A Conversation with Composer Gerald Levinson about Olivier Messiaen

Vincent P. Benitez

Introduction

Gerald Levinson (b. 1951) has been recognized as one of the leading composers of
his generation.1 He has won numerous awards and honors in recognition of his work and
music. Levinson studied composition with George Crumb, George Rochberg, and Richard
Wernick at the University of Pennsylvania, and Ralph Shapey at the University of
Chicago. From 1974-76, he studied composition with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris
Conservatoire. After his studies with Messiaen in Paris, Levinson served as Messiaens
translator and assistant for master classes, lectures, texts, and program notes when
Messiaen was in the United States. Levinson is the Jane Lang Professor of Music at
Swarthmore College, where he has taught as a faculty member since 1977.
I became acquainted with Gerald Levinson in 2006 when both the Pennsylvania
State University (where I am a member of the music faculty) and Swarthmore College
were hosting Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, authors of a then recent biography on
Messiaen, as visiting scholars.2 Hill gave all-Messiaen piano recitals at both institutions,
1

I would like to thank Gerald Levinson for his assistance with this article. For detailed biographical

information about Levinson and his music, I encourage the reader to visit the Web site of his publisher,
Theodore Presser (http://www.presser.com/Composers/info.cfm?Name=GERALDLEVINSON).
2

Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005).

with Simeone providing pre-concert talks. I exchanged a few e-mail messages with
Levinson as I was preparing for the visit of Hill and Simeone. I knew that he was not only
a student of Messiaen but, more importantly, a person that I, as one interested in Messiaen
and his music, should get to know. After spending two weeks in Paris and Assisi, Italy in
May-June 2006 conducting research for a book on Messiaens opera, Saint Franois
dAssise, I thought it would be a great idea to interview Levinson about Messiaen and his
music. I was unprepared for the wealth of information about Messiaen that I was to receive
on that hot Pennsylvania day, 14 July 2006, when I traveled from my home in State
College to the campus of Swarthmore College and Levinsons office.
I met Jerry in his office on the second floor of the campuss music building. After
exchanging greetings, I immediately went to work, setting up my digital tape recorder for
the long interview that was to unfold. We covered a great deal of material on that day,
including how Levinson became acquainted with Messiaen and his music, his studies with
Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, and thoughts about Messiaens music and
compositional techniques. Throughout the interview, Levinson demonstrated a profound
esteem for Messiaen as a musician, teacher, and person.
In this article, I recount the conversation I had with Levinson about Messiaen. It is
a portrait of one of the greatest composers and pedagogues of the twentieth century, as
sketched by one of his pupils, a leading composer in his own right. I present the interview
in three segments, beginning with how Levinson became acquainted with Messiaen and his
music.

Levinsons First Contact with Messiaen and His Music

How did you become familiar with Messiaens music? What prompted you to study with
him at the Paris Conservatoire? 3
I am trying to remember how I became familiar with his music. I think the first
recording I ever had was the one in which Boulez conducted Et exspecto resurrectionem
mortuorum and the Couleurs de la Cit cleste, which I remembered was issued by CBS
Records and had a white cover with silver letters; very modern, very spectacular.4 I believe
I read about Messiaen in William Austins book on twentieth-century music.5 Although he
talked about Messiaen in a lot of ways that made me very curious, Austin focused on the
earlier music. His book was published in the mid-1960s and thus covered music through
the first half of the twentieth century. I remember that it included excerpts from Messiaens
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps and Les Corps glorieux, and the discussion of him intrigued
me. Then I bought a recording of Et exspecto, and it seemed to have no relationship to the
kind of music that Austin described. At the time, I was a Stravinsky devotee, and still am.
One of the things about Stravinsky that I found very exciting was that, in the 1960s, he was
transforming his musical language into a highly exploratory, ultra-modern idiom.
3

Gerald Levinson, Vincent Benitez.

For a compact disc version of this recording, see Group instrumental percussion de Strasbourg,

Orchestre du Domaine Musical, Pierre Boulez, conductor; Yvonne Loriod, piano; liner notes, Sony Classical
SMK 68 332, 1969/1978/1995.
5

William W. Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century: From Debussy through Stravinsky (New

York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1966), 390-95.

Considering that he studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, that was truly amazing. So, I got the
sense, listening to these pieces by Messiaen from the 1960s, that something similar was
also true of him, which it was. I was struck by the stylistic distance that he had traveled,
from his early music that Austin described in ways that intrigued me, to these new pieces,
which sounded nothing like what I had heard and understood previously.
By the time I was in college, at the University of Pennsylvania, I was a fan of
Messiaens music, and I was talking about it to all of my friends. I probably bored them a
lot. George Crumb told me that back then I introduced him to a lot of Messiaens music,
and that it meant a lot to him. Two summers ago [2004], that came full circle, when both of
us were invited to be in residence at the Festival Messiaen in Le Grave.6 He could not go
because it was his seventy-fifth birthday year, so I spoke on his behalf when his music was
played. He wrote a beautiful tribute to Messiaen, on how much his music had meant to
him, which I translated into French for the program book. Anyway, by the time I
graduated, I had studied with Crumb, and then with Richard Wernick and George
Rochberg. Wernick and Rochberg had no sympathy for Messiaens music. Rochberg
admitted that the Quatuor was a great masterpiece, but he had no patience with any of
Messiaens other music. We used to argue about it.
By the time I graduated, I thought I should go to Paris and study with Messiaen. I
wanted to find out how to do that, so I wrote letters to him at the Paris Conservatory,
6

An annual summer festival celebrating the music of Messiaen in the towns of La Grave and Villar

dArne in the French Alps, near Messiaens country home. Each yearly festival normally consists of a tenday series of concerts, talks, and other events, celebrating themes predominant in Messiaens life and music
in a beautiful mountain setting that he loved.

which were not answered. Then I learned that he was coming to Washington, D.C. to play
the world premiere of the Mditations sur le mystre de la Sainte Trinit. This was in the
spring of 1972. One aspect of his music that I didnt cotton to was his organ musicI
really didnt get it. I didnt like the organ, and I didnt understand his organ music.

Even the earlier works from the 1930s?

