Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (1944)

I Regard du Père: Extrêmement lent

II Regard de l’étoile: Modéré

III L’échange: Bien modéré

IV Regard de la Vierge: Bien modéré

V Regard du Fils sur le Fils: Très lent

VI Par Lui tout a été fait: Modéré, presque vif

VII Regard de la Croix: Bien modéré

VIII Regard des hauteurs: Vif

IX Regard du temps: Modéré

X Regard de l’Esprit de joie: Presque vif

X1 Première communion de la Vierge: Très lent

XII La parole toute-puissante: Un peu vif

XIII Noël: Très vif, joyeux

XIV Regard des Anges: Très vif

XV Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus: Très lent, calme

XVI Regard des prophètes, des bergers et des Mages: Modéré

XVII Regard du silence: Très modéré

XVIII Regard de l’Onction terrible: Modéré

XIX Je dors, mais mon coeur veille: Lent

XX Regard de l’Eglise d’amour: Presque vif

Whatever one’s personal reaction to the Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus – and reactions tend to be extreme, not only aesthetically but also theologically and even ornithologically – there is no room for doubt that it is one of the most imposing monuments of 20th-century piano literature, alongside works of the stature of Albéniz’s Iberia and Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke.

It is not just a matter of size although, at two hours in duration, the work is obviously one of the biggest of its kind. The most impressive aspect of all is that, to give expression to his transcental vision and to accommodate his already highly developed harmonic and rhythmic language, Messiaen invented a new and extravagantly demanding piano technique. Touching regularly on the highest and lowest registers of the instrument and its loudest and softest dynamics, Messiaen’s pianist is called upon to imitate the sound of other instruments and to execute the most brilliant runs and arpeggios, the most awkward figuration, the most massive of chords and the most perilous leaps while coping with superimposed layers of material that look as though they require three or four hands and with abstruse complexities of rhythm at the slowest and quickest of tempos. This “revolution in piano writing” he confessed he could never have achieved without the inspirational playing of Yvonne Loriod – the “unique, sublime and brilliant pianist” to whom he dedicated the work and who gave the first performance in the Salle Gaveau in March 1945. ­

The Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus owes its title – which is perhaps best translated as “Twenty Ways of Looking at the Infant Jesus” – to Maurice Toesca’s Les Douze Regards. Indeed, since the composer was asked early in 1944 to provide 12 pieces of piano music to accompany a reading of those poems in a radio broadcast, it probably owes not only its title but also its very existence to those Douze Regards. Other influences, as Messiaen acknowledged, were Dom Columbia Marmion, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint John of the Cross, Sainte Thérèse of Lisieux, the Gospels, and the Roman Missal. Even so, Messiaen’s contemplations from twenty different, mystic points of view are very personal, as some of his commentaries (quoted here in italics) confirm.

I Regard du Père (How the Father sees Him)

And God said: ‘This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased …’

The most important of the four main themes of the work, as identified by the composer himself, is the Theme of God. Confined to the bottom half of the keyboard throughout, harmonised in F sharp major and illuminated by a halo of repeated notes high in the right hand, it is the one and only concern of the immensely slow-moving first movement. It is to recur like a rondo theme in seven of the following movements.

II Regard de l’étoile (How the star sees Him)

The fall of Grace: the Star shines innocently, surmounted by a Cross …

The main melodic feature of the second movement is the “Theme of the star and the cross” – the star and the cross combined because, says Messiaen, “one opens and the other closes the earthly life of Jesus.” It is a chromatic line articulated in asymmetrical rhythms and first heard in octaves (the two hands are actually four octaves apart) just after a ppp cascade of light and four heavy chords imitating bells.

III L’échange (The exchange)

Descending in a spray, rising in a spiral; the terrible trade between humans and God. God made man to make us gods …

God is represented here, in a movement that proceeds on a regular crescendo from pp to ffff, not by the Theme of God but by immutably repeated thirds in triplet rhythms in the middle of the keyboard. Man struggles, until the brutally dissonant coda, with a three-note motif repeated in the same rhythm but with ever wider intervals in the left hand.

