The Pebble in the Water’’: Messiaen, Debussy and the ... · ear the beginning of the 1984...

‘‘The Pebble in the

Water’’: Messiaen,

Debussy and the Meaning

of Rhythmic Contrast

TIMOTHY B. COCHRAN

Near the beginning of the 1984 film, OlivierMessiaen: The Music of Faith, the subject turns to Claude Debussy’s influ-ence, and Messiaen reflects—as he often did in interviews—on the rev-olutionary power of Pelleas et Melisande over his impressionable childhoodmind.1 The composer proceeds to perform the opening of the opera’s

A version of this essay was presented at the Annual Meeting of theAmerican Musicological Society in San Francisco, November 2011.An earlier exploration of Messiaen’s pebble in the water conceptwas presented at The 11th International Congress on MusicalSignification in Krakow, Poland, October 2010 and published as"The Rhythm of Water: Modes of Interpretation in Messiaen’sAnalyses of Debussy’s Music," in Music: Function and Value, Pro-ceedings of the 11th International Congress on Musical Signification,vol. 2, eds. Teresa Malecka and Małgorzata Pawłowska (Krakow:Akademia Muzyczna w Krakowie/Musica Iagellonica, 2013),507–17. Excerpts shared with the present article have been rep-rinted by permission. I would like to thank the numerous collea-gues and advisers who gave such helpful input on different stagesof this project, especially Nancy Rao, Michael Klein, Michael Puri,Douglas Johnson, Floyd Grave, Christopher Murray, and theanonymous peer-reviewers of this journal.

1 In 1919 one of Messiaen’s teachers, Jehan de Gibon, gave him the opera score asa gift. He reflected on the event in an obituary for de Gibon in 1952: ‘‘What did the teachergive to the child as a souvenir of these beautiful lessons? A classic work, a harmony treatise?No: he gave him a score which at the time was the height of daring (rather like serial music,or musique concrete, or a sonata by Pierre Boulez nowadays). He gave him Pelleas et Melisandeby Debussy! This present served to confirm the young pupil’s vocation, and point him inthe direction he wanted.’’ Quoted in Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven,CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 15. See also Claude Samuel, Olivier Messiaen, Music and

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The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 31, Issue 4, pp. 503–540, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2014by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permis-sion to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights andPermissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/JM.2014.31.4.503

prelude at the piano. As the soundtrack transitions to the orchestral ver-sion, the camera shifts to a shot of gently lapping waves before cutting toan entirely still body of water. The narrator quotes Messiaen:

Debussy’s music is like water. Water is still, unmoving, but immediatelyyou throw a pebble in, there’s a shockwave around the pebble, and thewater is set in motion. And Debussy’s music is like that. There are stopsand all of a sudden, it moves. It was those stops that seized myimagination.2

The camera mirrors Messiaen’s description as an implied off-camerastone creates concentric circles of slow waves emitting from the bottomleft corner of the frame while the prelude draws toward its conclusion.

As the movie illustrates, the vagaries of water play a pivotal role inMessiaen’s conception of rhythm in general and Debussy’s rhythmic stylein particular. For Messiaen a natural bond exists between the rhythms ofwater and music.3 In volume six of his seven-volume Traite de rythme, decouleur, et d’ornithologie—the volume devoted entirely to Debussy—Messiaen establishes a primordial link between rhythm and water:

More than anything else [water] is mobile, exquisite, treacherous, illu-sory—more than anything else it is rhythm and the suggestion ofrhythms (not forgetting that the word rhythm derives from the Indo-European root: SREU: to flow, and fastens itself to concepts of irregularperiodicity and of perpetual variation of which the waves of the oceanoffer a magnificent example).4

-Color: Conversations with Claude Samuel, trans. E. Thomas Glasgow (Portland: Amadeus Press,1994), 110.

2 ‘‘Debussy’s Influence on Messiaen,’’ in The South Bank Show: Olivier Messiaen: TheMusic of Faith, directed by Alan Benson (New York: Films Media Group/Films for theHumanities & Sciences, 1985), streaming video file, 18:14–18:34.

3 According to Messiaen’s theory of superimposed time scales, the rhythm of water isa single layer in a vast polyrhythm of humanity, nature, and the cosmos. He summarizes hisnotion of superimposed time scales in Conference de Bruxelles, prononcee a l’Exposition Inter-nationale de Bruxelles en 1958 (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1960), 11–12: ‘‘I spoke to [my pupils atthe Conservatoire de Paris] of all those superimposed times that surround us: theimmensely long time of the stars, the very long time of mountains, the average time of man,the short time of insects, and the very short time of atoms: all these times being similar inthe sense that they represent for each unit a normal life span, on the other hand, all thesetimes present enormous differences to our perception.’’ See also Messiaen, Traite de rythme,de couleur, et d’ornithologie, vol. 1 (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1994), 30: ‘‘the substance of theworld is [ . . . ] polyrhythm.’’ He fleshes out this perspective in volume one of the Traitewith quotes from geologist Pierre Termier, biologist Alexis Carrel, and astronomers PaulCouderc, Abbe Moreux, Teo Varlet, and Lucien Rudaux. Ibid., 18–20.

4 ‘‘ . . . plus que tout autre il est mobile, exquis, perfide, illusoire—plus que tout autreil est rythme et suggestion de rythmes (n’oublions pas que le mot Rythme derive de laracine indo-europeenne: SREU: couler, et se rattache aux idees de periodicite irreguliereet de variation perpetuelle dont les vagues de l’Ocean nous offrent un magnifique

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Drawing on the tools of etymology and observation to substantiate hisclaim, Messiaen positions the rhythm of water as a source of musicalrhythm, an interpretation that he echoes in volume one of the Traite:

Root and derivative are in agreement: rhythm comes from the move-ments of the sea, of waves and their undulations. It is linked originally tomovement, but more specifically, to repeated movement with con-stantly renewed variations; that is, to the infinity of irregular periodicity.[ . . . ] Moreover, like the waves of the sea, which ceaselessly succeed oneanother, rhythm is a perpetual imbrication of past and future, march-ing toward the future, like Time.5

Note that Messiaen does not claim that all organized durations manifestthe rhythm of water; he limits the definition of liquid music to that whichemploys dynamic rhythmic variations. Eschewing static repetition, therhythm born of water enacts ‘‘irregular periodicity,’’6 which is the oppo-site of repetition as such, and reflects human time, which is characterizedby the cycle of similar but non-identical events.7 He goes so far as to saythat pure repetition and metric regularity—which one finds in a march,for example8—are ‘‘the negation of rhythm’’;9 truly rhythmic music‘‘scorns repetition, squareness, and equal divisions.’’10 Like water itshould be malleable and subtly unpredictable even in its cycles and re-iterations: ‘‘Not repetition of the same, not the alternation of the samewith the other: but the succession of the same that is always different, andof others that are always related to the same: this is perpetual variation.’’11

-exemple).’’ Olivier Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, vol. 6 (Paris: Al-phonse Leduc, 2001), 15.

5 ‘‘Racine et derives sont d’accord: le rythme est issu des mouvements des flots, desondulations des vagues de la mer. Il se rattache donc primitivement au mouvement, maisau mouvement repete avec des variantes toujours nouvelles; c’est-a-dire a l’infini de laperiodicite irreguliere. [ . . . ] De plus, comme les vagues de la mer qui se recouvrent sanscesse, le rythme est une perpetuelle imbrication de passe et d’avenir, en marche versl’avenir, comme le Temps.’’ Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 1:39–40.Emphasis in original.

6 Ibid., 6:15.7 Ibid., 1:42, 8.8 Ibid., 58.9 Olivier Messiaen, ‘‘Obstacles,’’ in 20eme Siecle images de la musique francaise: textes et

entretiens, ed. Jean-Pierre Derrien (Paris: SACEM & Papiers, 1986), 168.10 Samuel, Olivier Messiaen, Music and Color, 67.11 ‘‘Non pas la repetition du meme, non pas l’alternance du meme et de l’autre: mais

la succession de memes qui sont toujours autres, et d’autres qui ont toujours quelquesparentes avec le meme: c’est la variation perpetuelle.’’ Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, etd’ornithologie, 1:39. This emphasis on perpetual transformation and subtle contrast asa rhythmic value is a leitmotiv of Messiaen’s rhythmic theories. In his explanation of non-retrogradable rhythm, he warns against exact repetition: ‘‘In practice one never repeatsa non-retrogradable rhythm, precisely because this repetition does not bring about any-thing new.’’ To avoid stasis, Messiaen alters the central or outer values with each repetition,constructing a second symmetry out of the first. Olivier Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur,

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With its broad compositional and philosophical resonance, Messiaen’sgrand theory of rhythm in nature presented in volume six has thepotential to overshadow the significance of Debussy’s individualachievements; yet Messiaen cites the water/rhythm bond in order tovalidate the rhythmic fluidity that he sees permeating Debussy’s work.In the prologue to chapter two we learn about Debussy’s fascinationwith ‘‘all that delights the eye or the ears, all that lulls, shimmers,changes, and disappears.’’12 Messiaen presents Debussy to be a com-poser who treats nature not as an object to be observed scientificallybut rather as the site of subjective experience, filled with transforma-tions, contrasts, and modulations. Messiaen’s assertion that water wasDebussy’s preferred inspiration sets up his elaboration on the primor-dial and etymological bond between water and rhythm, which elevatesrather than marginalizes the importance of Debussy’s style, validatingit as representative of timeless, natural truths. He implies that De-bussy’s attentiveness to the ephemeral qualities of water led him toa rhythm beyond the bar line.

Reflecting the preoccupations of his classroom lectures on Debussyat the Conservatoire de Paris, Messiaen’s analyses throughout volume sixbear out his interpretation of Debussy’s water-inspired rhythmic lan-guage implicitly.13 Rhythmic subtlety—particularly durational changeand thematic variation—is a pervasive theme of volume six, which

-et d’ornithologie, vol. 2 (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1995), 8. Likewise, the principle of person-nages rythmiques results in a continuous ebb and flow of durational values—some expand-ing, others contracting, still others remaining the same like characters interacting ona stage. Iwanka Krastewa argues that Messiaen’s theories and techniques render ‘‘irregu-larity as a fundamental principle of temporal organization,’’ linked closely with his interestin the varied rhythmic formulae of Greek metric patterns. See Iwanka Krastewa, ‘‘Le Lan-gage rythmique d’Olivier Messiaen et la metrique ancienne grecque,’’ Schweizerische Musik-zeitung/Revue musicale suisse 112, no. 2 (1972): 85.

12 ‘‘ . . . tout ce qui ravit l’œil ou l’oreille, tout ce qui berce, miroite, change et dis-paraıt.’’ Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:15.