I am not sure. At some point, I obtained the Ducretet-Thompson LPs of him
playing all of his organ music. I still have those LPs, but they sound much better on their
CD-reissue.7 I do not know how long ago I had them. I tried listening to his organ music,
and I guess I didnt connect with it too much. Then I found out he was being sponsored by
Catholic University, so I thought, well, if I want to find out what its like to study with
him, maybe I could try to arrange a meeting while he was in Washington. So, I left
messages for him at Catholic University. People there assured me that they would pass
them on to him. But I never got any responses, so I decided not to go. I thought, okay, this
guy is world famous. All those pictures of himhe looks as if he is on another planet,
totally unapproachable. But on the day of the concert, many of my friends asked why I
hadnt left yet, since I was in Philadelphia, just a couple of hours from Washington. They
said: Its the world premiere of a new Messiaen piece. Why arent you there? I replied:
Well, . . . he didnt answer my messages, and Im not going to meet with him, and well

Messiaen par lui-mme: Organ Works, Olivier Messiaen, liner notes, EMI Classics CDZ 7 67401

2, 1957/1992, 4 CDs.

. . . I dont like his organ music. And after enough people said, Are you crazy?, I finally
got on the last possible train, and I remember I ran to the National Shrine where the
premiere was taking place, and I got in just as it was beginning. Messiaen played the
Mditations and as in most churches, the organ is concealed from the audience, so there
was this abstract experience with his musican extremely strange music filling this vast
space, full of 3,500 organists.
Afterward, Catholic University gave him an honorary degree. Thats the first time
any of us in the audience saw him. He came down and there was an academic processional.
He actually had a cap and gown on. I cant believe that he put up with that. Its amazing, so
uncharacteristic. Then he gave a speech in French on esoteric, theological subjects with
which I was not familiar. Even if you understood French, which I did, I wasnt sure what
he was talking about. I think he tried to explain why he wrote a piece about the Holy
Trinity to be played in the National Shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. He talked about
theological connections between the Virgin Mary and the Trinity, questions that were
probably of no concern to anybody in the room. This just confirmed my impression that he
was a truly strange person and on another planet, spending his time thinking about things
very remote from what anybody else was thinking about, except, maybe, monks. So I
thought, well, I guess it was interesting to have been here, but I didnt understand his
music. I wont get to meet the guy, and he is really weird, but what the hell, I was here at
the premiere.
Afterwards there was a reception line, with all 3,500 organists. Most of them had
copies of the Banquet cleste. Thats the organ music of his that they knew, from 1928.

This was 1972they were a little behind. I had the sense from the room that everyone else
was at least as bewildered by the music as I was. But I thought it would be interesting to
see him close upI thought, Ill just sort of sneak into the reception line. When I came
up to him, I just suddenly blurted out something like, Can I talk to you for a minute?,
instead of everyone elses, Its such an honor to meet you. Would you please autograph
my score? I just sort of blurted this out, in my French, and he looked up at me, in that
intense, direct way he had, and said, You must be the young man thats been sending me
all of those messages. I said, Yes. He said, Well, by all means. And Yvonne LoriodMessiaen got up and said, Here, take my chair. Do you speak French? You can help
translate. So immediately upon meeting him, I assumed the role that I would take up for
so many years afterward. And so she said, Can I get you a Coke? So there I was, being
taken in by this maternal figure, and being asked if I could help a little bit, and talking to
Messiaen about studying with him. Just like that. I was in shock, because they were such
nice people, so courteous, unpretentious, and friendlyand that was really a revelation,
because I hadnt thought of him as a human being. And the first meeting . . . well, he
recognized who I was. He confirmed that by my conversation with him. He was very tuned
into people. Actually, I think he was quasi-telepathic, or at least very, very intuitive about
people. He had many students who didnt speak very good French, and we all felt we could
easily make ourselves understood to Messiaen, much more easily than to other people.

Was Yvonne Loriod in tune with people in the same way?

Not in the same way. In fact, I always felt that I spoke better French in talking with
Messiaen than I did in talking with her. Partly because the way he spoke was very slow,
beautifully pronounced, and very clear, and . . . she spokeshe speaksvery fast and with
much more slang. Shes harder to understand, which made me more nervous, and my
French would fall apart. Since Messiaen was very patient, I felt that I could take my time
and think it out; I probably did express myself better. Messiaen told me something
intimidating at that first meeting, about all those terrible entrance exams at the
Conservatory. I was twenty years old and I was not a virtuoso in any way, and I thought all
of this sounded pretty tough.
I was and still am an amateur pianist who loves the piano. But I did not have much
technique, and I heard about these solfge exams and all the stuff they do, and I thought, I
dont think I would pass. They space these exams from October to December, so you have
to actually go there and spend three months of your time just to find out if youre getting
into the school or not. Messiaen said, If you come over, and you dont get officially
admitted, you are still more than welcome to audit the class, but the difference is, you
wont have your works played through the Conservatory,and this was a really
wonderful thing. You got really good players, you got played over the radio, and so on.
And he said, I dont take private students anymore. I just dont have the time, so its only
through the Conservatory; think about it. I figured that maybe I should wait a little longer
until I had better odds of passing those exams, and so I went to the University of Chicago
for two years and studied with Ralph Shapey. After I got a masters degree there, I thought,
now that Im a little older, Id feel a little less at sea if I went to Paris and didnt get in. So I

got a grant from the University of Chicago to do that, and went over there in the fall of
1974. I found out that Messiaens class met for twelve hours a weekthree four-hour
sessionstalk about generous; that was just amazing!

Levinsons Studies with Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire

Were the classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?

I dont remember. It probably was something like that. You know you can consider
an American university class as one-third of the time of thatthree hours a week. In order
to help foreigners who had crossed oceans to try to get into his class, Messiaen was willing
to come early to do dictation exercises with us.

Oh, really? That is interesting.

It was. Those of us who went, got in, and those of us who didnt, didnt. Messiaen
knew that the training in other countries wasnt the same. They didnt drill this dictation
solfge stuff the way they do at the Paris Conservatory, and we would have been at a
disadvantage. Whats very interesting is that those dictations, are, to my mind, antimusical. The melodic dictations were chromatic, pretty much atonal, but not music. They
had no shape. They were these artificial test-tube things, which would test your hearing of
intervals and rhythms, but they went on for so long that they became a memory trickit
was like memorizing random numbers. It wasnt music; it was random shapes.

10

Messiaen couldnt bring himself to drill these kinds of non-musical melodies with
us, so when he wanted to practice atonal dictation, he brought in Schoenberg and Berg
the actual music that was atonal and chromatic, stuff that had phrases. So, that was
interesting. He still wanted to use actual music to train us. The other types of dictation that
I found valuable, and very French, were pure chordal dictations, which involved up to
eight-note chords, where they would tell you what the bass note was. But these werent
progressions, and they werent functional, and they could be quite complex as chords. For
me, that was representative of the French taste for sounds in themselves, which was just
like Messiaens music. He would play more or less random chords for us, training us to
hear things like that. In hearing that way, I do well, and thats something I have in common
with the French way of hearing. Anyway, a Russian friend and I were both accepted for
study there. Some other foreigners werent accepted.