IV Regard de la Vierge (How the Virgin sees Him)

Innocence and tenderness … The woman of purity, the woman of the Magnificat, the Virgin gazes upon her child …

A “tender and innocent” theme in the top half of the keyboard alternates with interventions of a rattling xylophone imitation and vigorous birdsong. On its last two appearances it is overlaid by a variant of the Theme of God.

V Regard du Fils sur le Fils (How the Son sees the Son)

Mystery, rays of light in the night – refraction of joy, the birds of silence – the person of the Word made flesh – union of the human and divine natures in Jesus Christ …

The second of the five major pillars of the construction is based, like the first, on the Theme of God which is ever present in the left hand in its original key of F sharp major. It is combined with either a mathematically calculated polymodal rhythmic canon on two staves (one marked pp the other ppp) or its natural antithesis in more passages of birdsong.

VI Par Lui tout a été fait (By Him was everything made)

Abundance of space and time; galaxies, photons, contrary spirals, inverted lightning: by Him (The Word) was Everything made … in an instant, creation reveals to us the luminous shadow of His Voice …

Two more of the four cyclic themes are introduced in the long-sustained bravura of Par Lui tout a été fait, the Theme of Chords and the Theme of Love. Although, according to Messiaen, it is a fugue, it is scarcely recognisable as one, mainly because the fugue subject rarely appears in the form in which it is introduced, low in the left hand, in the opening bars. The right hand enters almost immediately with the counter-subject followed by a fortissimo variant of the subject. So the “fugue” goes on, incorporating rhythmic and melodic canons, the Theme of Chords, the one and only recall of the subject in its original form and a backwards version of the whole piece so far. Unstoppable though the juggernaut toccata seems to be, it is eventually halted after a pronounced rallentando by the Theme of God in the form of heavily emphatic chords each followed by Liszt-like rumbles in the bass. The fugue resumes, now featuring not only the Theme of God but also the Theme of Love, which latter the left hand repeats no fewer than twenty times in a row in the frenetic coda.

VII Regard de la Croix (How the Cross sees Him)

The Cross said to Him: You will be a priest in my arms …

Much less complicated both musically and theologically, Regard de la Croix is dominated by the Theme of the Cross, which is articulated in wide-spaced slow-moving double octaves, each note sustained by the pedal to allow both hands to insert a tolling ostinato of painful dissonances between the parallel lines. The texture remains the same until the brief crescendo of unadorned double octaves at the end.

VIII Regard des hauteurs (How the heights see Him)

Glory in the Heights … the Heights descend to the manger like the song of a lark…

Having learned to love bird song in the mountains of the Dauphiné near where he was brought up in Grenoble, Messiaen could scarcely think of “glory in the heights” in any other terms. The lark is accompanied by a nightingale, a blackbird and others – none of them really identifiable but all of them important for the evidence they offer of how the composer’s study of birdsong liberated his harmonies and rhythms. Rarely sounding more than two notes at once except in a few small chord clusters, it is both the shortest of the Vingt Regards and the most radiant in texture.

IX Regard du Temps (How Time sees Him)

The mystery of the infinity of Time; Time sees born in itself the One who is Eternal …

It was just as natural for Messiaen to think of time in terms of a rhythmic canon, as he does here with each of the three pianissimo parts given its own stave. Introducing it and alternating with it every few bars is a usually louder chordal theme.

X Regard de l’Esprit de joie (How the Spirit of Joy sees Him)

Violent dance, joyous sound of horns, rapture of the Holy Spirit … the joyous love of Blessed God in the Soul of Jesus Christ …

The third of the major pillars of the construction is the Regard de l’Esprit de joie, an exuberant scherzo equivalent to the Joie du sang des étoiles in the Turangalîla Symphony. It begins at the bottom end of the keyboard with what he describes as an “oriental dance” in mainly staccato articulation, its rumbling rhythms interrupted at unpredictable intervals by violent chords in both hands. The main theme – the Theme of Joy rising inexorably up a gapped scale – makes its first entry in the left hand as the tempo slows down from presque vif to modéré on an allusion to the Theme of God.

