Messiaen’s epic “Vingt Regards”

Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant Jesus, more often heard of than heard and then more often in excerpt than complete, will resound in its entirety in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Friday evening (Dec. 7). PianoArts is presenting the event.

Christopher Taylor, a leading authority on and exponent of this 20-part, two-hours+ piece, will play it. Taylor, the Paul Collins Associate Professor of Piano Performance at UW-Madison, has performed the notoriously difficult Vingt Regards all over the country and in Europe. He plays it from memory. To hear this piece is to think: How is it even possible to memorize this?

“It’s not an endless sea of sound,” Taylor said, in a phone interview Nov. 29. “It coheres. It tells a story. And it fits the hand and the brain pretty well. Once the music is in there, it feels pretty secure. It has that kind of logic. Messiaen gives you chances to breathe, and five movements to really warm up before he hits you with the tough stuff.”

The music sounds spontaneous, mercurial, intuitive. But Messiaen (1908-1992) was no ecstatic naif. Some of the music invites the listener into an awestruck, hypnotic state, but Taylor thinks that’s not the only way to perceive this music.

“It’s important to sense the game plan, the logical progression,” he said. “It’s useful to the listener to follow the titles and know you’re halfway or three-quarters of the way through.”

Messiaen built the entire piece around seven motives, each of them symbolic. The Theme of God (the Father), the chorale-like Theme of Chords, the Theme of Oriental Dance and Plain Chant, the Theme of Joy, the Theme of Mystical Love, the Theme of the Star and Cross and the “First Theme” — a sort of summing up that doesn’t occur until the 20th movement — recur and lend coherence.  Messiaen liked symmetry and used such structures in some of the movements. Messiaen’s strong suit was harmony; sometimes, he’s avant-garde and piles on the clusters. Sometimes, he’s almost medieval in his austerity.

Taylor, a mathematician as well as a musician, has turned a probing theorist’s eye and ear on Vingt Regards over the years.

“The Theme of God is most important,” Taylor said. “You hear it immediately in the first movement. After you hear it for the 50th time, you keep your ear open for it. People can pick up on these things.”

Taylor noted that some movements are more mystical and others are more purely musical and invite you to follow the form.

“It’s amazing how Messaien manages to straddle those two philosophical approaches,” Taylor said. “He jumps back and forth, and you have to jump between two modes of listening. Some are brainier and more formal. Others, it’s better to just let the music unfold in time without too much cogitation.”

Likewise…

“His harmony is eclectic,” Taylor said. “He moves among different systems, and sometimes he’s more interested in rhythmic games.”

Vingt Regards, composed in 1944, is translated variously as Twenty Gazes, or Twenty Views, or Twenty Contemplations, on the Infant Jesus. This overall title and the titles of the segments — “Contemplation of the Father,” “Contemplation of the Virgin,” “Contemplation of the Angels,” “Contemplation of the Church of Love” and so on — reflect Messiaen’s particular brand of Roman Catholicism, which he declared on several occasions to be the driving force behind his work.

“He had a very sensuous approach to religion,” Taylor said. “He emphasized the emotional side, the sense of wonder, a sort of open-mindedness.  He took in Indian music, nature sounds — especially birdsongs. It’s not essential to subscribe to his brand of religion to experience the joy, wonder and ecstasy in the music. Anyone can relate to it. The main prerequisite is an open mind.”

PianoArts presents Christopher Taylor, 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7,  St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 914 E. Knapp St. Tickets are $30, $15 for students. Order online. Bonus for ticket: Thursday, December 6, 2012 • 7:00 p. m.

Free with ticket to December 7 concert: Explore the life and music of Olivier Messiaen with Timothy Benson, organist at Saint Paul’s Church, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 6. Also at St. Paul’s.

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