Diptyque (Messiaen)

Diptyque : essai sur la vie terrestre et l'éternité bienheureuse (French: Diptych: essay on earthly life and blessed eternity) is a bipartite essay for organ in C minor by French composer Olivier Messiaen. Written from 1929 through 1930, it is inspired by the theology of his Catholic faith and contrasts two states of existence: the earthly life and the heavenly afterlife.

Diptyque
essai sur la vie terrestre et l'éternité bienheureuse
by Olivier Messiaen
Messiaen in 1937; photograph by Studio Harcourt
Key	C minor
Catalogue	Simeone: I/3
Year	1929-1930
Form	diptych
Based on	Catholic theology
Time	2/4, then 4/4
Composed	1930 (1930): Paris
Dedication	Paul Dukas, Marcel Dupré
Performed	20 February 1930 (1930-02-20): Paris
Published	May 1930 (1930-05): Paris
Publisher	Éditions Durand
Movements	one (two sections)
Scoring	pipe organ
Premiere
Date	30 March 1930 for Les amis de l'orgue
Location	Église de la Sainte Trinité, ninth arrondissement, Paris, France
Performers	Olivier Messiaen, organ

History

In autumn of 1929, Messiaen acquainted himself with Charles Quef, then-titular organist at the Église de la Sainte Trinité in the ninth arrondissement of Paris. Through this, he was able to play his first two organ recitals in the Church of Saint John the Baptist Tencin, just northeast of Grenoble. They took place on 15 and 22 September.

The Diptyque was dedicated to two of Messiaen's most influential composers and teachers: Marcel Dupré and Paul Dukas; the first part of the work is clearly influenced by their style. Messiaen himself premièred a concert for Les amis de l'orgue on 20 February 1930, at the Église de la Sainte Trinité. It immediately caught the attention of fellow musicians and was published shortly afterwards in May 1930, by Éditions Durand. This publication was followed by some of his other compositions (the Préludes were released in June and the Trois mélodies in October).^[1] It is Messiaen's only organ work published by Durand.

Messiaen later became critical of his own earlier style. In an interview with Karin Ernst on 24 October 1977, Messiaen referred to the Diptyque as a 'sin' of his youth.^[2]

Structure

Although the Diptyque is in a single movement, it has two thematically related sections. Many scholars and performers thus consider it a two-movement work out of convenience. Being diptychal, the first section - at under five minutes (after the metronome mark) - is followed by the second section also taking a little under five minutes. It is scored for solo pipe organ, requiring two manuals and pedals. The second section also requires a manual of sixty-one notes, with a top C, unless one could manœuvre octaves through higher-pitched registration.

It is also worth noting that there are inconsistencies, errors or questionable notes (evidenced by redundant accidentals and parallel passages later) in measures 16, 18, 22, 28, 48, 50, 52, 76, 91, and 95.^{[citation needed]}

Epigraph

The Diptyque originally had an epigraph which was not revealed in the published score. It was crossed out of the composer's holograph manuscript, which is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. It reads: "Après les angoisses, les ténèbres de cette vie, la lumière et le repos de l'Éternité..." ('After the anguishes, the darknesses of this life, the light and the rest of Eternity...").

i. La vie terrestre, avec ses agitations inutiles

Marked Modéré (andante, ♩ = 50; time signature ²
₄) in the key of C minor, its first section, "La vie terrestre, avec ses agitations inutiles" (The Earthly life, with its arid encumbrances) is a rapid-paced toccata with a repeating seven-note motif.^[3] Unlike his later style, neither the tempo nor the time signature present any changes in this section. Here, the composer attempts to express 'the anguish and useless torment of life'.

ii. Le paradis

Its second section, "Le paradis" (Paradise) is marked Très lent (largo, ♪ = 58; time signature ⁴
₄) and is in the former section's parallel major.^[4] According to Messiaen, it is "an adagio in C major, based on a single serene ascending phrase", which "expresses the peace and charity of Christian paradise".^[1][5]

In 1940, during his internment in the Stalag VIII-A camp in Görlitz, Nazi Germany (now Zgorzelec, Poland), Messiaen arranged Le paradis for violin and piano from memory. This arrangement then became the eighth and last movement ("Louange à l'immortalité de Jésus"; "Praise to the immortality of Jesus") of his 1940-1941 Quatuor pour la fin du temps.^[2] However, for this transcription, Messiaen significantly slowed the movement's tempo, marking it as Extrêmement lent et tendre, extatique (grave; ♪ = 36), a tempo the composer followed in his own recording of the original organ work.^[6]

Errata

Messiaen manually corrected the following errors in his copy of the published score:

• 28: The penultimate semiquaver in the left hand is D♭.
• 50: The final semiquaver in the left hand is D♭.
• 95: The second semiquaver in the left hand is D♭.

External links

• Messiaen plays his work (Église de la Sainte Trinité, Paris, 1956)

See also

Contemporaneous organ works of Messiaen

• Le banquet céleste (1928)
• Prélude (1928)
• Offrande au Saint Sacrement (1929)
• Apparition de l'église éternelle (1932)