13 Insofar as it is based on lecture notes and compositional research between 1949and 1992, the Traite provides a window into the content, priorities, and techniques ofMessiaen’s pedagogy. The most comprehensive account of the famous Messiaen class ap-pears in Jean Boivin, La Classe de Messiaen (Paris: Christian Bourgeois, 1995), which pre-sents Messiaen’s pedagogy through interviews with former students. See also idem,‘‘Messiaen’s Teaching at the Paris Conservatoire: A Humanist’s Legacy,’’ in Messiaen’sLanguage of Mystical Love, ed. Siglind Bruhn (New York: Garland, 1998), 5–23; and idem,‘‘Musical Analysis According to Messiaen: A Critical View of a Most Original Approach,’’ inOlivier Messiaen: Music, Art and Literature, eds. Christopher Dingle and Nigel Simeone(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 137–57. Student reflections on Messiaen’s class appear also inHarry Halbreich, Olivier Messiaen (Paris: Fayard/SACEM,1980), 511–20; Pierre Boulez,Orientations: Collected Writings, trans. Martin Cooper, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez (Boston:Faber and Faber, 1986), 404–20; Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, and Peter Hill, ‘‘Mes-siaen as Teacher,’’ in The Messiaen Companion, ed. Peter Hill (London: Faber & Faber,1995), 266–82; and Alexander Goehr, Finding the Key: Selected Writings of Alexander Goehr(London: Faber & Faber, 1998).


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examines a broad sampling of Debussy’s piano, orchestral, and stageworks in minute detail.14 In the opening chapter on Debussy’s rhythmicprocedures, Messiaen maintains that the contrast between short andlong durations is the ‘‘primary state of Debussian rhythm.’’15 Debussy’suse of short notes tied across beats and bar lines to longer tones, aug-mentation and diminution techniques, rhythmic ornamentation andinteraction between rational and irrational values are frequent pointsof emphasis in Messiaen’s analyses.16 He presents quasi-paradigmaticanalyses of thematic variations from ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’ from Imagesand Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune that highlight transformations ofdurational units meticulously.17 Each analytical observation reflects anevaluation process that assigns value to the smallest contrasts, the minut-est variations and the flexibility of durational possibilities. Messiaen giveshighest prominence to rhythmic techniques that challenge the efficacyof meter and mechanical repetition, manifesting the water-inspired va-lues of irregular periodicity and perpetual variation. His occasional re-ferences to tempo reflect this mindset as well. Conjuring an image ofdecreasing energy, force, and motion, he describes the tempo change inmeasures 70-71 of ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’ as growing ‘‘languid little bylittle.’’ Likewise in the analysis of ‘‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’’ fromLa Mer, he notes that the tempo of the second theme’s return is ‘‘inde-cisive, mobile, changing.’’18 Metaphors of motion and plasticity evokeconcepts that he associates with the continuous flow of water in Debussy.

Messiaen may not identify each rhythmic subtlety as an instance ofwater—to do so would be redundant if Debussy’s entire rhythmic lan-guage manifests fluidity—but he refers regularly to the evocative meta-phor of the ‘‘pebble in the water’’ throughout volume six. In the filmexcerpt cited above, he invoked the image to point out the stops andstarts of Debussy’s rhythmic waterscape; but in volume six he turns thephrase into an analytical concept used to identify a class of especially

14 The volume divides into four main sections: (1) an opening chapter on the primaryfeatures of Debussy’s rhythmic language; (2) a chapter analyzing works with water themes(‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’ from Images, Book 1 and ‘‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer,’’ the finalmovement of La Mer) and works with connections to preexisting literature (Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune, ‘‘La Danse de Puck’’ from Preludes, Book 1, and ‘‘La Terrasse des audiencesdu clair de lune’’ from Preludes, Book 2); (3) two chapters on the opera Pelleas et Melisandewritten about twelve years apart; and (4) a concluding chapter of less polished analysesgleaned from markings in Messiaen’s teaching scores. Among the analyzed works are themovements of La Mer not featured in chapter two and various solo piano collections,including Debussy’s Douze Etudes, Images, Estampes, and Preludes.

15 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:3.16 For examples, see ibid., 4, 19, 31, 43, 46–47, 84; 6–9, 24, 26, 61, 75–76, 85; 19–20,

36, 103; and 3, 18, 43, 66.17 Ibid., 7, 18–21; 6, 32–36.18 Ibid., 20, 25.

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stark rhythmic contrasts and to invest them with an expressive logic builtaround the concept of shock—that is, the sudden stimulation of a previ-ously static context. Messiaen’s construction of musical meaningthrough the metaphor invites critical investigation.

Close inspection of Messiaen’s analytical concept reveals not onlya sophisticated engagement with Debussy, but also resonances betweenthe analyses of Debussy’s music and Messiaen’s own compositions andcommentaries. Although for the most part Messiaen refrains from link-ing interpretations of Debussy with his own music, many of his rhythmiccontrasts manifest the same expressive logic that he ascribes to Debussy’smusic, particularly those durational events that signify the interjection ofbirdsong within serene environments and that signal the striking appear-ance of divine power on earth. In addition to stylistic and semiotic cor-relations, the logic of shock theorized for the pebble in the water recursmore abstractly in Messiaen’s idiomatic views on musical experience andspiritual encounter. His interpretation of rhythmic contrast bears themarks of his more general aesthetics of shock, which in turn can beunderstood as a revision of a broader modernist hermeneutic. Messiaenmay imply a hierarchical connection between the pebble in the waterand his broader theories of rhythmic variation in nature; but the meta-phor also relates via analogy to Messiaen’s own representational strate-gies and predilections. Examining correlations between the pebble inthe water and Messiaen’s music will suggest a common conceptualunderpinning between the composer’s interpretative perspectives onself and other.

The Pebble in the Water

In measure 17 of ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau,’’ Debussy prepares a striking rhyth-mic event by collapsing a widely spaced chord with open fifths and addedsixth on beat three into a dyad of inner voices doubled at the octave(ex. 1). He coordinates this compression with a decrescendo anda noticeably long eighth note tied across the bar line to a quarter note.This shift results in a fragile, even tense stasis as the elongated durationappears on beat four of measure 17, abruptly halting the sixteenth-noteprocess of the preceding measures and rendering any sense of metricarrival in measure 18 uncertain. This metrically unstable pause in rhyth-mic activity provides a staging ground for the swift sixty-fourth-note tripletsthat appear on beat three of measure 18. In retrospect the tied notes act asa foil for a set of striking contrasts between the two halves of the measure:the shift from long durations in simple time to rapid rhythms in com-pound subdivisions; and the half-step transposition from the held C/Ddyad to the concluding C �/D � , which resonates out of the initial rhythmic


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opposition. An eruption of lively rhythms within a context of long valuescomes to the foreground again in the following measure.19

Just as Messiaen often uses a mixture of technical detail and figurativedescription to theorize his own rhythmic techniques, so does he adoptmetaphoric language for Debussy’s contrast in ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’ to bringout its expressive potential and imbue it with semiotic significance.20

example 1. ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’ from Images, book 1, mm. 16–18.Œuvres completes de Claude Debussy I/3 (Paris: Durand-Costallat, 1991). Reprinted by permission

19 David Lewin’s interpretation bears resemblances with Messiaen’s analysis: he refersto the rhythmic interruption as a ‘‘ruffling motive’’ through which ‘‘the wind first rufflesthe surface of the pond.’’ See David Lewin, Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 238. Roy Howat describes Debussy’s contrast asa type of dovetailing, whereby new material is introduced first as an interruption and thentakes over the texture in the succeeding section. He notes the same use of contrast asa transition to new material in measures 27–34 of ‘‘Poissons d’or’’ from Images, book 2. SeeRoy Howat, The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Faure, Chabrier (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2009), 41.

20 Messiaen wrote extensively about the structure and meaning of rhythmic techni-ques that he employed in his work. His two major treatises—Technique de mon langage musical(1944) and the posthumous Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie (1994–2002)—offerunique insight into his compositional methods, and scholars have taken these self-reflectivecommentaries as primary points of departure for studies of his music. Idiomatic concepts ofadded values, non-retrogradable rhythm, personnages rythmiques, and ancient-Indian deci-talas have rightly become essential topics in literature on his work, providing anchor pointsfor close examinations of the music. See Roberto Fabbi, ‘‘Theological Implications ofRestrictions in Messiaen’s Compositional Process,’’ in Bruhn, Messiaen’s Language of MysticalLove, 55–84; Robert Sherlaw-Johnson, ‘‘Rhythmic Technique and Symbolism in the Musicof Olivier Messiaen,’’ in ibid., 132–34; Jean Marie Wu, ‘‘Mystical Symbols of Faith: OlivierMessiaen’s Charm of Impossibilities,’’ in ibid., 85–120; Julian Hook, ‘‘Rhythm in the Musicof Messiaen: An Algebraic Study and an Application in the Turangalıla Symphony,’’ MusicTheory Spectrum 20, no. 1 (1998): 97–120; Eleanor Trawick,, ‘‘Order, Progression, and Timein the Music of Messiaen,’’ Ex tempore 9, no. 2 (1999): 64–77; Gareth Healey, ‘‘Messiaen andthe Concept of ‘Personnages,’’’ Tempo 58, no. 230 (2004): 10–19; Rob Schultz, ‘‘Melodic

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Drawing on the composer’s predilection for water imagery, Messiaen likensthe opposition between long and short durations in the excerpt to a pebblethrown into water:

The surface of the water, still, calm, and serene. Suddenly, it is troubled!A pebble in the water, a bundle of falling leaves, a shock amid thestillness, a sudden star in the night, a memory that like an arrow injuresthe subconscious.21

Messiaen may have appropriated his figurative description from De-bussy himself, who once referred to the reappearance of the openingtheme amid active accompaniment as ‘‘a little circle in the water [ . . . ]with a little pebble falling into it.’’22 But despite the shared imagery Mes-siaen does not merely echo Debussy’s description; he uses the phrase tofulfill his own interpretative goals. First, if Messiaen was familiar with De-bussy’s reference, he narrows its application to a specific rhythmic con-struction apart from any thematic reference. Whereas Debussy’s phraseevokes the general relationship between melody and texture, Messiaenreserves the term for a particularly stark opposition between long andshort durations, which he correlates with the dialectic of rhythmic stasisand action. Second, the metaphor of the pebble in the water takes Mes-siaen’s analysis beyond the technical issue of durational proportion to aninterpretation of sudden contrast as shocking disturbance catalyzed by anexternal stimulus. Through metaphoric language he constructs an expres-sive logic for rhythmic contrast in which long duration provides a calmliquid surface featuring a static peace, and the succeeding rapid valuesthreaten that stillness, creating a ripple effect.23 The swift interjectiontroubles the surface and displaces its stasis with irruptive action. Thus thepebble in the water provides Messiaen’s analysis with what Max Black callsa ‘‘strong metaphor,’’ which does not merely decorate a phenomenon, butrather brings resonant implications for interpretation.24 The metaphorrenders the gesture as more than an interpolated arabesque: it is alsoa disruptive and energetic presence. Creating a new meaning through the-

Contour and Nonretrogradable Structure in the Birdsong of Olivier Messiaen,’’ MusicTheory Spectrum 30, no. 1 (2008): 89–137; and Vincent Benitez, ‘‘Reconsidering Messiaenas Serialist,’’ Music Analysis 28, nos. 2–3 (2009): 267–99.

