Olivier Messiaen
Turangalîla-Symphonie

If we are comfortable with the term symphony (some more, some less), what about "Turangalîla"? Where does this strange word come from? Sanskrit, right? "turanga" and "lîla": the song of love that inspires Olivier Messiaen for a musical journey lasting over 75 minutes.

A symphony far removed from the more well-known (and worn-out) examples of the classical-romantic tradition, the "Turangalîla" employs a large orchestra of over a hundred musicians, prominently featuring the percussions (with 8 to 11 percussionists required in the score), the piano, which repeatedly crosses the entire musical fabric with a soloist role, and the Ondes Martenot, one of the earliest devices for the electroacoustic production of sound (an oscillator debuting in Paris in 1928 and produced in seven successive models until 1975).

Thus, venturing through these notes means encountering harsh and shrill melodies, themes that are sometimes bold, sometimes threatening, with an orchestral color rendered exotic by the dry timbres of the percussions, the nervous frolicking of the piano, leading to the lunar sounds of the Ondes Martenot.

It is useless to seek thematic development in this symphony: no phrasing followed by one or more variations in a long meditation. The West had already said everything about it, which is why Messiaen looks to the East. His musical phrases are short, immediately contradicted by others that follow urgently. There are indeed four main themes (the "brutal" one inspired by Mexican monuments, the flower theme, the love theme, the chord-based theme), but they surface and are submerged throughout the work, constantly reappearing, transfigured by orchestral treatment.

Composed between 1946 and 1948, divided into ten movements, Messiaen's "Turangalîla-Symphonie" is one of the most significant works of this important French composer, whose deep religiosity inspired almost all of his work but not this symphony. Some even sense jazz influences here and there, in addition to the aforementioned Eastern influences, and in fact, certain passages of this piece are discussed in terms of symphonic jazz. Nevertheless, every time we turn on the radar of 20th-century music, this vast and exuberant work constantly signals its presence.