Could you give me an overview of the class? How was it conducted? What was a typical
class session like? What repertoire was covered during your two years there?
Well, lets see. A lot of things you would have read about his class. There was his
plainchant course, the Greek rhythm thing, including Le Printemps by Claude Le Jeune
[1528/301600], which combines Renaissance melody and polyphony with Greek
meters actually wonderful music.

Thats in the first volume of the Trait [de rythme, de couleur, et dornithologie], correct?

11

Yes. When I started getting the volumes of the Trait, I thought, wow, this is just
like being there! I could almost hear him talking. Whats in the Trait is just like what he
did in class.

Thats good to know.

What he kept telling students all these years is what he wrote down. Some of it,
actually, Yvonne [Loriod-Messiaen] put together from his notes. They were probably the
notes he used in class. We did his short history of opera. I dont know if we did all of his
favorite operas, or remember if we discussed Mozart, but I do know that we talked about
Pellas [et Mlisande] and Boris [Godunov]. One day he brought in the score of Pellas
that had been a gift to him on his tenth birthday. This was an historic, iconic thing.8 Oh my
God, that score was about sixty years old or so, and had tiny handwriting all over it.
Because we had that Russian student in the class, the discussions on Boris were
more interesting than usual. Messiaen said, Boris is the great Russian opera to nonRussians, but to Russians its Khovanshchina, not Boris. So we decided to talk about that.
That was brought in, something that Messiaen knew less well, and we had very interesting
discussions about it. A friend of mine, a conductor who had just toured with his teacher in
Russia [Charles Brck, conducting the first Russian performances of the TurangallaSymphonie], brought me back an Urtext score of Boris, the non-Rimskyized version, which

Jean (or Jehan) de Gibon (1873-1952), Messiaens harmony teacher when he lived in Nantes,

France as a boy, gave him a copy of the vocal score of Debussys Pellas et Mlisande. Messiaen cited this
gift as a seminal moment in his development as a musician.

12

now is pretty well known, but wasnt in the mid 70s. I was able to show that score to
Messiaen while we were talking about Borishe wasnt familiar with itand he saw how
different it was. I remember an interesting comment he made. In the Coronation scene
[scene 2], when they sing the Slava theme, theres a place where the chorus sings it in a
fugal manner, but with imitative entries at the tritone [D/A]. Messiaen was talking about
that passage, and since I had just gotten the original Mussorgsky version, I was able to say,
You know theres something interestingMussorgsky didnt write thatthats Rimsky,
who felt that chorus needed to be longer, so he threw in this fugal thing. Messiaen replied,
Thats actually very interesting, because when you think about it, it is a bit academic. Hes
using the tritone, which is intrinsic to this scene and its bell chords, but in a slightly
academic way, so theres a sense that its Rimskybut I still like the passage.9

So when Messiaen taught, he sat at the piano and played?

He was always at the piano, singing and playing.

Did you take a lot of notes?

Yes, I took a lot of notes. Some people did, some people didnt. I wrote all over my
score of Pellas. I acquired a lot of scores back then. There was a music store on the way
to the Conservatory, with scores displayed in the window. I remember seeing the full score
of Pellas, of Daphnis et Chlo. They tended to cost one hundred francs, which was about

See Modest Petrovich Moussorgsky, Boris Godunov in Full Score (Rimsky-Korsakov Version)

(New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987), 85-88, 103-5.

13

twenty bucks at the time. And I thought, How could they charge twenty dollars for one
piece? Now Im pretty nostalgic for those days. If you could buy those scores now, theyd
cost about that amount in dollars. Im glad I overcame my initial resistance, because I
bought a lot of really wonderful scores, including the Turangalla. I had to buy a big metal
trunk to send this music library home when I returned to the United States. In fact,
Messiaen said, I think one of the most important tools of a composer is his library.

Oh, sure. Definitely.

You could see that in his case. One of the things that touched me most about
Messiaen was his openness about acknowledging his sources. The Trait is full of that, and
also the Technique [de mon langage musical]. Hed say, I found this progression in Ravel.
Here it is in the original, heres how I made a sequence out of it, and heres how I put it
into my music. Theres the chord progression associated with the Chorus of Sleeping
Soldiers in Wozzeck [Act II, scene 5] that Messiaen uses repeatedly in his music.10
Sometimes he doesnt even transpose it. Its just there, undigested, and yet he makes it
sound like Messiaen.

Through the deforming prism of his musical language, as he says?

Yes. Theres another progression from Honeggers Jeanne dArc au bcher that he
uses verbatim, without transposition, in much of his late music. Its a big deal in Saint

10

See Alban Berg, Wozzeck, Klavierauszug von Fritz Heinrich Klein (Wien: Universal Edition,

1958), 169-70.

14

Franois. It seems to me that the funeral carillon in the last scene of Saint Franois is not
too far removed from the coronation scene of Boris. There are a few extra notes in the
chords, but theyre a similar type of thinking.
Messiaen would sometimes talk about his music, if pressed, particularly if a concert
was coming upthere were a lot of performances of his music in Paris. If we begged him,
he would discuss the music of his that was going to be played, such as Et exspecto, Livre
dorgue, Turangalla. I dont remember them all, but there were a lot.

Since he was professor of composition at this time, and since it was a composition class,
did you have the opportunity to have your pieces played in class and critiqued?
Thats the other thing. He would make time for that. The interesting thing is that to
get into the Conservatory composition class, the last thing they wanted to see was your
music. You had to go through all these elimination rounds, dictation, solfge, all that stuff.
Then they had the mise en loge, which, in Debussys time, lasted twenty-four hours. In my
time, it was reduced to seventeen. You came in at six oclock in the morning and left at
eleven at night, something like that. You were not allowed to leave except to go to the
bathroom. You had to bring your own food in, and a guard accompanied you if you went to
the bathroom. They gave you a bit of music, and you had to do something with it.
There were two mises en loge. One was called style classique, and the other
moderne. They wouldnt tell you anything in advance about the classique. For the
moderne, they would tell you the names of two composers, from whose music you would
be given excerpts, which you would have to use as a basis to write something for a

15

specified instrumentation. That year the excerpts were going to be from Stravinsky and
Dutilleux. Messiaen helped us by acquainting us with Dutilleuxs music. As for the
classique, I remember they gave us the oboe damore introduction to the aria Qui sedes ad
dexteram patris from the Gloria of the B-Minor Mass, one of those long obbligato
introductions before the aria even starts, and said, Write variations on this for string
quartet, without access to a piano. And then, youd try to catch up on sleep, and two days
later, you took the other mise en loge, which was to write something in a contemporary
vein, based on either an excerpt from Stravinsky or one from Dutilleux, your choice. The
Stravinsky one was from Agon, of all things. It was a sort of twelve-tone fugue that
happens near the end of the piece. Its a fully serial piece by that point. And being a
Stravinsky fanatic, I happened to know the piece pretty well. So I was able to write
something that kind of sounded like the original, because I knew how it went. And I knew
that it was a trap. They said Stravinsky and they thought maybe we wouldnt notice that it
was twelve-tone. So I worked out all the rows and stuff. I did it right. Only after that did
they allow you to present your own music. That was the last thing they wanted to see.