21 . . . c’est la nappe d’eau, dormante, paisible, sereine. Brusquement, la voilatroublee! Un caillou dans l’eau, un paquet de feuilles mortes qui tombe, un choc sur ducalme, une brusque etoile sur la nuit, un souvenir en fleche qui blesse le subconscient.’’Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:18.

22 Marguerite Long, At the piano with Debussy, trans. Olive Senior-Ellis (London: Dent,1972), 25. See also Howat, The Art of French Piano Music, 55.

23 Boivin, La Classe de Messiaen, 279.24 Max Black, Perplexities: Rational Choice, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Metaphor, Poetic Ambi-

guity, and Other Puzzles (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 57.


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discursive act of metaphoric utterance, the pebble in the water providesa mode of interpretation, a way of seeing the world of rhythm.25

Messiaen’s theories of time and memory are instructive for under-standing the pebble in the water as a durational event. In volume one ofthe Traite Messiaen adopts a Bergsonian split between duree vecue—qualitative time dependent on states of consciousness—and tempsstructure—quantitative time in which parts are divided equally.26 Focus-ing on the perception of true duration, he argues that time filled withevents will pass quickly but will seem long in memory, while time void ofactivity will seem long in passing but brief in memory.27 According to thislogic, an event becomes an event through a sequence of activity thatcontrasts with surrounding inactivity; memory gathers and stores theenergy of these temporal articulations.28 Messiaen distinguishes furtherbetween physiological events (i.e., bodily action) and shocks froma source external to the body, whether emotional or aesthetic. Readthrough this theory of time, the pebble in the water becomes a temporalevent through the way that the outside force of rhythmic activity shocksthe empty time of long durational values. It is both a fleeting disturbancethat passes quickly and a resonant moment of lasting effect.

Later in the same discussion of time Messiaen addresses the way themind conceptualizes the quantitative relationships between durations ina rhythmic sequence, a perspective again rooted in Bergson that shedslight on the Debussy analysis.29 In Time and Free Will (1889) Bergsonargues that we typically conceptualize time not as true duration, whichis heterogeneous, but instead abstractly in terms of space as a string ofhomogeneous and localized time units:

25 Paul Ricoeur summarizes the discursive and creative nature of metaphor in TheRule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1977), 97. See also Black, Perplexities, 73–74; and Roger Scru-ton, The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 84.

26 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 1:12. Messiaen draws thisconcept from Bergson’s Essai sur les donnee immediates de la conscience (1889), but attributes histerminology to Armand Cuvillier. He quotes from Bergson’s L’Evolution creatrice (1907), Dureeet simultaneite (1922), and La Pensee et le mouvant (1934) at various points in the discussion.Vincent Benitez summarizes Messiaen’s interpretation of Bergson in his ‘‘ReconsideringMessiaen as Serialist,’’ 270–73. For a comprehensive summary of Messiaen’s eclectic reflec-tions on time, see Andrew Shenton, ‘‘Observations on Time in Olivier Messiaen’s Traite,’’ inDingle and Simeone, Olivier Messiaen: Music, Art and Literature, 173–89.

27 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 1:10.28 Benitez, ‘‘Reconsidering Messiaen as Serialist,’’ 273.29 For a study of the paradoxes underlying Messiaen’s theories of time, in particular

his reading of Bergson, see Benedict Taylor, ‘‘On Time and Eternity in Messiaen,’’ in OlivierMessiaen: The Centenary Papers, ed. Judith Crispin (Newcastle upon Tyne: CambridgeScholars Publishing, 2010), 256–80.

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We involuntarily fix at a point in space each of the moments which wecount, and it is only on this condition that the abstract units come toform a sum. No doubt it is possible [ . . . ] to conceive the successivemoments of time independently of space; but when we add to thepresent moment those which have preceded it, as is the case when weare adding up units, we are not dealing with these moments themselves,since they have vanished forever, but with the lasting traces which theyseem to have left in space on their passage through it.30

Building on the notion that passing moments create ‘‘lasting traces’’ ofduration in the human conceptualization of time, Messiaen proposesthat one comprehends the length and division of a duration in relationto the rhythms that precede and follow it. He argues that short valuespreceding very long values provide listeners with units for mentally divid-ing and representing the subsequent stasis; but the inverse does not holdtrue: long values preceding short values require listeners to segment theprevious duration in retrospect because a long note contains the poten-tial for infinite types of division.31 Messiaen might argue that this recali-bration intensifies the shock of the rhythmic event found in the excerptfrom ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’: the stream of even sixteenth notes in measure16 provides a template for measuring the continuing passage of time inthe tied note of measure17—that is, how to divide it cognitively; but thesubsequent irrational subdivisions conflict with the foregoing temporalrepresentation by dividing the sixteenth notes into unforeseen sextu-plets. The irrational values create a brief temporal fluctuation akin toa ripple effect. Thus the irruption of measure 18 forms a contrast notonly in the state of surface activity but also in the underlying units ofmeasure, requiring a retrospective reassessment of temporality. Messiaenviews the mixture of rational and irrational subdivisions as an essentialelement of Debussy’s style vitally connected to nature, and not surpris-ingly his examples of the pebble in the water throughout volume sixregularly feature such a shift to alternative subdivisions.32

The pebble in the water may provide an apt image for rhythmiccontrast in ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’ given the work’s title, but Messiaen em-ploys the phrase to describe moments in works that do not imply a bodyof water. These analyses demonstrate that he intends for his label todefine a class of stylistic elements—perhaps a musical topic33—beyondthe contingency of programmatic associations. He hears the pebble in

30 Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness,trans. F. L. Pogson (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1913), 79.

31 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 1:32.32 Boivin, La Classe de Messiaen, 279. See also the opening chapter of Messiaen, Traite

de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, vol. 6, on Debussy’s rhythmic procedures.33 Cochran, ‘‘The Rhythm of Water,’’ 515–16.


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the water in ‘‘Nuages’’ from Nocturnes, where the English horn solo dis-rupts the languid, simple-time homophony of the opening measureswith a swift sixteenth-note triplet in measure 5. He notes the pebble inthe water near the end of ‘‘Brouillards’’ from the second book of Preludes,where the ‘‘hastened anacrusis’’ of a theme in diminution (m. 41) followsafter the elongated conclusion of the theme’s original statement (ex. 2).We can infer from this excerpt that the scattered thirty-second-note arpeg-gio hovering above the texture augments the effect.34 In the introductionto his analysis of ‘‘Cloches a travers les feuilles’’ from Images, Messiaeninvokes the ‘‘faithful pebble in the water and the circles enlarging

example 2. ‘‘Brouillards’’ from Preludes, book 2, mm. 38-41. Œuvrescompletes de Claude Debussy I/5 (Paris: Durand-Costallat,1985). Reprinted by permission

34 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:84-85. For studies of Debussy’sarabesque techniques, see Caroline Potter, ‘‘Debussy and Nature,’’ in Cambridge Companion toDebussy, ed. Simon Trezise (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 143–47;Boyd Pomeroy, ‘‘Debussy’s Tonality: A Formal Perspective,’’ in ibid., 158–61; and Jann Pasler,‘‘Timbre, Voice-Leading, and the Musical Arabesque in Debussy’s Piano Music,’’ in Debussy inPerformance, ed. James Briscoe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 225–55.

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themselves,’’ and even uses the phrase to describe moments from nonrep-resentational works such as ‘‘Pour Les Sonorites opposees’’ from DouzeEtudes and ‘‘Mouvement’’ from Images.35 These examples demonstrate thatMessiaen uses the pebble in the water to describe recurring rhythmic con-trasts—most involving some type of metric recalibration—from a wide sam-pling of works without regard for programmatic associations. The picture ofa disturbed liquid surface may make points of contact with the impliedprograms of works, but its use is not limited to or determined by thementirely.

The chain of metaphors that often follow references to the pebble involume six suggests that Messiaen’s conception of rhythmic contrastincludes different registers of intensity. Near the beginning of thevolume’s opening chapter on Debussy’s varied rhythmic techniques,Messiaen chooses ‘‘Debussy—the pebble in the water’’ as a subheadingfor the section devoted to juxtapositions of short and long durations, butwithin the text he elaborates on the primary term with other metaphorsof disruption: ‘‘a shock amid stillness—desire in the subconscious—thepebble in the water—the thing that shines all of a sudden in the night.’’36

Likewise, in the passage cited above a similar chain appears after estab-lishing the pebble in the water as the point of reference: ‘‘a bundle offalling leaves, a shock amid the stillness, a sudden star in the night,a memory that like an arrow injures the subconscious.’’37 The supportingmetaphors each define the notion of shock in a different way at a differ-ent degree of intensity: leaves ruffle the surface without completely pen-etrating it, whereas the injurious arrow of subconscious memory hasa harsher connotation; light piercing the darkness could range frommerely salient to blinding. Messiaen makes no effort to parse the potencyof each event, but instead leaves a continuum of intensities—bolsteredby the expressive range of these analogies—intact for the pebble in thewater. The continuum provides a means of recognizing varied manifesta-tions of the same expressive trajectory from calm to shock in notablydifferent rhythmic contexts: ‘‘Nuages’’ and ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’ stage

35 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:112, 114. Along with a directreference to the pebble in the water in measures 1–3 of ‘‘Pour Les Sonorites opposees,’’ headopts similar imagery to highlight the sudden rhythmic contrast between a rising figurethat mixes sixteenth notes with dotted rhythms and calando quarter notes in measure 31:‘‘But the trumpet theme approaches rising out of these calm values. It is like the brightlycolored Kingfisher who passes over the water, or like the arrow of memory that crossesone’s thought.’’ (Mais le theme de trompette s’approche surgissant de ces valeurs calmes. Ilest comme le Martin-pecheur colore qui passe sur l’eau, ou comme la fleche de la memoirequi traverse la pensee.) Ibid., 104.

36 ‘‘Un choc sur du calme—le desir dans le subconscient—le caillou dans l’eau—lachose qui brille tout a coup dans la nuit.’’ Ibid., 3.

37 ‘‘ . . . un paquet de feuilles mortes qui tombe, un choc sur du calme, une brusqueetoile sur la nuit, un souvenir en fleche qui blesse le subconscient.’’ Ibid., 18.


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their rhythmic disruptions through similar means, but the triplet distur-bance in the English horn solo of the former (m. 5) is more delicate,subtler, and more concise than its counterpart in the latter (m. 18).Within this interpretative framework, Messiaen’s metaphor can be mod-ulated to account for both tiny pebbles and sizable stones.

