2 Préludes (1928-29)

Cloches d’angoisses et larmes d’adieu

Un reflet dans le vent

The title of Messiaen’s earliest published piano work – the Préludes he wrote between 1929 and 1929 when he was still a pupil of Dukas at the Paris Conservatoire – inevitably calls Debussy to mind. So do some of the evocative titles attached to the eight pieces included in the collection, like Les sons implacables du rêve or Un reflet dans le vent. Instants défunts, on the other hand, is a clear allusion to the Pavane pour une infante défunte by another hero figure of the previous generation, Maurice Ravel. At the same time, however, there is far more Messiaen in the actual music of the Préludes than Debussy, Ravel or anyone else: his own personal “modes of limited transposition” are already fully operational in determining the nature of the harmony and the colour of the sound.

The prelude most prophetic of the later Messiaen is the sixth and most extended of them, Cloches d’angoisses et larmes d’adieu (Bells of anguish and tears of farewell). As the title suggests, it is divided into two parts. The repeated notes at the beginning, suggestive of a tolling bell, might recall Le Gibet from Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit but the harmonies around them, particularly those magically refracted high in the right hand, are pure Messiaen. The longer second part, following a towering climax of bell chords, presents its tears in a radiant B major, which is more conventional in harmony but no entirely characteristic in its celestial aspirations.

Un reflet dans le vent is the virtuoso finale to the set. There are more echoes of Ravel (Scarbo also from Gaspard de la nuit) in the dramatically gusty opening section but the next idea, a beautifully written suggestion of rippling wind, is a new sound in French piano music. The exuberant central climax anticipates Turangalîla in its expression of sheer joy. A short development and a varied recapitulation complete one of the few examples of sonata form to be found anywhere in Messiaen’s music.