Le Merle noir

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Singing blackbird

Le Merle noir (German: The Black Blackbird ) is a chamber music work by the French composer Olivier Messiaen for flute and piano . Messiaen composed the piece in 1951 for an examination at the Paris Conservatory . The piece creates a connection between the creative birdsong and the twelve-tone music, so it sounds improvised despite the strict order of the musical genre.

The piece combines traditional elements, namely Messiaen's transcriptions of blackbird motifs, and elements derived from twelve-tone rows. The structure of the piece corresponds to the pattern AB-A'-B'-Coda, the parts are clearly recognizable by pauses. In the A section and its varied repetition, the flute performs a longer solo that is inspired by blackbird singing. In contrast to the A parts, the B parts have a more rhythmic structure. The final part, the coda , is only partially influenced by the blackbird singing and the tone sequences and rhythm are strongly influenced by the composition technique.

The piano begins with a short sequence of nine chromatic tones, consisting of five ascending and four descending notes. This motif is taken up several times, for example at the end of the first flute solo in ascending form, at the end of the second solo in descending form. At the beginning of the B part, the piano enters with a phrase that is immediately taken over and expanded by the flute. This part is characterized by additive rhythm .

Paul Dukas , Messiaen's teacher, is said to have motivated his students to listen to the birds. Since Messiaen was already interested in bird songs, this suggestion fell on fertile ground with him: "Their melodic turns, especially those of the blackbirds, exceed the imagination of the human imagination". The preoccupation with the vocalizations of birds was very formative for Messiaen's early work. The ten-year phase began with Le Merle noir , which Messiaen devoted almost exclusively to the song of the birds.

literature

  • Irna Priore: The Compositional Techniques of Messiaen's Le Merle Noir. In: Flute Talk Magazine. 20: 11–13, April 2001 ( online PDF; 208 kB)
  • Roger Nichols: 'Le merle noir': The Case of a Blackbird in a Historical Pie. In: The Musical Times. 129: 648-650, December 1988 ( abstract )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Irna Priore: The Compositional Techniques of Messiaen's Le Merle Noir. See literature
  2. ↑ www.naxos.com: Flute music from France
  3. ↑ www.musiktext.de: Le Merle noir (1951) ( Memento from July 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

Web links