Not only do these chains of metaphors add nuance to the range ofintensity for the concept, but they also allow Messiaen to make points ofcontact between diverse areas of experience. He draws correspondencesbetween the pebble in the water and other semiotic domains, bringingtogether a network of distinct phenomena via analogy. In this light wecan read the lists of metaphors for rhythmic shock not as competinginterpretations, but as isomorphic extensions of the expressive patternfrom the realm of water to the domains of light and human psychology.Despite its prominent position in his text—as a heading, as the focalpoint of several passages, and as an independent description throughoutthe volume—Messiaen does not enclose the pebble in the water withinitself, but instead assigns to it the role of an organizing metaphor that unitesa field of diverse phenomena around a common set of associations.38 Itsessence is transferrable within a network of associated tropes.

Messiaen draws on these correspondences between diverse realms ofexperience to enrich his analysis of Pelleas et Melisande where he uses theexpressive pattern of a disturbed liquid surface to link aspects of rhythm,setting, plot, and psychology. In the analysis of act 1, scene 3, Messiaencorrelates the shock of rhythmic contrast with analogous oppositionsbetween calm and disruption in the drama.39 Just after rehearsal 40Genevieve remarks on the gloomy sea, and Pelleas predicts a comingstorm despite the current lull: ‘‘We will have a storm tonight. [ . . . ] yet[the sea] is so calm now.’’ Suggesting that Pelleas is referring to botha literal storm and the tragedy to come, Messiaen interprets the stillnessof the music at this point as ominous: ‘‘There is no worse water than thewater that sleeps,’’ he writes, as if disturbance to the rhythm and plotwere inevitable. Just as he highlights the contrast between calm andimpending chaos literally in the sea and figuratively in the characters’relationships, Messiaen notes its rhythmic manifestation as well. Accord-ing to him, three statements of a G� minor chord represent the ‘‘calm

38 Marion Guck’s term in ‘‘Musical Images as Musical Thoughts: The Contribution ofMetaphor to Analysis,’’ In Theory Only 5, no. 5 (1981): 31. Paul Ricoeur might call the pebblein the water a ‘‘root metaphor,’’ which is ‘‘capable of both engendering and organizinga network that serves as a junction between the symbolic level with its slow evolution and themore volatile metaphorical level.’’ See Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and theSurplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 64.

39 Volume six contains two analyses of act 1, scene 3, written about twelve years apart.The second of the pair was Messiaen’s last written analysis, assembled in the winter of 1991–1992, a few weeks before his death. The present discussion draws from both analyses.

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and yet menacing sea.’’40 A rapid dotted figure of tones foreign to thetriad appear in the horns, interrupting the placid setting with a motiveresembling Golaud’s theme (ex. 3). Messiaen describes the rhythmicinterpolation as ‘‘an irruption of liveliness in the midst of slowness, ofagitation in the calm, this pebble in the water.’’41 The momentary rhyth-mic contrast and its associations with disturbed water provide him witha model for interpreting an entire symbolic context, uniting music, set-ting, and drama under a single expressive trajectory.

Messiaen conjoins the concept of the pebble in the water with itsparallel image of light in the darkness in the analysis of act 1, scene 1.When Golaud notices something shining in the bottom of the nearbywell (two measures after rehearsal 13), Messiaen infers a connectionbetween the ruffle of a sixteenth-note triplet, which breaks the aura ofstillness, and the character’s sudden perception of light:

Golaud [ . . . ] is interested only in that which shines. But that whichshines is deep in the water: still and deep, full of drama and secrets—and that which shines is perhaps the love, attainable only to Pelleasand Melisande in its fatal and superterrestrial form. We know thatDebussy was a passionate lover of clouds, wind, the sea, and marvelousillusions that are a backwards landscape, a light that repeats itself, bythe magic of reflections, in the tranquil and perpetual mirror of thewater. It does not matter whether it is a golden crown or a ray of light!Something shines—in the water: it is the intrusion of movement in the

example 3. Reduction of act 1, scene 3 from Pelleas et Melisande, threemeasures before rehearsal 41. Published in Messiaen,Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, vol. 6 (Paris:Alphonse Leduc, 2001), 84. Reprinted by permission

40 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:66.41 ‘‘Cette irruption du vif dans le lent, de l’agite dans le calme, ce caillou dans l’eau.’’

Ibid., 84.


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calm, of change in the immovable, of very short values in the very longvalues.42

Although the rhythmic interjection is subtle, Messiaen treats it as a reso-nant event, bolstering his trope of water and light with bold typeface:whatever the object is, it shines forcefully as a type of intrusion in theformer stillness of the well.

The pebble in the water suffuses Messiaen’s interpretation of theopera’s psychological components as well. Five measures before the endof act 1, scene 3, a rapid dotted rhythm in the French horn interruptsa held chord in the strings. Messiaen implies that this irruption of rapidvalues signifies the presence—either mentally or physically—of Golaud,creating an uncanny and aggressive articulation within an otherwisepeaceful conclusion (ex. 4). Despite the dissonance between Golaud’s

example 4. Reduction of act 1, scene 3 from Pelleas et Melisande,rehearsal 48. Published in Messiaen, Traite de rythme, decouleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:72. Reprinted by permission

42 ‘‘Golaud [ . . . ] s’interesse seulement a ce qui brille. Mais ce qui brille est au fond del’eau: l’eau dormante et profonde, pleine de drames et de secrets—et ce qui brille est peut-etre l’amour, accessible sous sa forme fatale et supra-terrestre a Pelleas et Melisande seuls.On sait que Debussy a ete l’amant passionne des nuages, du vent, de la mer, et de cesillusions merveilleuses que sont un paysage renverse, une lumiere qui se repete, par lamagie des reflets, dans le miroir tranquille et perpetuel de l’eau. Peu importe que ce soitune couronne d’or ou un rayon de soleil! quelque chose brille—dans l’eau: c’est l’intrusion dumouvement dans le calme, du changement dans l’inamovible, des valeurs tres breves dansles valeurs tres longues.’’ Ibid., 60. Emphasis in original.

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jealousy and the couple’s burgeoning desire manifested in this rhythmiccontrast, Messiaen asserts that ‘‘this distant aggressiveness would not beable to trouble the still water of Melisande’s dream, which takes place ata height, on another planet.’’43 He employs language associated with thepebble in the water both to define the rhythmic contrast and to judgeMelisande’s mental state. The swift gesture may disturb the durationalcalm, but according to Messiaen Melisande’s dream-life remains smoothand untroubled like still water. Even the startling iteration of Golaud’stheme cannot penetrate its surface. The pebble in the water provides theconceptual underpinning not only for the rhythm in itself, but also forthe contrast between Melisande’s dream and the violent thought of real-ity that threatens to disrupt it.

In each of these examples from the analysis of Pelleas et Melisande,Messiaen organizes his interpretations of the music, scene, and dramaaround the image of the pebble in the water, which extends the reach ofits signification beyond rhythm itself. Like other recurrent metaphors,the pebble in the water provides a pattern to be reproduced and rein-vented in various forms, never becoming exhausted in a single context.44

Messiaen’s engagement with the expressive pattern of shock amidcalm is not limited to analyses of Debussy: it recurs explicitly in his owndiscussion of the musical-spiritual experience and implicitly in aspects ofhis musical style. Just as he transfers the essence of the pebble in thewater to various domains via analogy, we can correlate Messiaen’s con-ception of Debussy’s rhythmic style with his own aesthetics of shock andthe rhythmic techniques that manifest it throughout his oeuvre.

The Aesthetics of Shock

Beginning in the late nineteenth century shock became a central con-cept in defining modern life in Europe. Increasing urbanization andindustrialization, population density, and technological advancementsin transportation and communication would place, in Dorothee Brill’swords, ‘‘new demands on the individual’s sensorial and cognitive capa-cities.’’45 In 1903 sociologist Georg Simmel summarized this urbanoverstimulation:

The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consistsin the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and

43 ‘‘Mais cette lointaine agressivite ne saurait troubler l’eau dormante du reve deMelisande, qui se situe en hauteur, sur une autre planete.’’ Ibid., 93.

44 For more on recurring types and patterns of metaphors, see Jorge Luis Borges, ThisCraft of Verse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 23.

45 Dorothee Brill, Shock and the Senseless in Dada and Fluxus (Hanover, NH: DartmouthCollege Press, 2010), 18.


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uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli. [ . . . ] Lasting impres-sions, impressions which differ only slightly from one another, impres-sions which take a regular and habitual course and show regular andhabitual contrasts—all these use up, so to speak, less consciousness thandoes the rapid crowding of changing images, the sharp discontinuity inthe grasp of a single glance, and the unexpectedness of onrushing im-pressions. These are the psychological conditions which the metropoliscreates. With each crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicityof economic, occupational and social life, the city sets up a deep contrastwith small town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundationsof psychic life.46

World War I would set this condition into sharp relief as the term ‘‘shellshock’’ came to define the neurological disorders resulting from thetraumatic experiences of mechanized warfare.47 Thus the notion ofshock acquired a multiplicity of referents in the cities and on the battle-fields of the twentieth century, all featuring events that exceeded theformer limits of human experience.

If the defining quality of modern shock is a breach of the subject’smental capacities from external stimuli, then it requires psychic protec-tion for survival. Simmel argues that increased awareness is an essentialprotective mechanism. He maintains that the intellect—as opposed tothe heart—is our most adaptable organ and is capable of protectingmodern man ‘‘against the threatening currents and discrepancies of hisexternal environment which would uproot him.’’48 Sigmund Freud the-orizes the shock effect similarly as ‘‘the breaking through of the barrierwith which the psychic organ is provided against stimuli,’’ namely con-sciousness.49 In Freud’s psychology protection from the shock of stimulithrough the barrier of consciousness is as essential as the reception ofstimuli in the first place.50

Such protection figures prominently in Walter Benjamin’s theory ofshock as a fundamental component of art in the modern age. In ‘‘OnSome Motifs in Baudelaire’’ (1939) Benjamin argues that ‘‘movingthrough this traffic [of the big city] involves the individual in a series

46 Georg Simmel, ‘‘Metropolis and Mental Life,’’ in Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings,ed. David Frisby and Mike Featherstone (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 175. Emphasisin original.

47 Ruth Leys, ‘‘Traumatic Cures: Shell Shock, Janet, and the Question of Memory,’’Critical Inquiry 20, no. 4 (1994): 623–62. For an essay on connections between war neurosesand art, see Brigid Doherty, ‘‘‘See: We Are All Neurasthenics!’ or, The Trauma of DadaMontage,’’ Critical Inquiry 24, no. 1 (1997): 82–132.

48 Simmel, ‘‘Metropolis and Mental Life,’’ 176.49 Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. C. J. M. Hubback (London: The

International Psycho-Analytical Press, 1922), 37.50 Ibid., 31.

