An examination of developmental and variational processes in selected chamber and piano works of Oliver Messiaen (1908-1992)

• Main Author: Yeow, Gary Laycock Eng.
• Other Authors: Howard, John
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Music
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/14086
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Olivier Messiaen's creative output spans a multiplicity of genres and musical forces. His musical oeuvre displays his inimitable stamp and he has, in his numerous treatises, conferences and recorded conversations, sought to explicate his compositional aesthetics and procedures. In his conversations with Claude Samuel , Messiaen draws attention to the important formal principles of development and variation as he relies upon such structural frameworks in the composition of his music. Whilst Messiaen might employ the song form, the sonata principle or the Greek triad of the strophe, antistrophe and epode as structural scaffolds in the composition of his music, he acknowledges that he hasn't 'abandoned the eternal principle of development because that would be inconceivable, nor that of variation which is timeless .