Did they evaluate your compositions at that point?

Well, they got submitted to a jury, somehow. You were allowed to submit a tape.
So I gave them a tape. There was a piece I finished my senior year in college that I was
fairly proud of. It was a song cycle, which actually had an oblique reference to Messiaen in
it. I used a progression of two chords that was taken from a melody from the Pomes pour

16

Mi. One of my precious recordings is one where Messiaen accompanies a singer on

Pomes pour Mi.11 Have you heard that?

I think I have an old LP of it.

On Everest, right?

Yes. I have that exact LP.

That was one of my precious possessions. I dont think I was there at the jury. I
think a tape was played for them. Maybe I was. I dont remember if you had to present
your music in person. So, anyway, I got in.
In the class we were invited to bring our own music in, particularly works in
progress that we wanted Messiaens feedback on. He would schedule that ahead of time. If
somebody said, There is something Id like to show you, he would say, Why dont we
look at it from 9:00 to 9:30 on Wednesday? And that meant, if you didnt want to just sit
there and be bored while somebody else talked about his or her music, you could come to
class later. So you would, more or less, have private time, although people might be
looking in on you. He would devote his full attention to your score and give you feedback.
He wasnt very, very hands-on about digging into how the piece was written. We were
assumed to be fairly advanced by then. He would give us many detailed tips on
orchestration: That doesnt balanceit sticks out, or You need to reinforce this, or

11

Pomes pour Mi; Lise Arseguest, soprano; Olivier Messiaen, piano; Everest 3269, sound

recording.

17

Thats not in a good register. There was a lot of attention to instrumental details. I
remember one comment, about the particularly sumptuous voicing and orchestration of a
chordal passage in my orchestral piece in progress, that it was bien capiton. That sent me
to the dictionary; it turned out to mean well-upholsteredthe mot juste for the sound I
was aiming for!
Messiaen also talked about pacing and shaping. I have two stories to tell. The first
one is about my first year there, when I made a mistake and did not take enough advantage
of this kind of teaching. The second year I did much betterI had learned my lesson. The
first year, I had come out of a long period of writers block, but I felt very alive and
stimulated in France. So I got back to work pretty early in my [second] year. And I wrote a
forty-minute piece for chamber orchestra, a really big, ambitious piece. And I refrained
from showing it to him. But it was scheduled for performance on the radio, and the
Conservatoire arranged for very good players. They were recent alums, generally, of the
Conservatory; they were top-notch players. A friend of mine was going to conduct it, but
he decided he wouldnt be able to handle it. So he offered to coach me so I would be able
to conduct it. I had a little conducting training, but I really shouldnt have done that. I also
never showed Messiaen the piece, for reasons I still dont understand. Finally, it was about
two weeks before the performance, and I had really been doing all-nighters to finish the
piece. I finally thought, I really should show it to him. So, we made an appointment. It
was a really long piece. He said, Lets set aside a good hour for this. So, everyone else in
the class was warned, If you want to sit in on this, fine, but if you think it will be boring,
dont come until 10:00 oclock, or even later. I was still finishing the score, and I had

18

stayed up really late the previous night to actually finish it. I set my alarm clock, but
wouldnt you know it, I overslept. I woke up at 11, and I threw the alarm clock across the
room. I remember it. I would blame the alarm clock. I rushed down to the Conservatory on
the Metro, and Messiaen was looking very stern. Where were you?, he said. I was deeply
apologetic. He had been there, but practically nobody else was, because they thought it was
my time, and all that time was wasted. I stood him up! So we arranged for another time to
meet, and he looked over the piece. There wasnt really enough time to read the score, it
was so long. But he saw a lot of problems in it. He said, You really should have come to
me sooner. But it was too late. I had to finish copying out the parts.
That concert was the worst catastrophe of my musical life. For one thing, all of us
composers had lied about how long our pieces were; otherwise, they never would have let
us schedule them. There were four new pieces, and I told them that my forty-minute piece
was twenty-five minutes long. All my colleagues had done something similar. And then it
was the last concert of the season, and there was a chorus that had gotten bumped from an
earlier concert, so they threw that on. I found out that the Brahms B-major Trio was also
being added to the program. Thats one of Brahmss longest pieces. So I went to the
director of the concert, saying, You cant do that. Thats impossible. The piece is fifty
minutes long. And the guy looked up and said, No, they said it was fifteen minutes. I
said, Well, are they just doing the first movement? Even thats longer than fifteen
minutes. And he said, No, four movements; fifteen minutes. And then I realized that the
guy whose job it was to coordinate chamber music at the Paris Conservatory didnt know
Brahms, because they dont like Brahms in France. So you could lie about Brahms and get

19

away with it. And then Andr Jolivet died that week, so they had to do a tribute to him.
They had Pierre-Laurent Aimard come and play the Cinq Danses rituelles. So, long story
short, the concert was five and a half hours long.
My forty-minute piece started at 11:30 p.m. Two-thirds of the audience had gone,
but Messiaen was still there. My piece was mostly slow, and it got slower and longer as it
went along. The fifth movement out of five was the longest and slowest, and it fell apart at
the performance. There were long stretches of actually nothing happening. Eventually I
was reduced to calling out rehearsal numbers, saying vingt-trois, but even then nobody
came in, because they were all sort of blitzed. And so the concert ended at 1:15 a.m. with
Pierre-Laurent playing. The technicians got mad and dimmed the lights about 1:00 oclock
in the middle of the [Cinq] Danses rituelles. And Pierre-Laurent didnt miss a beat. Now
hes a great master. Everybody knows Pierre-Laurent Aimard now. He was seventeen then,
and an amazing prodigy. I asked him afterwards, How did you keep playing when all
those lights went out? And he said, The lights went out? That to me was a real lesson
about what a real master performer does. So anyway, Messiaen said to me, You know,
you really should have talked to me beforehand.
That work for chamber orchestra is the most major piece of mine that I do not keep
in my active catalogue anymore. It had some lovely things in it, but it was hopelessly,
badly shaped. So the next year I wrote a clarinet trio, which I still like a lot, and am just
finishing a recording of it now, thirty years later. Another was a two-panel orchestra piece,
of which the first ones pretty good, very slow and very massive. I showed that to
Messiaen as soon as I had a good draft of it, and he went through it with a fine-tooth comb,

