or felicitous congruence with—the medieval theologian's views on music, underlies all his compositions with biblical, liturgical, or mystical titles,³ many aspects in the six compositions addressing the subject that Messiaen summarized as "love and death," ⁴ and even some passages in his bird song compositions.⁵ It is in fact quite astonishing to what degree Messiaen's practical usage of music as a "language" concurs with Thomas's theoretical opinions.

The second aspect, Messiaen's quotations from ST and their musical translation, determines only a limited number of works but is rendered all the more interesting by the fact that the musical treatment often complements, rather than only represents, the emphasis found in the Thomistic passage. While three compositions from the composer's mature period—his oratorio on the Transfiguration, his organ meditations on the Trinity, and his opera on St. Francis of Assisi—constitute the climax of the composer's integration of specific statements, references to Thomas can actually be traced to different (including much earlier) times in the composer's life and to occasions other than the "setting" of a text in the musical work.

• • Three times does Messiaen mention Thomas in introductory texts: in the scores for Trois petites Liturgies de la présence divine (1943–44), in Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (1964), and in Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité (1969).

• • Three works include three Thomistic quotations each, either set for voices or transcribed in Messiaen's musical alphabet; see Movements IX, XII, and XIII of the oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1965–69), Movements I, III, and VII of the...