Turangalîla-Symphonie

The Turangalîla-symphonie is the only symphony by the French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). It was written for an orchestra of large forces from 1946 to 1948 on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with two soloists playing piano and ondes Martenot. Along with the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, the symphony is one of the composer's most notable works.

Leonard Bernstein conducted the premiere in Symphony Hall in Boston on 2 December 1949, followed by the New York City première at Carnegie Hall on 10 December (Messiaen's 41st birthday). The latter two performances included an intermission after the fifth movement and were the only work on the programme. The commission did not specify the duration, orchestral requirements or style of the piece, leaving the decisions to the composer. Koussevitzky was scheduled to conduct the première, but fell ill, and the task fell to Bernstein,Template:Efn who never again conducted the work. Yvonne Loriod, who later became Messiaen's second wife, was the piano soloist, and Ginette Martenot played the ondes Martenot for these first performances.

From 1953 on, Yvonne's sister Jeanne Loriod was the ondes Martenot player in many performances and recordings.

Concept

While most of Messiaen's compositions are religious in inspiration, at the time of writing the symphony the composer was fascinated by the myth of Tristan and Iseult. Turangalîla forms the central work in his trilogy of compositions concerned with the themes of romantic love and death; the other pieces are Harawi for piano with soprano and Cinq rechants for unaccompanied trios of soprani, alti, tenors, and basses. It is considered one of the greatest musical compositions of the twentieth century, being described by its commissioner as 'the most important piece of classical music ever written since Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring'. A typical performance runs around 80 minutes in length. Messiaen once summarised the entire symphony as being "a love song; a hymn to joy."

Although the concept of a rhythmic scale corresponding to the chromatic scale of pitches occurs in Messiaen's work as early as 1944 in his Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus (a suite Messiaen quotes in the fourth movement), the arrangement of such durations into a fixed series occurs for the first time in the opening episode of the work's seventh movement, Turangalîla 2, and is an important historical step toward the concept of integral serialism.

The title of the work, and those of its movements, were a late addition to the project, chosen after Messiaen made a list of the work's movements. He described the name in his letters from 1947 to 1948. He derived the title from two Sanskrit words, () and (), which he explained thus:

"Lîla" literally means play – but play in the sense of the divine action upon the cosmos, the play of creation, destruction, reconstruction, the play of life and death. "Lila" is also love. "Turanga": this is the time that runs, like a galloping horse; this is time that flows, like sand in an hourglass. "Turanga" is movement and rhythm. "Turangalîla" therefore means all at once love song, hymn to joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death.

Messiaen described the joy of Turangalîla as "superhuman, overflowing, blinding, unlimited". He revised the work's orchestration in 1990.

Instrumentation

The piece is scored for a large orchestra, consisting of the following instruments:

Woodwinds

1 Piccolo

2 Flutes

2 Oboes

1 Cor anglais

2 Clarinets

1 Bass clarinet

3 Bassoons

Brass

4 Horns

3 Trumpets

1 Trumpet in D

1 Cornet

3 Trombones

1 Tuba

Percussion (12 percussionists)

Vibraphone

Keyed or mallet glockenspiels

Triangle

Temple blocks

Wood block

Crash cymbals

3 types of suspended cymbals (Standard, Turkish, and Chinese)

Tam-tam

Tambourine

Maracas

Snare drum

Provençal tabor

Bass drum

Tubular bells

Keyboards

Solo piano

Ondes Martenot

Celesta

Strings

32 Violins

14 Violas

12 Cellos

10 Double basses

Interestingly, the piece does not require timpani, notwithstanding the use of a very large percussion section. The demanding piano part includes several solo cadenzas.

Cyclic themes

File:Ondes martenot.jpg

The ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument, is used in sensuous and dramatic parts of the Turangalila such as the "love theme"

In writing about the work, Messiaen identified four cyclic themes that reappear throughout; there are other themes specific to each movement. In the score the themes are numbered, but in later writings he gave them names to make them easier to identify, without intending the names to have any other, literary meaning.

File:Turangalila ex 1.PNG

Introduced by trombones and tuba, this is the statue theme. According to Messiaen, it has the oppressive, terrible brutality of ancient Mexican monuments, and has always evoked dread. It is played in a slow tempo, pesante.Template:Efn

File:Turangalila ex 2.PNG

This is the flower theme. It is introduced by two clarinets.

File:Turangalila ex 3.PNG

This theme, the most important of all, is the love theme. It appears in many different guises, from hushed strings in movement 6, to a full orchestral treatment in the climax of the finale.

File:Turangalila ex 4.PNG

A simple chain of chords, used to produce opposing chords on the piano and crossing counterpoints in the orchestra.

Structure

The work is in ten movements, linked by the common themes identified above, and other musical ideas:

The composer's initial plan was for a symphony in the conventional four movements, which eventually became numbers 1, 4, 6, and 10. Next, he added the three Turangalîla movements, which he originally called tâlas, a reference to the use of rhythm in Indian classical music. Finally, the 2nd, 5th, and 8th movements were inserted. Early on, Messiaen authorized separate performance of movements 3, 4, and 5, as Three tâlas (not to be confused with the original use of the term for the three Turangalîla movements), but later came to disapprove of the performance of extracts.