20

and he was very helpful. I remember he said, This movement is eighteen pages of score,
and the second movementwhich I had the first little bit ofwas a fast movement with
lots of notes in it, which had cost me a lot of effort. I had maybe five or six pages of the
second movement. I was exhausted from writing it out, because it had scads of notes in it.
And he said, Well, thats good. You just need this to be about a hundred pages long. I
said, What? He said, Well, in my experience, to balance slow music with fast music
takes about five times as many pages. Well, if you look at the score of Turangalla, the
fifth movement and the last movement go on for an unbelievable number of pages, covered
with sixteenth notes. Solid sixteenth notes. Thats why Stravinsky made that crack that all
you need to write Turangalla is a copious supply of ink. In the end, when you asked
Messiaen to look closely at your pieces, he would do it. The most important thing you
came away with, more than any specific compositional advice, was the feeling that your
musical efforts had been deeply understood and generously supported.
When interesting contemporary composers were in town, which would include
many of his former students, he would invite them to his class. I think Tristan Murail and
Grard Grisey came to class. This spectralist thing was new in the mid 70s. These
composers were Messiaens recent alums. At least one of them came to class and talked
about their music. I definitely remember Xenakis coming to class. Of the operas we talked
about, the ones that made the biggest impression on me were Pellas, Boris,
Khovanshchina, and Wozzeck.

Any Wagner during your two years there? The Ring of the Nibelungen?

21

Im not sure. I should remember that. We must have looked at it, given the way he
went chronologically through opera. I know that Parsifal was staged then, and I remember
going to see that. That was the closest experience I ever had to Saint Franois. The pacing
and the feeling were actually a little bit similar. But I dont remember him talking about
Parsifal. We would also bring in things. We took about half a class where I acquainted him
with George Crumbs newest music, Music for a Summer Evening, for two pianos and
percussion, which was written for the dedication of this very music building here at
Swarthmore. Thats why we have the manuscript page of it out in the lobby. But I didnt
know anything about Swarthmore at the time. Messiaens reactions to that music were very
interesting. He really liked it and was moved by it. But, hearing the Petrouchka- or Boristype chords and whole-tone harmonies in it, he said, You know its very interesting that
American composers are finding these sounds, because its what we French composers
grew up with back in the 20s. It seems a little old hat to me. I asked, What about the
pure pentatonic stuff in the last movement? That seems different, he said. Thats so old,
its eternal.
I also brought Ivess Fourth Symphony to the class, which he found quite
fascinating. I dont know if he had known that piece beforehand. Thats the piece I used to
get my prix in analyse when I was in Claude Ballifs class; my friends were in Betsy
Jolass class. She filled in for Messiaen when he was touring, which he did a lot. And so I
did get to know her that way. That was a nice bonus of the class. In fact, Messiaens first
trip away after I entered the class was to come to New York to hear the first performance
of the Des canyons aux toiles . . . , which my parents went to, and I thought that was

22

weird. I was here in Paris, studying with Messiaen, but theyre hearing a premiere of this
major work in New York. But Marius Constant did it later that same year in Paris, in a
beautiful performance (much better than the world premiere), which is preserved on CD,
so I did get to hear it when it was still hot off the press.12

Levinsons Thoughts about Messiaens Music and Compositional Techniques

[Before we discussed Messiaens music and compositional techniques, Levinson talked

about his encounters with Messiaen after his studies at the Paris Conservatoire.]

I left Paris in 1976 and came to Swarthmore in 1977. The Messiaens came to
Swarthmore for a weeklong residency during his seventieth birthday tour in the fall of
1978. Yvonne Loriod gave a transcendental performance of the Vingt regards sur lEnfantJsus here, and Messiaen gave a wonderful informal talk (with my translation) on the
work, with extended questions and conversation afterward. It was a marvelous, leisurely
visit, including a dinner at our house with my then-colleague Joan Panetti, who had also
attended Messiaens class and studied piano with Loriod.

12

Des canyons aux toiles . . . ; Messiaen Edition; Ensemble Ars Nova, Marius Constant, conductor;

Yvonne Loriod, piano; Georges Barboteu, horn; Alain Jacquet, xylorimba; and Franois Dupin, glockenspiel;
liner notes; Warner Classics 2564 62162-2, 2005; 18 CDs.

23

In the summer of 1983, when we were completing a year-long around-the-world

journey, after our second stay in Bali, we visited the Messiaens briefly at the cottage in
Petichet. They were knee-deep in proofreading the thousands of pages for parts of Saint
Franois and rehearsing the singers, and were beyond exhaustion. Messiaen looked so old
and tiredwe were really worried. Nigel and Peters biography confirms that his health
was very poor at that point.13 When we saw him six months later, after the premiere of the
opera, the transformation was astounding. He looked years younger and stronger. Seeing
Betsy Jolas in the hall afterward, I said that the opera was marvelous, magnificent, but so
long. It's so generous, she replied rightly.
I saw Messiaen a lot in 1986 because we went to Boston for the U.S. (concert)
premiere of music from Saint Franois, for which I translated the libretto and program
notes, and I went to Detroit for the premiere of the Livre du Saint Sacrement. In between,
my biggest piece, my Symphony, Anahata, had been premiered, so I played that for him in
Detroit.14 I have pictures of him following that score, and he wrote about that in the book
with Claude Samuel. He said some very nice things about the piece.15

13

Hill and Simeone, 340.

14

Levinson composed his Anahata: Symphony No. 1 in 1984-86. The Northeastern Pennsylvania

Philharmonic commissioned the work, premiering it on 18 April 1986, with Hugh Wolff conducting.
15

To the American Gerald Levinson, a composer of great talent, who has found inspiration for some

of his works in the gamelan of Bali and the music of Nepal and Tibet, and who just wrote a masterpiece: the
Symphonie Anahata for large orchestra. See Olivier Messiaen: Music and Color: Conversations with Claude
Samuel, trans. E. Thomas Glasow (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1994), 189.

