Fête des belles eaux

Fête des belles eaux (French: Festival of the beautiful waters) is a 1936 suite of incidental music by French composer Olivier Messiaen.^[1] The suite, commissioned for the 1937 Paris Exposition, has eight movements, and was scored for six ondes Martenots.^[2] It was written to accompany the movements of the fountains and fireworks at the exposition.^[3]

It lay unpublished until its posthumous issuing by Éditions Alphonse Leduc in 2003.

Structure

This composition is in eight movements and takes approximately thirty minutes to perform. The movements are as follows:

1. Premières fusées (First rockets)
2. L'eau (The water)
3. Les fusées (The rockets)
4. L'eau (The water)
5. Les fusées (The rockets)
6. L'eau (à son maximum de hauteur) (The water (at its maximum height))
7. Superposition de l'eau et des fusées (Superposition of the water and the rockets)
8. Feu d'artifice final (Firework finale)

The melodic theme used in the fourth movement was also used later in the fifth movement ("Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus") of Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps as well as the discarded movement of Les corps glorieux, Vie pour Dieu des ressuscités.