L’Ascension
Olivier Messiaen
Born: December 10, 1908, Avignon, France
Died: April 27, 1992, Clichy, France
Year Composed: 1933
Length: c. 28 minutes
World Premiere: February 1935, Paris
Last ISO Performance: October 2014 with conductor Matthew Halls
Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 French horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings
Oliver Messiaen was one of the major composers and professors of the 20th century. He was born into a family of readers and writers—his mother and brothers were poets and his father translated Shakespeare into their native French—but Oliver would channel his own appreciation for art into musical compositions rather than literary compositions. The poetic backdrop in his life still influenced his music, which often includes flowery French tempo indications (“extremely slow, emotional and solemn”) as well as illustrative subtitles to individual movements.
Although L’Ascension was one of Messiaen’s earliest orchestral compositions, it was first published for solo organ—nearly fifteen years before the orchestral score appeared in print. Messiaen was pressed to rearrange his orchestral score by his publisher, Alphonse Leduc, who claimed L’Ascension was originally commissioned as an organ solo rather than an orchestral piece. Fearing the orchestral version would not be published at all without the solo arrangement, Messiaen acquiesced. Having already written the orchestral third movement, Messiaen was then forced to rewrite a new movement for organ solo. The orchestral forces required to perform the third movement are far too intricate for one player to reduce at the organ, even when utilizing all four limbs.
Like other composers (Mahler comes to mind), Messiaen specified the exact number of string players he thought would be required to perform L’Ascension appropriately. Each movement employs section divisi—divided parts within each string section—and continues to split even further into solo lines. These divided string parts maintain a cohesive, blended section sound while allowing for multiple melodic and harmonic parts to fully color the orchestral landscape.
Color was incredibly important to Messiaen, and his orchestrations reflect this vividly. Messiaen experienced synaesthesia, a neurological anomaly where the experience of sound is crosswired with another sense. Specifically, Messiaen experienced chromesthesia, where external sounds are linked to the internal perception of color. The inner string parts shade the orchestral color provided by upper and solo violin lines, while brass and woodwinds are perfectly placed to add highlight and shimmer where needed.
L’Ascension is made up of four meditations for orchestra. Each meditation serves to illustrate Christ’s ascension into heaven. The first and fourth meditations have explicitly narrative titles: “The Majesty of Christ Demanding His Glory of the Father” and “Prayer of Christ Ascending Towards His Father.” The inner two movements are alleluias that illustrate the narrative elements of movements I and IV while expressing the experience of ascension itself. The second movement is particularly illustrative: a soul longing for heaven constantly looks up, begging for His true ascension. This movement is filled with rhythmic complexity—another Messiaen compositional hallmark—that sounds entirely organic, like birdsong. Messiaen was a bird enthusiast, claiming that birdcalls were true, organic music and a major inspiration throughout his entire compositional output. While the second movement is yearning and introspective, the third movement soars. Guided by woodwinds and punctuated by percussion, the trumpets lead the listener through swirling strings that ultimately lift the orchestra, inch by inch, to its final destination: the tranquil serenity of Heaven, now reached in the fourth movement.