Le Banquet Celeste
Le Banquet céleste (The Heavenly Banquet) is an organ composition by the French composer and organist Olivier Messiaen .
Origin and structure
The work was written in 1926, initially as an orchestral work, from which Messiaen made an organ work by 1928. It is not the rather neoclassical harmony of this early work that surprises the listener, but rather the very slow pace at which the harmonies slowly change. The text from the Gospel is translated into music with a mystical attitude, which is played mainly on the feast of Corpus Christi, but also generally Sub communione .
Messiaen has prefixed the piece with a saying from the Gospel of John: Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I remain in him ( Jn 6.56 EU ). The composition begins with low chords on a floating registration ( voix céleste , viol, bourdon 8 ') with swell mechanism closed three-quarters , which is then opened bit by bit . In the pedal musical is the main topic in staccato with a Carillon registration (4 ', 2 2 / 3 ', 2 '1 and') introduced, which manifest the drops of blood in the "staccato bref, à la goutte d'eau" (waterdrop Staccato) symbolizes. The piece uses the second of Messiaen's limited transposable modes in its three transposition possibilities, in which the three main functions - tonic, dominant, subdominant - are applied. The work ends with elongated chords on the beat, with the long final chord being accompanied by a 32 'labial register in the pedal.
The playing time is about seven to eight minutes.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. dataset of the DNB .
- ^ Introduction to the work by Jon Gillock (download as a Word document), accessed on April 19, 2016.
- ↑ a b Introduction to the work at Capriccio Kulturforum , accessed on April 19, 2016.
- ↑ a b organduo.lt: Organ Music: About "Le Banquet Celeste" by Olivier Messiaen , accessed on April 19, 2016.