The composer’s “intoxication” amid all this joy is expressed by the sound of four hunting horns in the left hand under a clattering ostinato in the right. After an extensive development of the hunting calls, the Theme of Joy returns fff in refulgent polytonal harmonies amid more allusions to the Theme of God. The oriental dance is resumed, but now with the hands at opposite ends of the keyboard, and the Theme of Joy makes one last, emphatically climactic ffff appearance before a brief coda and a loud echo of the hunting horns.

XI Première communion de la Vierge (The Virgin’s First Communion)

After the Annunciation, Mary adores Jesus within her … My God, my Son, my Magnificat! – my love without the sound of words …

The vividly expressive eleventh movement is based on the Theme of God, which appears in the opening section as a sequence of four chords quietly repeated in the left hand and overlaid in the right by a variety of decorative but also meaningful figurations, including the Virgin’s tender “internal embrace” of her unborn child and a characteristic display of bird song at one point. The Virgin’s “Magnificat” in the quicker middle section is presented as a vigorous dance with a compressed and syncopated variant of the Theme of God again in the left hand set against “panting” expressions of physical exhilaration in the right. It leads to a dramatic litany of chords shared by the two hands, an extraordinary passage of quietly drummed low Fs representing the beating of the child’s heart and a brief recall of the opening très lent material, the Theme of God dying away at the end.

XII La parole toute puissante (The all-powerful Word)

This Child is the Word who sustains all things through the power of His voice …

The power of the Word is reflected by an implacably thunderous fortissimo reverberating mainly in the lower half of the keyboard. In a texture consisting of a three-part theme proclaimed in octaves over a percussive ostinato of chord clusters sustained at the very bottom of the range – Messiaen had a tamtam coloured by drum rolls in mind – harmony is virtually excluded.

XIII Noël (Christmas)

The Christmas bells say with us the sweet names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph …

Noël is a contrastingly joyful carillon, of brilliant tintinnabulations at one end of the keyboard and shuddering thuds at the other, enshrining at its centre an intimate, sweetly harmonised family scene at the crib.

XIV Regard des Anges (How the Angels see Him)

Sparkling, beating; a powerful blast from immense trombones; Your servants are flames of fire – then the song of birds who feast upon blue – and the amazement of the angels grows – for it is not to them but to the human race that God is united…

There is another rhythmic canon a few bars into Regard des Anges – in three monotone voices, each one harmonised in parallel tritones (making them sound dangerously like Danse macabre). This is one component of the composite material, including also an evocation of stentorian trombones low in the left hand, that Messiaen presents three times in what he calls the first three “strophes” of the piece. In the fourth strophe the angels abandon their trombones and transform themselves into birds, the elaborately articulated song of which can be heard to combine with the rhythmic canon. The fifth strophe, introduced by a return of the trombone theme, expresses in a climactic crescendo “the growing stupefaction of the angels that God allied himself not to them but to the human race.”

XV Le baiser de l’Enfant-Jésus (The Infant Jesus’s kiss)

At each Communion, the Infant Jesus sleeps with us, close to the gate; then he opens it onto the garden and comes forth in a blaze of light to embrace us …

The fourth major pillar of the construction, inspired by an engraving of the infant Jesus running arms outstretched to embrace Sainte Thérèse, is based like the others on “the theme of God.” It is presented here as a lullaby with a recurrent rocking motif in the left hand. After a variation in which the theme is overlaid by filigree runs and trills of Lisztian delicacy, the scene changes to the garden, where it is combined with birdsong. The climax of the piece, following a long crescendo as Jesus runs with arms outstretched, is the kiss, the ecstatic Theme of Love in triadic chords high in the right hand accompanied by arpeggios in the left. It is not, however, the end of the piece, even though it sounds like it: a tranquil coda, identified as “the shadow of the kiss,” is still to come.