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of shocks and collisions,’’ and that this metropolitan condition is at thecenter of Baudelaire’s lyric poetry.51 He says that ‘‘Baudelaire made it hisbusiness to parry the shocks’’ of the modern city through personal tics—i.e., physical defense mechanisms—as well as poetic construction. In thededication of Le Spleen de Paris Baudelaire himself imagines a protectivepoetic prose that is ‘‘musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple andresistant enough to adapt itself to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, thewave motions of dreaming, the shocks of consciousness.’’52 AlthoughBenjamin organizes his discussion around the nineteenth-century poet’swork, the essay is aimed equally at twentieth-century modern life andaesthetics. Benjamin digresses from Baudelaire at various points to dis-cuss how changes in the modern condition have affected the technologyand reception of art in the twentieth century, necessitating a new form ofconsciousness: ‘‘There came a day when a new and urgent need forstimuli was met by the film’’ in which ‘‘perception in the form of shockswas established as a formal principle.’’53 Whereas a painting invites stillcontemplation of a single image, the fragmentation and constant, abruptchanges of a moving image limit the viewer’s ability to assess the depth ofthe image or to make associations with it.54 Echoing Simmel and Freud,in ‘‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’’ (1936),Benjamin argues that ‘‘like all shocks, [the shock effect of film] shouldbe cushioned by heightened presence of mind.’’55 Consciousness thusacts as a protective barrier in the reception of film and other modern art,which reflects the ubiquitous and unavoidable shocks of the modernworld.

If the stimulation of the twentieth-century metropolis was as over-whelming and pervasive as theorists of modern shock would have it, thenit is no surprise that Messiaen retreated from the urban environment formusical inspiration from nature. Although his love of the countrysidebegan at an early age, Messiaen often described his preferred environ-ment as the opposite of the urban atmosphere:

I have an absolute horror of cities, a horror of the one I live in, despiteall its beauties—I’m referring to the French capital—and a horror of allthe bad taste man has accumulated around him, whether for his needsor for various other reasons. You’ll notice, as I do, that nature never

51 Walter Benjamin, ‘‘On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,’’ in Illuminations, ed. HannahArendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 175.

52 Ibid., 165.53 Ibid., 175.54 Gregg Lambert, In Search of a New Image of Thought: Gilles Deleuze and Philosophical

Expressionism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 28.55 Walter Benjamin, ‘‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’’ in

Illuminations, 238.


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displays anything in bad taste; you’ll never find a mistake in lighting orcoloration or, in bird songs, an error in rhythm, melody, orcounterpoint.56

Messiaen’s nature is a place free of the disjunctions and affrontingstimuli that define the visual and aural landscape of the modern city.Nature—birdsong in particular—was for Messiaen ‘‘a factor of health’’that helped him cope with ‘‘the misfortunes and complications of life.’’57

Yet in spite of Messiaen’s retreat to nature, we can read his theori-zation of durational shock in dialogue with this modern discourse. Brill’ssummary of modern theories of shock bears striking similarities with theabove descriptions of the pebble in the water: ‘‘Similar to a projectilebreaking the skin and entering the flesh, shock describes such penetra-tion on a psychological level.’’58 Both Messiaen’s and Brill’s descriptionsemploy images of intrusion, penetration, and disturbance from an out-side source to chart the trajectory from stability to shock. The pebble inthe water refers to the onset of sudden and foreign stimulation, whichbreaches the vulnerable surface, resulting in changing images, disconti-nuities, and unexpected impressions much like Simmel’s metropolis orBenjamin’s cinema.

The kinship between the pebble in the water and this modern dis-course becomes especially salient when Messiaen builds his interpreta-tion not only on observation of natural phenomena, but also ona parallel psychological interpretation of memory injuring the subcon-scious. In his analysis of act 1, scene 3 of Pelleas he even theorizes psychicdefenses for the mental-durational shock: the subtle appearance of theGolaud theme, for Messiaen, is at once the pebble in the water anda threat to Melisande’s mental state. It is soft but menacing as a stimulusoutside the order of the scene’s rhythmic placidity and Melisande’s psy-chology. Melisande’s psychic defenses prove too strong, however, as,according to Messiaen’s interpretation, she parries the shock successfullywith the barrier of her untroubled dream world.

Although Messiaen had presumably little specific knowledge of theauthors cited above and he links rhythmic contrast in Debussy primarilywith natural rather than urban phenomena, his interpretative conceptsbuild on a logic that correlates with a broad modernist hermeneutic ofshock. We can read Messiaen’s pebble in the water as a revision of oralternative to this discourse as he links the notion of shock with thesudden actions of a natural setting, often coding it positively in unspokenopposition to the city.

56 Samuel, Olivier Messiaen, Music and Color, 33, 155.57 Ibid., 32.58 Brill, Shock and the Senseless in Dada and Fluxus, 41.

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Beyond the pebble in the water itself, shock as an intrusion of externaland overwhelming stimuli is a central component of Messiaen’s aesthetics.On several occasions Messiaen referred to shock as a desirable effect oflistening to his music, which he frames in a way familiar from the metaphorof the pebble in the water. When asked how listeners might comprehendthe elaborate construction of his rhythms, he maintained that ignorance ofmusical structure—what he often referred to as the ‘‘virgin’s eye’’—is anasset that makes a jolting encounter with beauty and charm possible:

It’s not essential for listeners to be able to detect precisely all the rhyth-mic procedures of the music they hear, just as they don’t need to figureout all the chords of classical music. That’s reserved for harmony pro-fessors and professional composers. The moment that they receivea shock, realize that it’s beautiful, that the music touches them, thegoal is achieved!59

When Messiaen says elsewhere that the ideal listener comes to a per-formance without prior beliefs so as to receive a shock, he implies thatthis startling aesthetic experience charts the same trajectory from stasisto stimulation that he associates with rhythmic contrast in Debussy.60

Reflecting his interpretation of durational opposition, Messiaen estab-lishes an idealistic conception of listening in which the audience makesitself passive and vulnerable to an outside presence, which marks cogni-tion and resonates within memory.61 He construes his music not as easilypalatable, but as a mysterious and satisfying intrusion into the blankcontext of the listener’s mind. We can read this view against the foil ofFreud and Benjamin, who maintain that the role of consciousness isvigilance. According to Messiaen, the audience will receive the mostbenefit from his music by letting down its guard, by shedding the de-fenses of stylistic knowledge and aesthetic preference; not surprisingly,the result is an experience of shock.

Not only does Messiaen appropriate the notion of shock for musicalexperience, but its aesthetics are central to his invocation of spiritual

59 Quoted in Samuel, Olivier Messiaen, Music and Color, 83. For Messiaen the ‘‘virgin’seye’’ is a strategic naivete adopted by the listener/analyst, who examines music without thenormal filters of musical convention, historical context, structural knowledge, or priorexperience in order to make novel discoveries and draw unlikely connections betweenworks across time and place. See Olivier Messiaen: La Liturgie de cristal, DVD, directed byOlivier Mille (Paris: Artline Films, 2002), 27:31–27:40; and Traite de rythme, de couleur, etd’ornithologie, vol. 7 (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2002), 105.

60 Claude Samuel, Entretien avec Olivier Messiaen, 11–13 October 1961, published witha recording of Turangalıla-symphonie (Vega 30 BVG 1363). Cited in Robert Sholl, ‘‘OlivierMessiaen and the Avant-Garde Poetics of the Messe de la Pentecote,’’ in Olivier Messiaen,Messiaen the Theologian, ed. Andrew Shenton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 206.

61 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 1:10.


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presence within music as well. Messiaen appropriates the language ofmodernist shock to define a set of aesthetic and spiritual experiences asthe intrusion of an external yet redemptive presence. In Messiaen’s viewGod is the ‘‘ultimate reality’’ and his truth exceeds comprehension.62

Therefore the appearance of his power on earth creates a disjunctionbetween the banality of everyday experience and the unpredictablepotency of spiritual action. It remaps one’s previous sensorial and cog-nitive capacities not through an urban landscape of technological satu-ration, overpopulation, and horror, but through the revelation of glory.Robert Sholl describes Messiaen’s theological approach as the ‘‘shock ofthe positive,’’ which reconfigures the musical language and aesthetics ofmodernism in order to ‘‘redirect our gaze’’ toward the hope of Christianeternity.63 In music designed to depict or create human encounters withheavenly power, Messiaen often employs strategic methods that reflectthe potency of the event. Signifying what Christopher Dingle calls ‘‘celes-tial incursion into the terrestrial domain,’’ he sometimes uses contrast asa tool for setting the moment of transcendence apart from previousmaterial.64 For example, when an angel knocks at the door in scene 4of St. Francois d’Assise, Messiaen exaggerates the volume and articulationof the stroke because this is no mere human action but rather an ‘‘irrup-tion of grace,’’ as he describes it in the score. Instead of entering thedramatic scene quietly, divine presence disrupts the familiar.

The correlation between contrast, shock, and the experience oftranscendent power is especially strong in Messiaen’s approach toeblouissement (dazzlement). He refers to moments of spiritual intensityin which an overwhelming flood of vibrant color points the beholdertoward truth as ‘‘breakthrough toward the beyond, toward the invisibleand unspeakable.’’65 He locates the site of this breakthrough in stained-glass windows of the great cathedrals, where rich color combinationsoverwhelm the senses.66 Summarizing the musical equivalent, he says:

62 Vincent Benitez, ‘‘Messiaen and Aquinas,’’ in Shenton, Messiaen the Theologian, 121.63 Robert Sholl, ‘‘The Shock of the Positive: Olivier Messiaen, St. Francis, and

Redemption through Modernity,’’ in Resonant Witness: Conversations between Music andTheology, eds. Jeremy S. Begbie and Steven R. Guthrie (Grand Rapids: William B. EerdmansPublishing, 2011), 189. See also Robert Sholl, ‘‘Olivier Messiaen and the Avant-GardePoetics of the Messe de la Pentecote,’’ 199–222.

64 Christopher Dingle, The Life of Messiaen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2007), 213.

65 Olivier Messiaen, Lecture at Notre-Dame (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2001), 4. Cited inSander van Maas, The Reinvention of Religious Music: Olivier Messiaen’s Breakthrough Toward theBeyond (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 35. See also Christian Asplund’s De-leuzian interpretation of dazzlement in his ‘‘A Body without Organs: Three Approaches—Cage, Bach, and Messiaen,’’ Perspectives of New Music 35, no. 2 (1997): 171–87.

66 Sander van Maas, ‘‘Forms of Love: Messiaen’s Aesthetics of Eblouissement,’’ in Mes-siaen Studies, ed. Robert Sholl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 81.