24

Then I saw him in New York. I know he was there more than once during his
eightieth-year tour in 1988. Zubin Mehta did the Turangalla in New York. I remember
seeing Messiaen there, and again at a New York performance of Des canyons aux
toiles . . . . And we had a very lovely visit with the Messiaens at home in Paris in late
1990. He was already suffering from serious back pain by then, but was hard at work on
the clairs sur lAu-Del . . . , which he described in some detail, especially its extravagant
orchestration: If I cant commit these follies now, at my age, when can I? We exchanged
letters in between times. He was a gracious correspondent. Thats how we were in touch
with each other. After 1986, I never sent him any more of my music, strangely enough. I
dont think he heard anything of mine after Anahata. I actually didnt write too much for a
while. We had two kids during that time, and I slowed down a lot. In 1990, I finished a
couple of big pieces, and I remember in early 1991, I thought I should send something to
him. I didnt get around to it for a while. I was a little slow. And then he died in 1992. Its
possible that the last piece he heard of mine was that symphony, Im not sure. There were
letters. In fact, I came up for promotion to full professor at the end of 1991, when he was
already pretty sick, and he wrote a beautiful recommendation for me in nice, clear
handwriting. Its actually dated Berlin or somewhere else in Germany. I think it was
December of 1991, and he was still able to go to some concert in Germany, and wrote a
really nice letter from there.

How could Swarthmore College refuse granting you a promotion when they received a
recommendation from one of the worlds greatest composers?

25

A letter of his helped me get hired in the first place in 1977. I was completely
green. Id never taught a class in my life. I hadnt had a graduate teaching fellowship, and
this is a very teaching-oriented place. But my two colleagues here, James Freeman, the
conductor, and Peter Gram Swing, who was the founder of this department, liked my
music. They particularly liked that song cycle Id written as a senior in college. And
Messiaen wrote a really nice letter. And those two things made them think they would take
a chance on me, which for a few years, may have seemed like it hadnt paid off, because I
was a terrible teacher. Im less terrible now, but I was a disaster then.

Id like to turn now to tonality, color symbolism, and natural resonance in Messiaens
music. I have always felt that Messiaen has been unclear regarding how tonality is defined
in his music. Im not sure how tonality is asserted, emphasized, or put forth. I know, in
reading a lot of the literature on Messiaen, that Peter Hill remarked, when taking lessons
from him, that Messiaen did talk about tonality. He would say that this is in the key of the
dominant, or the dominant of the dominant when Hill was playing some of Messiaens
works for him. There are these fleeting remarks. From your experience, how is tonality
defined in Messiaens music? If something is in C major or A major . . . I have some ideas,
based upon my analysis of his music.
I think he thought, in a lot of his earlier music, which often uses key signatures, that
there was a background tonality, and that the basic functions of tonality are thereyou
could have read about this even as early as the Techniquethat, lets say, in Harawi, or in
the love theme from Turangallain the Garden of Loves Sleep, theres an F tonality,

26

theres a region which is clearly dominant, theres a region thats tonic, and theres a
region thats subdominant. Each of them is colored by the octatonic mode, Messiaens
Mode two. The three different transpositions of the octatonic mode are coloristic
decorationselaborations of the three basic harmonic functions. So that theme begins on
the dominant, moves to the tonic, and has a climax on the subdominant, about which he
always said, Thats the romantic climax. When Ive given talks on Turangalla, I play the
last page of Tristan [und Isolde], and I play the last climax of the love theme in the eighth
movement of Turangalla. Its clearly the same music. What is it? Its a big plagal
cadence, with prominent added sixths, in both cases.

Did he think in large structural terms?

I dont think he thought in structural terms. If he did, it was very primitive. The
idea of sonata form, as exemplified in the fifth movement of Turangalla, thats just a
scaffolding its based on. You know, I teach a lot of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. I
think of sonata form as an extremely fascinating, dynamic way of thinking. Its not a form.
Its notthis happens, and then this happens, and then you plug this in there. But the
French conception of sonata form is more like a recipe. And its that recipe that Messiaen
follows in the fifth movement of Turangalla, but its filled with the most wildly radical
materials. Its very paradoxical because its put into this mold of clearly labeled first
theme, transition, second theme, cadence, development section with modulations, and
recapitulation. But the actual music lights a stick of dynamite under that rigid mold. The
actual processes, all those rhythmic games. . . .

27

I think one of the most thrilling places in all of his music is the development
section of that fifth movement, where the brass takes the statue theme in personnages
rythmiques [rhythmic characters] and polyrhythmic counterpoint. It really sounds like the
universe is about to explode. Extraordinary energy level. Well, that fills the here comes
the development part of the recipe. As that passage goes on, the personnages rythmiques
passages are extremely dissonant with harsh clashes between the different brass groups.
They alternate with restatements of the theme where the key signatures come back, and it
goes through different keys. I think he even called them plateaus. It has nothing in
common with the way Beethoven would go through keys as a dynamic process in a
development section. Its just a kind of a gridlike a preformed gridthat you lay your
materials over.

What about tonality in the music of the 60s, 70s, and 80s?
Youre right. Thats a different story.

Im thinking of the Chorale on the Holy Mountain from La Transfiguration de NtreSeigneur Jsus-Christ where all phrases come to rest on E-major chords.
I copied that out. That Chorale is one of the most perfect things he ever wrote, one
of the most extraordinary things in all of music. It shouldnt work. I can play a bunch of it
by heart. You can identify what the chords are, one by one. The first one is the Pellas
chord, the second one is the Daphnis et Chlo chord, the third one is one of the turning

28

chords, and the fourth one is an E-major triad.16 How it moves from a sort of polytonal
sound to thick and almost clustery atonal sounds to pure triadsthats pure magic! Smooth
voice leading seems to be a part of it, but thats the part that he cant explain, or doesnt
want to, and why that chorale seems so perfect, why it really works. Well, thats where
your work really begins, it seems to me.

Was Messiaen interested in voice leading with respect to his compositions? Ive read all of
these accounts of his teaching. He seemed to be most interested in isolated chords, and the
history of chords.
Right. Chords as isolated objects. Its not unique to him. Its very French, as
indicated by those dictation exercises at the Conservatory. We dont do that here. I try to
do that with my students because I think its a good kind of aural training. Chords as things
16

The chords from Pellas et Mlisande and Daphnis et Chlo are two sonorities that Messiaen has

identified in his analyses of the music of Debussy and Ravel at the Paris Conservatoire. They are comprised
of two superimposed triads a semitone apart. As used in the Chorale, the Pellas (or Golaud) chord consists
of an F-minor triad on the bottom and F-minor triad on top, and the Daphnis et Chlo chord its mirror image
(an F-minor triad on the bottom and an F-minor triad on top). In a filmed class session of Messiaen teaching
at the Paris Conservatoire drawn from Denise Tual and Michel Fanos documentary, Messiaen et les oiseaux
(1972), Messiaen discussed the Golaud chord and its relationship to the Daphnis et Chlo chord. The two
chords are mirror images of one another, with the Golaud chord featuring a B-minor triad on the bottom and
A-major triad on top, and the Daphnis et Chlo chord an implied A-major triad on the bottom and A-minor
triad on top. See Jean Boivin, La classe de Messiaen (Paris: Christian Bourgois diteur, 1995), 217-20; and
Vincent Benitez, A Creative Legacy: Messiaen as Teacher of Analysis, College Music Symposium 40
(2000): 120-27.