XVI Regard des prophètes, des bergers et des Mages (How the prophets, the shepherds and the Magi see Him)

Tamtams and oboes, a vast, buzzing chorus …

The tamtams, reallistically suggested by accretions of fourths low in the left hand, gradually accelerate by way of progressively shorter note values while similarly percussive dissonances in the right hand retain a strict rhythmic regularity. Primitive oboes are presented in exotic monody by the right hand alone. The “buzzing” chorus sings a four-note theme which is much repeated before it too is gradually accelerated in the left hand while the oboes, now in minor thirds, retain an even rhythm in the right. In the last section the rhythmic values of the tamtam strokes are gradually increased, reversing the process they went through in the opening bars.

XVII Regard du Silence (How Silence sees Him)

Silence in the hand, an upside-down rainbow … each silence of the Manger reveals music and colours which are the mysteries of Jesus Christ …

Messiaen represents silence – always a problem for a composer – by a series of very quiet “impalpable” chords negated by one hand contradicting the other both modally and rhythmically. The composer’s reference to “musics and colours which are the mysteries of Jesus Christ” more or less explains the suddenly loud entry of another of the main themes of the work, the Theme of Chords, and the subsequent delicately scored arpeggios and snatches of bird song. This contemplation of Jesus in the manger ends with a remarkable coda of pianissimo chords alternating between left and right hands at the top end of the keyboard and described by Messiaen as “confetti, light precious stones, jostling reflections.”

XVIII Regard de l’Onction terrible (How the Terrible Unction sees Him)

The Word assumes a definite human form; the choice of the flesh of Jesus by the awesome Majesty of God …

The Regard de l’Onction terrible was influenced, Messiaen has said, “by an old tapestry of the Word of God struggling under the features of a mounted Christ. One sees only his two hands holding a sword that he brandishes amid flashes of lightning.” But before he approaches the picturesque element of the piece, he offers an extraordinary introduction where the two hands are set in contrary motion not only in the usual melodic sense but also rhythmically: the rhythmic values of the notes in the right hand get progressively longer by a quaver at a time while those in the left hand get progressively shorter. The central section of what turns out to be a palindromic construction sets a thunderous chorale against brilliant lightning flashes of keyboard bravura. The coda puts the contrary-motion introduction in reverse.

XIX Je dors, mais mon cœur veille (I sleep, but my heart is awake)

It is not the bow of an angel which smiles, it is the sleeping Jesus who loves us on his Holy Day and who give us forgetfulness …

Slow-moving, sometimes almost motionless, Je dors, mais mon cœur veille is an ecstatic contemplation of the Theme of Love, which was to be the basis of the sleepily rapturous Jardin du sommeil d’amour (also in F sharp major) in the Turangalîla Symphony a few years later. In this case, however, the love is divine rather than Tristanesque and, unadorned by birdsong, its expression is punctuated by eloquent silences.

XX Regard de l’Eglise d’amour (How the Church of Love sees Him)

Grace made us love God as God loves us; after the shower of night, the spirals of anguish, here are bells, glory and the kiss of love … All the passion of our arms around the Invisible One …

The last of the major pillars of the construction – ­affirming the holiness of the F sharp major tonality postulated at the start of the work and re-established in the preceding movement – is a hugely comprehensive celebration and transfiguration of what has gone before. Beginning, characteristically, with the development rather than the exposition of his material, Messiaen eventually makes a formal presentation of his two main subjects, the themes of Love and God. Just about the whole of the second half, marked Très lent, solennel, is devoted to a massive glorification of the Theme of God (always recognisable by its eight repeated chords) which stretches the capacities of the piano and the pianist to their limits.

Gerald Larner © 2008