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Coloured music does that which the stained-glass windows and rose-windows of the Middle Ages did: they give us dazzlement. Touchingat once our noblest senses: hearing and vision, it shakes our sensibilitiesinto motion, pushes us to go beyond concepts, to approach that whichis higher than reason and intuition, that is, FAITH.67

Here Messiaen implies that musical dazzlement is a jolting experience oftruth, a sudden change from the stasis of rational thought to an over-powering, almost violent, confrontation with glory.68 Opposing ordinaryexperience with the shock of spiritual encounter, Messiaen’s metaphorsof breakthrough, overwhelming intensity, and shaken sensibilities beara conceptual similarity to the shattered calm at the heart of the pebble inthe water metaphor and the shocks of the modern condition as truthinvades and remaps cognition. Although breakthrough moments in Mes-siaen’s works differ considerably in their emphasis on vibrant color fromthe Debussian paradigm, they often rely on sudden change to set themoment of transcendence apart from surrounding material. Sander vanMaas describes the musical fabric of dazzlement as ‘‘a framed opening toa plane that differs strongly from the surrounding context.’’ These inten-sified windows of musical time are composed of sudden distinctions inorchestration, harmony, texture, tempo, rhythm, and articulation.69

Thus Messiaen articulates and constructs his notion of dazzlement ina way similar to his interpretation of Debussy: he describes an interpola-tion of sudden power and energy—manifested in intense sound colorand bolstered by coordinated changes in other parameters—that desta-bilizes the rational setting, i.e., consciousness.

Messiaen’s Rhythmic Contrasts

Messiaen’s interpretation of the pebble in the water may be a componentof his broad theory of rhythm in nature, but it also reflects the compo-ser’s personal version of the aesthetics of shock, which reimagines a dis-tinctly modernist discourse for experiences of nature, music, and divinepresence. If Messiaen’s interpretation of Debussy manifests aspects ofthese broader aesthetic concerns, it is worth considering how corre-sponding moments of rhythmic contrast in Messiaen’s music might alsoenact a similar expressive logic.

67 Almut Roßler, Contributions to the Spiritual World of Olivier Messiaen, trans. BarbaraDagg and Nancy Poland (Duisberg: Gilles & Francke Verlag, 1986), 65.

68 References to evil, hell, and sin are largely missing from Messiaen’s programs andtitles; adopting a ‘‘Theology of Glory,’’ he prefers to emphasize joy, light, salvation, andglory. See Andrew Shenton, Olivier Messiaen’s System of Signs: Notes Towards Understanding HisMusic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 27–28.

69 Sander van Maas, The Reinvention of Religious Music, 58.


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Several scholars have attempted to isolate points of similarity betweenthe composers as indicators of influence, but the differences in style areoften more salient.70 George Benjamin, who studied with Messiaen at theConservatoire in 1977–1978, summarizes the distinction between the com-posers’ styles: ‘‘There are several moments in Messiaen’s music that dosound like Debussy, I suppose, but he doesn’t have the impressionism,the suppleness, the mysteriousness that Debussy has. His music is directand hard-edged practically always.’’71 Despite naming Debussy as a chiefinfluence, Messiaen himself articulated a corresponding distinctionbetween the ‘‘delicate colors’’ of Debussy, which are akin to the ‘‘shim-mering coloration’’ of a Claude Monet painting, and the ‘‘strong colors’’of his own language, which he compared to the ‘‘violent’’ color contrastsfound in the paintings of Robert Delaunay.72 The aesthetic differencesbetween Debussy and Messiaen would seem to be prohibitive for a mean-ingful comparison of styles, rhythmic strategies included.

Yet Messiaen’s description of the pebble in the water comprisesa continuum of intensities, which can account for both subtly registeredshocks and violent intrusions. Differences in the force of the composers’respective durational oppositions do not preclude analogies betweentheir expressive trajectories. Patrick McCreless has observed that gesturesfound in distinct stylistic contexts can evince a similar rhetoric.73 Inorder for any comparison to be meaningful, we must treat the pebblein the water as a hermeneutic template for rhythm and not only asa narrowly Debussian stylistic feature. If we view the metaphor as anexpressive pattern capable of being reproduced and modulated in dif-ferent contexts, we discover that Messiaen constructs many of his ownpotent rhythmic events via a logic that correlates with his interpretationsof Debussy.74

70 See Roger Smalley, ‘‘Portrait of Debussy. 8: Debussy and Messiaen,’’ The MusicalTimes 109, no. 1500 (1968): 128–31; Reinhard Oehlschlagel, ‘‘Claude Debussy und die neueMusik,’’ Musica 25, no. 4 (1971): 353–55; Zsolt Gardonyi, ‘‘Phanomene harmonie-geschichtlicher Kontinuitat in Olivier Messiaens Oper Saint Francois d’Assise,’’ Melos 47, no.3 (1985): 59, 61; Madeleine Hsu, Olivier Messiaen, the Musical Mediator: A Study of the Influenceof Liszt, Debussy, and Bartok (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); CharlesA. Riley, The Saints of Modern Art (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998), 190; andTheo Hirsbrunner, ‘‘Debussy d’outre-tombe,’’ Cahiers Debussy 12–13 (1998-1999): 153–58.

71 George Benjamin, ‘‘Debussy’s Influence on Messiaen,’’ The South Bank Show: OlivierMessiaen: The Music of Faith, 20:09–20:23. For Benjamin’s studies with Messiaen, see Boivin,La Classe de Messiaen, 432.

72 Roßler, Contributions to the Spiritual World of Olivier Messiaen, 77; Samuel, OlivierMessiaen, Music and Color, 43–44.

73 Patrick McCreless, ‘‘Anatomy of a Gesture: From Davidovsky to Chopin and Back,’’in Approaches to Meaning in Music, eds. Byron Almen and Edward Pearsall (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 2006), 11–14.

74 Lawrence Kramer proposes that instead of focusing on the fact of resemblancebetween works we should focus on ‘‘the act of adapting an expressive pattern to suit a new

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It would be incorrect to claim that all of Messiaen’s rhythmic contrastsenact the logic of the pebble in the water, but he does imbue variousdurational oppositions with corresponding associations. The followingexamples of rhythmic contrast signify events fundamental to Messiaen’smusical language—i.e., the interjection of rapid and erratic birdsongwithin serene environments and the striking appearance of divine poweramid mundane experience—that follow the same expressive pattern asthe pebble in the water metaphor and the aesthetics of shock. Messiaendepicts water frequently in his music: he imitates the motion of water (e.g.,the conventional arching contours that signify waves of the sea throughout‘‘Le Courlis cendre’’ from Catalogue d’oiseaux); he indicates a special typeof staccato articulation with the phrase gouttes d’eau in various organ works(e.g., measure 14 of ‘‘Communion’’ [Les oiseaux et les sources]’’ fromMesse de la Pentecote); and he esteems water as theologically symbolic (e.g.,‘‘Les Eaux de la grace’’ from Les Corps glorieux). But none of these overtreferences to water involve a rhythmic strategy built around sudden con-trast. Messiaen invokes the metaphor of the pebble in the water only oncein the Traite outside of volume six, and even then refrains from fullytheorizing the concept as a personal rhythmic technique.75 Despite thelack of direct reference in his self-reflective writings and score annotations,the trajectory defined by the pebble metaphor forms the foundation ofcertain representational strategies involving rhythm outside the waterdomain in Messiaen’s music. Even if he does not list the pebble in thewater among his many idiomatic techniques, Messiaen’s use of rapidrhythms to create sudden activity within still settings and to conjure shockamid calm suggests a common conceptual underpinning for analysis andcomposition.

Correlations I: Birds in their Environment

Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisiblebird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received atonce so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silenceand of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity themoment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.76

-context.’’ He goes on to say that ‘‘the hermeneutics of resemblance begins when we think ofresemblance not as something we discover in a work but as something one work does withanother—perhaps even unwittingly—in response to its own enterprises and urgencies.’’Lawrence Kramer, Interpreting Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 168.

75 See the analysis of rehearsal 18 of ‘‘Chant d’amour 2’’ from Turangalıla-symphonie inMessiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 2:234.

76 Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin(New York: Modern Library, 2003), 193. This quote appears on New Yorker critic Alex Ross’s


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Just as Messiaen highlights striking oppositions between long andshort rhythmic values throughout Debussy’s oeuvre, he often employs inhis own works elongated durations as foils for his swift and disjunct bird-songs, rendering them salient by contrast with surrounding material.77

Frequently he frames the rapid rhythms and angular contours of bird-songs with sustained chords in homophonic textures. Such stark rhythmicand textural opposition is prevalent throughout Catalogue d’oiseaux, thesecond movement of which, ‘‘Le Loriot,’’ exemplifies this approach(ex. 5). The piece begins softly and slowly with sustained articulationsof parallel dominant-seventh chords. Without transition a string of rapidthirty-second notes appears in a faster tempo, at a higher dynamic level,and across a much wider range. In response to the multiple oppositionswithin the texture, Peter Hill describes the song aptly as ‘‘boldly etched’’amid a ‘‘chorale of harmonies.’’78

Messiaen often imbues these representations of birds with expressiveassociations similar to those assigned to the pebble in the water. Recallthat he uses the metaphor in volume six of the Traite to code Debussy’srapid rhythms as active/disruptive and the preceding longer durations asstatic/calm. He constructs an analogous opposition in certain contexts

example 5. ‘‘Le Loriot’’ from Catalogue d’oiseaux, mm. 1–3 (Paris:Editions Musicales Alphonse Leduc, 1964). Reprinted bypermission

-blog under the title ‘‘Proust predicts Messiaen,’’ Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, 15 March 2007,http://www.therestisnoise.com/2007/03/proust_predicts.html.

77 Contrast is a pervasive element of the works featuring birdsong and heterogeneity/lack of transition is a hallmark feature of Messiaen’s style in general. See Jeremy Thurlow,‘‘Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux : A Musical Dumbshow?’’ in Sholl, Messiaen Studies, 119–44.Stockhausen compared Messiaen’s forms to ‘‘a tapeworm that can be cut into several pieceswithout damaging the whole,’’ cited in Stefan Keym, ‘‘‘The Art of the Most IntensiveContrast’: Olivier Messiaen’s Mosaic Form Up to Its Apotheosis in Saint Francois d’Assise,’’ inibid., 190.

78 Peter Hill, ‘‘Piano Music II,’’ in Hill, Messiaen Companion, 331.

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of birdsong as well. Throughout Catalogue d’oiseaux, which depicts birdswithin their natural environments, Messiaen labels the slow-movingmusic that often surrounds the birdsong as parts of the scenery.79 Thesehomophonic progressions usually bear environmental ascriptions thatrefer to still and silent objects in the landscape; the languid chords—which typically articulate an undifferentiated eighth-note pulse—support the sense of inactivity. According to the score, the slow chordsthat open ‘‘Le Traquet stapazin’’ depict vineyards, and a similarly plod-ding progression represents the colors of the sky above the mountainsafter sunset later in the piece. Analogous eighth-note progressions sig-nify the night in the opening of ‘‘L’Alouette lulu,’’ the warmth of thedesert in ‘‘L’Alouette calandrelle,’’ and the rising sun in ‘‘La Rousserolleeffarvatte.’’ Although each progression of this type employs distinct har-monic colors and contours linked to specific environments for particularbirds, they all feature similarly unmarked chorales that establish theinertness of the setting in which the rapid and active birdsong becomessalient.80 Messiaen’s birdsong settings resemble the Debussy examplesnot only in their use of striking rhythmic contrast, but also in significa-tion: the elongated values of the framing progressions are appropriate tothe inactivity of the bird’s surroundings, supplying a still texture oratmosphere into which the birdsong injects activity, life, and motionmuch like a pebble that enlivens the placid surface of a pond.