29

in themselves, apart from context. I dont remember Messiaen talking about voice leading,
but when you play that Chorale, you just feel how each chord moves [at this point,
Levinson has moved to the piano in his office and plays chords from the Chorale]. Theres
a bit of the German sixth in that [Levinson plays the third chord, a turning chord with a
second-inversion F-major triad at the bottom]. The next phrase is an elaboration of the
first. I think part of it is Messiaens clear phrase writing. He presents his materials very
simply. But I think of that as tonality by sheer assertionthat phrases keep ending on the
same triad, so they lead you to expect that triad and thatat the end of that Choralefeels
like a very satisfying sense of cadence.

This is what I have gathered from my work. For example, in his book on twentieth-century
music, Robert Morgan discusses how tonality is established by assertion in the music of
Debussy and in early works of Stravinsky.17 And Im thinking that in Messiaens music
especially in the later works, tonality is just asserted. The example I have here is the
Angels music from scene 3, Le Baiser au Lpreux, of Saint Franois. You have these
phrases and modes. Transpositions of mode three begin and end with an A-major chord in
first inversion. You have all these nice colors in between.
Yes, thats a special kind of tonality. Its the tonality of A major in that particular
spacing. I think there are precedents for that, such as the beginning of Beethovens Fourth
Piano Concerto: G-major chord with a B on top, with a unique, characteristic spacing

17

Robert Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and

America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), 45-50, 89-103.

30

[Levinson plays a G-major chord with tripled third, and the third on top, at the piano]. Its
not just about a tonality, but a particular sound. Its the spacing, and the third on top, the
extra doubling of the third, and . . .

The particular color.

So, the Angels key of A major is inextricably associated with the coloration of that
particular voicing of the first-inversion A-major triad. Its not just the key of A major in
general. Whats really remarkable is the variety of chords, their level of dissonance,
thickness, or thinness. A heterogeneous assortment of sounds that somehow makes
harmonic sense. Messiaen talked about the harmonic dictionary; you probably heard that
phrase. He said thats an important compositional tool. You just keep adding things to your
harmonic dictionary, such as ideas from the music of other composers, your own ideas, or
whatever. But whats really interesting is how systematically he thought about the things
he did. His list-making compulsion is really extreme. But the music, at least at its best in
the Chorale from La Transfiguration, sounds completely free and daring. These clusters,
the pure octatonic mode, the third mode, the Wozzeck progression, its so heterogeneous,
but thats the last thing that occurs to you, listening to that Chorale. That sums up
Messiaens later personality for me. Hes an incredible magpie. The range of stuff that
hell draw into his music, even quite undigested, untransformed quotations from other
musicit sounds like him. This business of the distorting prismsometimes he doesnt
even bother to distort it. Its just that he places it into his world somehow, and it seems
right at home, even though it hasnt been altered a bit.

31

In a conversation I had with Father Jean-Rodolphe Kars [22 May 2006, Paray-le-Monial,
France], he described Messiaen as the Catholic composer.18
Small c?

Small c and capital C, in the sense that we were talking about Messiaen and his
relationship to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Theres an article by Father Pascal Ide that
was published in Olivier Messiaen: Homme de foi.19 Father Ide is a Thomist, and he is
comparing, of course, Messiaen with Thomas Aquinas. I pursued that comparison with
Father Kars in our conversation, and he thought of Messiaen as a modern-day counterpart
to Thomas Aquinas, in that Aquinas would draw from the philosophies of non-Christian
thinkers and incorporate them into his theology.
I dont know that much about Aquinas, but Im very touched by how much
Messiaen drew from the symbolism of Buddhism and Hinduism for Et exspecto, and the
Amazonian bird from Peruvian mythology, which you only hear at the moment of death, in
Harawi. What I never knew until reading Paul Griffithss book, then in Peter Hill and

18

Father Jean-Rodolphe Kars (b. 1947) studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire. He was a finalist at

the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1967, and the first-prize winner at the First International
Olivier Messiaen Piano Competition in 1968, which launched his career as a concert pianist. In 1966, Father
Kars began to study the piano music of Messiaen. He was fascinated by the music and passionate about the
composers accompanying commentaries. This led ultimately to his conversion to Catholicism and vocation
as a priest.
19

Pre Pascal Ide, Une rencontre dcisive, in Olivier Messiaen, homme de foi: Regard sur son

uvre dorgue, glise de la Trinit (Paris: Trinit Mdia Communication, 1995), 76-79.

32

Nigel Simeones book, was how the main tunes there are transformations of Peruvian folk
tunes.20 That main theme is one of the most beautiful themes in all of Messiaen, in my
opinion. It doesnt make it less beautiful to realize that he just tweaked a folk tune to get
that.

Lets move on to color symbolism. Messiaen said that color drove his approach to music.
There is music that is colored, and music that isnt. He always admired painters. He had a
friendship with Charles Blanc-Gatti [1895-1965]. Surely, the symbolism of colors, in my
mind, must have played some role in his approach to composition. I dont think it could
have been fortuitous to choose, for instance, E Major for parts of Scene 7 of Saint
Franois, Les Stigmates. E Major evokes red for Messiaen, and red has always been
associated with Pentecost and the blood of martyrs. And also the red robes that cardinals
wear to signify power. But it would be strange for me if Messiaen chose to set Les
Stigmates in A Major. It just wouldnt make sense.
As I recall, the only tonality in that movement is associated with the chorus at the
end, right?

Yes, everything else is very dissonant and atonal. There are the Mode de valeurs-like
passages. But then once you get to the chorale at the end, its E Major when the chorus
calls out Franois. You have these E-Major chords. And then it ends. You have E Major

20

Paul Griffiths, Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

1985).