Recordings

File:Maurice Le Roux 3.jpg

Maurice Le Roux conducting the Turangalila-Symphonie

No recording was made of the world premiere, and Bernstein himself did not return to the work in either concert performance or in the recording studio, but a recording exists of part of the rehearsals for the premiere in Boston, featuring the fifth and sixth movements.

It was released in 2013 as part of a set of previously unissued Bernstein recordings (Music and Arts WHRA-6048).

Recordings of Turangalîla-Symphonie

Conductor	Orchestra	Piano	Ondes martenot	Label	Catalog	Released	Format	Notes
Roger Désormière	Orchestre National de la RTF	Yvonne Loriod	Ginette Martenot	INA		1950		Live recording on 25 July 1950, of the European premiere at the Aix-en-Provence Festival
Hans Rosbaud	SWF-Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden	Yvonne Loriod	Ginette Martenot	Wergo	WER 6401-2	1992		Recorded 23/24 December 1951
Maurice Le Roux	Orchestre National de la RTF	Yvonne Loriod	Jeanne Loriod	Vega/Accord	VAL 127 Vega C 30 ST 20033/4 Vega C 35 X 940	1962	Box set 10-inch LPs	Recording supervised by Messiaen in 1961. Released in France
Jean Fournet	Netherlands Radio Philharmonic	Yvonne Loriod	Jeanne Loriod	Q Disc		1967		Live
Seiji Ozawa	Toronto Symphony Orchestra	Yvonne Loriod	Jeanne Loriod	RCA		1967
André Previn	London Symphony Orchestra	Michel Béroff	Jeanne Loriod	EMI	SLS 5117	1977	Double LP
Louis de Froment	Orchestre Symphonique de RTL	Yvonne Loriod	Jeanne Loriod	Forlane		1982		Live
Esa-Pekka Salonen	Philharmonia Orchestra	Paul Crossley	Tristan Murail	CBS Masterworks Sony	I2M 42126 G010003836824C	1985 2018	2 LPs CD
Simon Rattle	City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra	Peter Donohoe	Tristan Murail	EMI	EX270468-3 747463-8	1986	LP CD
Myung-Whun Chung	Orchestre de l'Opéra Bastille	Yvonne Loriod	Jeanne Loriod	Deutsche Grammophon	0289 431 7812 9	1990	CD	First recording of the revised version, supervised by Messiaen.
Riccardo Chailly	Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra	Jean-Yves Thibaudet	Takashi Harada	Decca	London 436 626–2	1993 2012	CD
Marek Janowski	Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France	Roger Muraro	Valérie Hartmann-Claverie	RCA	09026 61520 2	1992
Yan Pascal Tortelier	BBC Philharmonic	Howard Shelley	Valérie Hartmann-Claverie	Chandos	CHAN9678	1998	CD
Antoni Wit	Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra	François Weigel	Thomas Bloch	Naxos	8.554478-9	1998	CD
Hans Vonk	Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra	Garrick Ohlsson	Jean Laurendeau	Pentatone		1999		Live
Kent Nagano	Berliner Philharmoniker	Pierre-Laurent Aimard	Dominique Kim	Teldec	8573-82043-2	2001	CD	Live recording in March 2000 in Berlin
Norichika Iimori	Tokyo Symphony Orchestra	Kazuoki Fujii	Takashi Harada	Canyon		2001
Ryusuke Numajiri	Japan Philharmonic Orchestra	Ichiro Nodaira	Takashi Harada	Exton		2002		Live
Thierry Fischer	BBC National Orchestra of Wales	Roger Muraro	Jacques Tchamkerten	BBC Music		2006		Live
Hiroyuki Iwaki	Melbourne Symphony Orchestra	Kaori Kimura	Takashi Harada	ABC Classics	4812873	2007	CD	Live recording in 1985. Re-released 2007.
Sylvain Cambreling	SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg	Roger Muraro	Valérie Hartmann-Claverie	Hänssler Classic	93.225	2008	CD
Juanjo Mena	Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra	Steven Osborne	Cynthia Millar	Hyperion	A67816	2012	CD
Hannu Lintu	Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra	Angela Hewitt	Valérie Hartmann-Claverie	Ondine	ODE12515	2014	CD
Yutaka Sado	Tonkünstler Orchestra	Roger Muraro	Valérie Hartmann-Claverie	Tonkünstler Orchestra	TON2005	2018	CD
Gustavo Gimeno	Toronto Symphony Orchestra	Marc-André Hamelin	Nathalie Forget	Harmonia Mundi	HMM905336	2024	CD	Live
Andris Nelsons	Boston Symphony Orchestra	Yuja Wang	Cécile Lartigau	Deutsche Grammophon	UPC00028948670451	2024	CD (2025)

See also

• Classic 100 Music of France (ABC)
• Leela, a character from Futurama named after the Turangalîla-symphonie

External links

• Turangalîla-Symphonie The Philharmonia Orchestra's Olivier Messiaen Website. Featuring films, photos, documents and much more. An interview with Esa-Pekka Salonen, a look at the percussion used and a visit to the site of the premiere in Boston.
• Programme notes for the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Ronald Gallman
• About the ondes Martenot : facts, videos, pictures, recordings, players...
• Audio excerpts from all 10 movements of the Symphonie