We can push the correlation between the contrasts created by Mes-siaen’s birdsongs and his concept of the pebble in the water further bynoting that the songs create shocking events within the calm landscape.When Messiaen describes the interpolation of rhythmic activity in De-bussy, he uses the label of the pebble in the water to suggest that the rapidvalues act not only as catalysts of motion, but also as the intrusion of anoutside force. In similar fashion Messiaen’s birdsongs energize the tran-quility of their environment by intensifying its harmonic colors with

79 Messiaen does not limit these labels to the homophonic progressions. His score isfilled with annotations for a range of inaudible objects, actions, and sensations in the bird’senvironment. Gilles Tremblay calls these depictions ‘‘musiques extra-sonores,’’ whichinclude times of day; actions of the birds, waves, and wind; landscape; temperature; andlight. See Gilles Tremblay, ‘‘Oiseau-nature, Messiaen, musique,’’ Cahiers canadiens de musi-que 1 (1970): 27. Theo Hirsbrunner provides a summary of Messiaen’s commentaries forand geography of the thirteen movements of Catalogue d’oiseaux in his ‘‘Magic and Enchant-ment in Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux,’’ in Bruhn, Messiaen’s Language of MysticalLove, 195–212.

80 The simplicity of the representation should not be mistaken for simplicity ofconstruction. Messiaen’s block-chord textures are often composed of complex permuta-tion schemes that cycle through all twelve pitch-classes using a technique that Messiaencalls ‘‘interversion’’ or ‘‘symmetrical permutation.’’ See Cheong Wai-Ling, ‘‘SymmetricalPermutation, the Twelve Tones, and Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux,’’ Perspectives of NewMusic 45, no. 1 (2007): 110–36.


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chromatic resonance tones and agitating the frame of durational stillnessin which they appear.81 Of course, there are many passages from Mes-siaen’s body of work in which the rapid birdsong and slow harmonicbackground overlap not in stunning opposition but rather in structuralsymbiosis: in Chronochromie, for example, the composer uses the bird’spersistent thirty-second-note subdivisions to emphasize the subtle differ-ences between lengths of chords—a technique that Messiaen calls monnay-age (minting).82 In such cases the birdsong highlights the underlyingstructure, marking out its complex durational proportions with rhythmiccoloration. But in contexts where the birdsong is defined by durationalopposition to—rather than rhythmic coordination with—its precedingblock-chord texture, the force of birdsong marks a shift in qualitativetemporality, exemplifying Messiaen’s notion of the shocking event. Thebird produces such an event through its rapid sequence of activity, whichsimultaneously creates the perception of accelerated time and sets thebird apart for memory as an enduring image. The shock effect comes intosharper relief if we also read the bird’s rhythmic intrusions through Mes-siaen’s quantitative interpretation of rhythmic succession in which imagesof past durational units provide the means of structuring the presentpassage of time. According to the logic of Messiaen’s theory, the openingeighth note in ‘‘Le Loriot,’’ for example, establishes a pulse for mentallydividing the succeeding quarter note (ex. 5); but the drastic shift in tempoand the organization of thirty-second notes into groups of three in mea-sure 2 place the bird’s durational pattern well out of proportion with theimplicit division of time in measure 1. Although the oriole’s song does notfeature the irrational values found in Debussy’s contrasts, it destroys theforegoing durational ratios nonetheless, requiring a cognitive reassess-ment of temporal division in retrospect.83 Much like the correspondingmoment of rhythmic contrast in Debussy’s ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’ (mm. 17–18), the birdsong becomes a memorable event through the way theincreased activity shocks the blank context from without and disrupts thecontinuation of durational proportions. This shattered stillness is paradox-ically constructive in Messiaen’s work: the bird’s emergence in the land-scape manifests the ‘‘shock of the positive’’ in nature—much like the

81 Jeremy Thurlow, ‘‘Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux,’’ 126–28.82 Samuel, Olivier Messiaen, Music and Color, 136; Amy Bauer, ‘‘The Impossible Charm

of Messiaen’s Chronochromie,’’ in Sholl, Messiaen Studies, 148; Olivier Messiaen, Traite derythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, vol. 3 (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1996), 84–85.

83 As Cheong notes, irrational values are mostly absent from Messiaen’s maturebirdsongs, which are structured instead by patterns of shorts and longs typical of Greekrhythms. Cheong Wai-Ling, ‘‘Neumes and Greek Rhythms: The Breakthrough in Mes-siaen’s Birdsong,’’ Acta Musicologica 80, no. 1 (2008): 25–26. Messiaen codifies Greekrhythms in Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, vol. 1.

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pebble in the water—by reorienting one’s focus from the negative stimu-lation of the urban setting toward the intensified glory of the countryside.

Messiaen enhances this strategy of agitated stillness when he framesbirdsongs with long durations of actual silence. Robert Sherlaw-Johnsondescribes these silences as sources of tension that augment the startlingeffect of the bird’s interjection by surrounding it with literal emptiness.84

Sherlaw-Johnson’s tense silence nearly echoes Messiaen’s analysis of De-bussy’s elongated durations in act 1, scene 3 of Pelleas (‘‘there is no worsewater than the water that sleeps’’) as if stasis portended the disturbanceto come. Messiaen uses such pregnant silence to intensify a fleetingirruption of birdsong in his own ‘‘La Manne et le pain de vie’’ from Livredu Saint Sacrement, where slow chords and prolonged rests form a peacefuland hushed desert setting.85 A chordal texture gives way to a fermatasilence in measure 7, which prepares the sudden assertion of the morn-ing chat’s brief but rapid song (ex. 6). By using literal silence as a frame,Messiaen exaggerates the polarity between inactivity and shockingaction: the stillness of the desert is emptier and the birdsong punctua-tion more forceful and resonant because of the juxtaposition.

Diane Luchese has noted that ‘‘Messiaen’s slow music often exhibitsa tendency toward deceleration,’’ and she describes the destruction ofpulse through continuous elongation of durational values as ‘‘a sonicmetaphor for the immeasurability of eternity.’’86 Put in terms of the

example 6. ‘‘La Manne et le pain de vie’’ from Livre du Saint Sacrement,mm. 6–9 (Paris: Editions Musicales Alphonse Leduc,1989). Reprinted by permission

84 Sherlaw-Johnson, ‘‘Rhythmic Technique and Symbolism in the Music of OlivierMessiaen,’’ 135.

85 See Messiaen’s commentary quoted in Jon Gillock, Performing Messiaen’s OrganMusic: 66 Masterclasses (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 270.

86 Diane Luchese, ‘‘Olivier Messiaen’s Slow Music: A Reflection of Eternity in Time,’’in Crispin, Olivier Messiaen: The Centenary Papers, 182–83.


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present essay, such deceleration provides Messiaen with the means todivest time of events—those striking articulations of activity describedin volume one of the Traite that would move time forward. The silencesthat sometimes conclude Messiaen’s slow phrases augment the effect oftime held in suspension.87

Messiaen turns this deceleration technique into a foil for the event-fulness of birdsong in section seven of Meditations sur le mystere de la SainteTrinite, where progressive augmentation imbues the silence with thesense of suspended temporality (ex. 7). The hushed, slow opening ofthe movement functions like an ending: the chord lengths increase gen-erally through values of 6, 7, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 13 sixteenth notes, movingprogressively toward a stillness that follows ultimately in the form ofa fermata rest in measure 2. By constructing a progression of growinginactivity, Messiaen renders the birdsong entrance in measure 3 all themore temporally eventful. Not only does it contrast rhythmically anddynamically with the preceding material, but it also emerges out of pro-gressive stasis, which makes the familiar trajectory from stillness to action

example 7. Section 7 of Meditations sur le mystere de la Sainte Trinite, mm.1–9 (Paris: Editions Musicales Alphonse Leduc, 1973).Reprinted by permission

87 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 1:10, 183.

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all the more abrupt and jolting. In volume six Messiaen describes theprogressive augmentation that concludes Debussy’s ‘‘Reflets dans l’eau’’as the widening of the waves toward a still liquid surface;88 but in sectionseven of his Meditations, he uses augmentation as a strategic progressiontoward inactivity that renders the birdsong entrance a potent catalyst forrenewed temporal progress. The birdsong shocks time into forwardmotion (if only temporarily and with punctuations of halting silence),reversing the durational course of the preceding measures.

Sometimes Messiaen draws these local rhythmic distinctions intolarger formal designs that render the bird’s creative freedom salientamid an unchanging landscape. One of Messiaen’s aims in depictingbirds is to allow them to escape from temporal confinement as freeimprovisers in his music.89 In works like ‘‘L’Alouette calandrelle’’ heachieves this goal through a perpetual call and answer between stableritornello and dynamic improvisation: the framing progression of paral-lel harmonies—G � major with added fourth and F � major—recursunchanged throughout the opening of the piece; the bird interjects itssong between appearances of the progression (as in m. 2), but by con-trast with the unchanging chorale, its melody varies from one occurrenceto the next (ex. 8). The high-registered and chromatic birdsong reso-nates out of the stable chorale in a continual state of thematic invention.In this and other excerpts Messiaen adopts a cinematic approach to forminsofar as he constructs sequences of abrupt temporal shifts that facilitatethe emergence of the bird’s expressive freedom over time.

example 8. ‘‘L’Alouette calandrelle’’ from Catalogue d’oiseaux, mm. 1–3(Paris: Editions Musicales Alphonse Leduc, 1964).Reprinted by permission

88 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:21.89 Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Olivier Messiaen: Oiseaux exotiques (Aldershot: Ash-

gate, 2007), 22; Hill, ‘‘Piano Music II,’’ 277.