33

appearing at structural points. In some of the literature on Messiaen, for example, the
Conversations with Claude Samuel, you get glimpses of Messiaens thoughts on color
symbolism. Messiaen talked about the truth of love, and the love of truthits a play on the
color violet. Here, the reddish side of violet would signify the love of truth, and the bluish
side of violethyacinthwould signify the truth of love. Im just wondering about color
symbolism.
Youve given that more thought than I have. I dont know. For one thing, Messiaen
admitted that the sound/color sense is personal and at least somewhat subjective. He
thought that everybody had the capacity to have sound stimulate an inner vision of color,
but to varying degrees. He was hypersensitive to that. But he wasnt unique. And he
hedged when people asked him, Would everybody else see the same colors? He would
say, Well, no. Everyones experience is colored by their own personality, in the sense that
everybodys senses are different. People would see things more or less vividly, or more or
less specifically or generally. But he would also say, I dont see how, if one person sees
something as blue, that someone else could see it as yellow. There would be general
families of colors that I would think would have to be in common. So he hedged his bet
about how subjective or objective it was. I didnt remember that E Major symbolized red
for him. Because if I was just thinking, E Major, it doesnt sound red. It sounds like a
cooler, purer, colornot as much as C Majorbut . . .

Yes, its red. The stage lighting at the choral calls of Franois in Les Stigmates is redorange. He actually called for red-orange stage lighting.

34

Absolutely. Thats right. I remember him describing the perennially in-progress

Trait, and telling us that the last volume would be devoted to sound-color relationships
and would contain vast lists of all his modes and chords in all their transpositions, with
detailed descriptions of each associated color complex. Sensing some skepticism, he said,
Well, people will think Im crazy, but Im going to lay it all out there. But when I read
Messiaens descriptions of a chord with all of its fantastic colors, and then when it is
transposed up a semitone it changes to a completely different complex of colors, I really
cant say I experience that in the same very specific way that he did.

Well, neither can I. In the first chapter of Charles Blanc-Gattis Sons et couleurs,
published in 1947, Blanc-Gatti dealt with the symbolism of colors.21 I would consider
Blanc-Gatti as a pivotal influence on Messiaen and his sound-color aesthetic, because
Messiaen always talked about Blanc-Gatti. He talked about other painters, too, such as
Delaunay. But its interesting for me that Blanc-Gatti wrote about the symbolism of colors
in his book. Surely, Messiaen was so erudite, reading all the timea very knowledgeable
man, he must have been acquainted with Blanc-Gattis book, and this could have
influenced him to a certain degree.
I havent read that book and I dont know. I know that he made a distinction
between himself and Blanc-Gatti, because Blanc-Gatti really had neurological synesthesia.

21

Charles Blanc-Gatti, Sons et couleurs, 2d ed., with a preface by Ivanho Rambosson (Paris: Victor

Attinger, 1947).

35

And for Messiaen, it was in his head.

He saw colors as if he were seeing them through his eyes. Actually, Messiaen told
this to lots of people. He pointed to one of Blanc-Gattis paintings on a wall in his
apartment at the Rue Marcadet, a painting of a church steeple with great big spirals coming
out of it, and said, That looks surrealist, but it isnt. He [Blanc-Gatti] was painting exactly
what he saw. Its not the same for me. In fact, it helps me if I close my eyes and really
focus my attention. Its an inner, imaginary vision. It feels real to me, but its at an
imaginary level thats different from a medical condition of synesthesia, which Blanc-Gatti
had.

What is your opinion of natural resonance? Messiaen always talked about natural
resonance as the foundation of his approach to harmony. There are all these different
schools, but my music is based upon natural resonance. What is your opinion, from what
you have gathered, talking to Messiaen, being in his class, studying his music?
Messiaen didnt have to convert me with respect to natural resonance. I remember
we were talking about music that was colored and music that wasnt, and the subject of
Elliott Carters music came up. He said, Its very interesting from the point of view of
rhythm, but its totally gray because of the way the pitches move around. They dont
coalesce into specific colors. Hes [Carter] totally unaware of that. That is another way of
saying, I think theres no natural resonance in it. I know that Carter has published a
harmonic dictionary, but its developed much more abstractly. Its based on interval
collections and abstract harmonic thinking, which I must admit I havent studied enough.

36

But it doesnt seem to stem so much from the actual sounds, as from a conception of
relationshipsintervalsamong sounds and different ways of disposing the aggregate
and, I dont know exactly, symmetries and stuff like that. But as someone who is rooted in
the piano as Messiaen was, or even Stravinsky, though I cant play like those guys could,
Im really fundamentally motivated by how sounds resonate together. Just constructing a
chord through some sort of logical intervallic thinking doesnt cut it for me.

Couldnt Messiaens approach to harmony have arisen from his work as an organist?
Because again, I get tantalizing glimpses from what he said about his construction of
chords, when he talked about clusters in his piano music with Claude Samuel. He talked
about organists and mixture stopsand I know that youre familiar with what he said. As
an organist, you pull out 16, 8, and 4 stops, and you pull out the mixture. The mixture
will reinforce the unisons and fifths, and, depending upon the mixture, can reinforce the
thirds. But its reinforcing the natural acoustic space. And Messiaen said, Oh thats too
symmetrical. I do different things.
Ive followed up on that. I just wrote for the organ, for the first time. I worked with
Olivier Latry from Notre-Dame on finding the right registrations for my piece, Toward
Light. One of the passages depends on isolating some mutation stops in a way that
suppresses the fundamental, which shows the influence of Messiaens thinking. One of the
organ builders demonstrated to me how you can add all the overtones up to the eleventh
partial, or something like that. It made the most fantastic sound. Messiaen never used that
particular sound, as far as I know. But that really is natural resonance. Those things are

37

tuned to the overtone series. It was quite an adventure, and an education, writing for the
first time for Messiaens own instrument, although I didnt heed his advice never to try to
combine organ and orchestra. I remember him saying something like You cant have two
kings.

Conclusion

On that hot Pennsylvania day, 14 July 2006, at Swarthmore College, I talked to

Gerald Levinson about Olivier Messiaen for five hours. At the end of our interview, I
thanked him for his generositythe interview lasted two hours longer than originally
planned. My wife Esther took pictures of the two of us before she and I left his office to
return to State College (Figure 1).
I learned a great deal about Levinson that day, and even more about Messiaen. For
me, Levinsons recollections of Messiaen, along with his thoughts about his music, were
fascinating. Through Levinsons narrative, I could easily imagine myself as a student in
Messiaens composition class at the Paris Conservatoire, trying to pass all of the entrance
exams, taking notes as he analyzed music at the piano, or absorbing his critiques of my
compositions. I knew that Messiaen sometimes quoted the music of other composers,
altering it through the deforming prism of his musical language, but I did not know the
extent to which he incorporated the musical ideas of others into his music with no change.
As Levinson stated, these quotations somehow worked.

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Figure 1. Vincent Benitez and Gerald Levinson, Swarthmore College, 14 July 2006

Messiaen clearly influenced Levinson as a composer and teacher. That was evident
in the way he talked about Messiaen and his music. Through his words, Levinson really
made Messiaen and his music more real for me. I hope that readers of this interview will
feel the same way.