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Because pieces like ‘‘L’Alouette calandrelle’’ and ‘‘Le Loriot’’ fea-ture framing progressions of exact length, they imply that the bird per-forms its song after regular time intervals: the preparatory homophonyacts as a type of cue for its entrance like an actor being signaled to thestage. Messiaen nuances the temporality of this formal approach whenhe grants the bird autonomy from the length of its introductory materialin ‘‘Le Rouge Gorge (1)’’ from Petites Esquisses d’oiseaux. Rather thansituating the continuously varied birdsongs in relation to a progressionof set duration, he often precedes the melody with homophonic progres-sions of varying lengths composed of a mostly unchanging vocabulary ofchords. As in other birdsong settings, Messiaen creates an oppositionbetween the context of slow, pulsing chords and the disjunctive eventof rapid birdsong, which is perpetually in a state of variation. In this case,however, each introductory progression contains a varying number ofchords, suggesting that the bird enters at different intervals, i.e., when-ever it pleases. Despite changes in the number of chords, the content ofthe progression is mostly the same from iteration to iteration as eachstatement features a set order of harmonies (table 1). The first twoprogressions begin with Messiaen’s invented Chord of Transposed Inver-sions on the Same Bass Note (CTI), each in first inversion and at thesame pitch level, followed by a chord derived from his third mode oflimited transposition and another version of CTI.90 But the second

TABLE 1Summary of tres lent progressions in ‘‘Le Rouge Gorge (1)’’ from

Petites Esquisses d’oiseaux (Paris: Editions Musicales AlphonseLeduc, 1988), 3, 5. Reprinted by permission

m. 1 m. 7 mm. 34–35

1. CTI (C� bass/1st

inversion)2. Mode 33. CTI (B bass/1st

inversion)


inversion)2. Mode 33. CTI (B bass/1st

inversion)4. Mode 35. CTC (E bass)


inversion)2. Mode 3

3. Mode 34. CTC (E �bass)

CTI ¼ Chord of Transposed Inversions on the Same Bass NoteMode 3 ¼ Derived from the Third Mode of Limited TranspositionCTC ¼ Chord of the Total Chromatic

90 I have adopted the abbreviations for Messiaen’s invented chords put forth inCheong Wai-Ling, ‘‘Rediscovering Messiaen’s Invented Chords,’’ Acta Musicologica 75

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progression (m. 7) extends the opening chords with an additional mode3 harmony and an iteration of another invented chord, the Chord of theTotal Chromatic (CTC). The third appearance of a block-chord texture(mm. 34-35) omits the second CTI but keeps the order of the otherchords intact, only altering the concluding CTC by transposing it downa half step. This invariance in chord vocabulary and order between pro-gressions suggests that the environment is hardly changing, but thatlisteners can observe more or less of it depending on the duration—three, five, or four chords respectively—of the bird’s absence. The con-trasts appear less predictably, thus making the bird’s agency more appar-ent and the durational shocks even more potent.

The examples above demonstrate that Messiaen’s conception ofrhythmic contrast for certain works with birdsong parallels and extendsthe hermeneutics of his analyses of Debussy’s music and their underlyingaesthetics of shock. In a way similar to the analyses of volume six, Mes-siaen codes the sudden rhythmic contrasts of many birdsong entrancesas an opposition between contextual stasis and dynamic activity; thecontrast is the site of an event catalyzed by an outside force. He buildshis birdsong strategy on a similar conceptual foundation as the conceptof the pebble in the water not only to set the bird apart as different fromits environment, but also to render the bird’s emergence of expressivefreedom as a temporally shocking occurrence that reorients listeners’perception of durational flow on local and broader formal levels.

Correlations II: Divine Power

The dialogue between Messiaen’s theological perspective on divine poweras a type of shock to rational existence and the concepts underlying theeffect of the pebble in the water can provide a hermeneutic window intoselect rhythmic contrasts in works that explore the subject of divine break-through. In certain pieces with the theme of heavenly presence on earthMessiaen imbues rhythmic events with a logic of difference as shockingdisruption that recalls the pebble in the water. One such contrast occurs in‘‘Regard de l’etoile’’ from Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jesus. The loud andswift thirty-second-note flourish that opens the movement conflictssaliently with the stately pulse that concludes the previous movement ata � dynamic level (ex. 9). The rapid tones emerge abruptly out of a hushed-

(2003): 85–105. For chord tables outlining transpositions and inversions of Mode 3 har-monies, CTI, and CTC, see Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 7:122–23,141–47, 188–90. For additional literature on Messiaen’s invented chords, see Vincent Be-nitez, ‘‘Aspects of Harmony in Messiaen’s Later Music: An Examination of Chords ofTransposed Inversions on the Same Bass Note,’’ Journal of Musicological Research 23, no. 2(2004): 187–226; and Cheong Wai-Ling, ‘‘Composing with Pre-composed Chords in theFinale of Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum,’’ Revue de musicologie 90, no. 1 (2004): 115–32.


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and deliberate context. When the gesture—which Michele Reverdylikens to a ‘‘flashing rocket’’—returns in measure 17, Messiaen usesa whole-note pause in rhythmic momentum to recharge the intensityof the flourish, setting it into relief yet again with the foil of a longduration.91

As in the birdsong works, Messiaen’s commentary within the score of‘‘Regard de l’etoile’’ indicates a correlation between the concept of thepebble in the water and the meaning of his own rhythmic contrast. Themovement meditates on the Star of Bethlehem as a symbol of divinepower breaking into human existence. Messiaen’s subtitle for the workreads: ‘‘Shock of grace . . . the star glistens naively, surmounted bya cross . . . ’’92 In this account a jolting influx of grace marks the appear-ance of the star, which is itself a portent of Christ’s eventual death. Thestar emerges in the heavens as a cosmic disruption. Though he does notname the shock explicitly in the score, we can infer from other labels thatthe rapid flourish plays this role within the opening phrases.93 Messiaenindicates that a string of accented chords in the phrase that follows thegesture depicts bell chimes, and he construes the consequent monoph-ony as the theme of the star and the cross. By referring to a star-crosstheme, he makes a direct connection between the sequence of events inthe score and the program suggested by the movement’s subtitle (table2). Not only does this annotation link the theme with the naively shining

example 9. ‘‘Regard de l’etoile’’ from Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jesus,mm. 1–4 (Paris: Editions Durand, 1947). Reprinted bypermission

91 The term’s French origin is ‘‘fusee eclatante.’’ Michele Reverdy, L’Oeuvre pour pianod’Olivier Messiaen (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1978), 36.

92 ‘‘Choc de la grace . . . l’etoile luit naıvement, surmontee d’une croix . . . ’’93 Siglind Bruhn offers an alternative reading of the reference to ‘‘shock’’ in Mes-

siaen’s subtitle in her Messiaen’s Contemplations of Covenant and Incarnation: Musical Symbols ofFaith in the Two Great Piano Cycles of the 1940s (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 2007), 154.

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star, but it also implies that the ‘‘shock of grace’’ precedes it. Both therapid flourish and the bell chimes are disruptive and startling: whereasthe latter fashions a striking dynamic opposition, the former createsa jolting rhythmic event, whose shockwaves dissipate slowly from thirty-second notes to sixteenth notes and finally half notes offset by an eighthnote. In tandem with the chimes, the strikingly swift rhythm forms a keycomponent of Messiaen’s narrative strategy in this Nativity scene: follow-ing the expressive pattern familiar from Debussy’s pebble in the waterand Messiaen’s birdsongs, lengthy durations establish a calm setting;spiritual power invades and animates the static context with markedlyshort durations.

Messiaen draws a similar correlation between contrast and divineshock in ‘‘Resurrection,’’ a song that describes Christ’s emergence fromdeath to life at the end of Chants de terre et de ciel. At the climax of the songthe text features fragmentary outbursts of words that monumentalize thesupernatural event: ‘‘Fragrance, gate, pearl, unleavened bread ofTruth.’’94 Just before each word Messiaen notates lengthy chords thatset high-ranging arabesques into relief (ex. 10). The fortissimo harmoniesare forceful in themselves, but they also provide durational foils fora sudden blur of sixty-fourth-note 11-tuplets, which destroy the continu-ity of the underlying 4

4 meter with a marked shift to irrational subdivisionsresembling those described in Debussy. Messiaen once compared theexplosive power of the resurrection to a nuclear event: ‘‘At Hiroshimabodies of the victims were found etched on the walls. In the same way theresurrection was like an atomic explosion: Christ rose at a stroke and hisimage was imprinted on the Shroud [of Turin].’’95 Using similar

TABLE 2Sequence of programmatic events in ‘‘Regard de l’etoile’’ from

Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jesus. Reprinted by permission

‘‘Shock of grace . . . ’’‘‘The star glistens naively,surmounted by a cross . . . ’’

(1) Rhythmic contrast (2) Bell chimes:dynamic contrast

Theme of the star andthe cross

94 Translation in Siglind Bruhn, Messiaen’s Explorations of Love and Death: Musico-PoeticSignification in the ‘Tristan Trilogy’ and Three Related Song Cycles (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press,2008), 98.

95 Jean-Christophe Marti, ‘‘Entretien avec Olivier Messiaen,’’ in Saint Francois d’Assise:Messiaen (Paris: l’Avant-Scene Opera, 1992), 11, cited in Robert Fallon, ‘‘Birds, Beasts, andBombs in Messiaen’s Cold War Mass,’’ The Journal of Musicology 26, no. 2 (2009): 180.


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language in Technique de mon langage musical (1944), he describes theoutbursts of rhythmic energy in ‘‘Resurrection’’ as ‘‘blow[s] of instanta-neous light,’’ suggesting that rhythmic contrast enacts a strategy of shockonce again.96 Although shock acquires many stylistic forms in Messiaen’stheological works, he stages it as an explicitly rhythmic event at theclimax of this song. Just as he refers to rhythmic contrast in Debussy as‘‘life and motion [ . . . ] reborn from the liquid mass,’’ so does he enlistthe intrusion of durational opposition and metric discontinuity to signifythe explosive power of Christ’s divine awakening in this piece.97

The logic of the pebble in the water metaphor—itself a variation onMessiaen’s aesthetics of shock—can reproduce itself in diverse rhythmiccontexts of varying intensities, including depictions of both natural andsupernatural events. As the examples above have shown, pieces such as‘‘Le Loriot’’ and ‘‘Regard de l’etoile’’ share semiotic strategies in whichrhythmic contrast creates salient, temporally shocking, and memorabledurational events that signify the emergence of an outside presencewithin a static context. It is hardly surprising then that the two represen-tational strategies—birdsong and divine breakthrough—become con-flated in the opening movement of Trois Petites Liturgies de la presence

example 10. ‘‘Resurrection’’ from Chants de terre et de ciel, m. 20 (Paris:Editions Durand, 1939). Reprinted by permission

96 Olivier Messiaen, The Technique of My Musical Language, trans. John Satterfield(Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1956), 59.

97 Messiaen, Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, 6:187.

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divine in which a female chorus sings a prayer to the ‘‘God present withinus.’’ Messiaen makes no distinction between the natural and the super-natural in his theology: he views birdsongs as hymns, which respond toand reflect the divine creator.98 In Trois Petites Liturgies birdsong plays

example 11. ‘‘Antienne de la conversation interieure’’ from Trois PetitesLiturgies de la presence divine, mm. 1–3 (Paris: EditionsDurand, 1952). Reprinted by permission

98 Bruhn, Messiaen’s Contemplations of Covenant and Incarnation, 65, 175.


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a dual symbolic role, acting as both a sign of nature and of divine pres-ence, and Messiaen uses rhythmic contrast between rapid birdsong andthe stillness of prayer to signify the appearance of heavenly power. At thebeginning of the movement the vocalists articulate a desire for God’spresence among and within humanity; Messiaen sets this prayer in slow,chordal homophony with the strings undergirding the voices (ex. 11).To create an opposition between earth and heaven—between prayer andanswer—he builds a dialectical structure in which phrases of rapid bird-song overlap with the final elongated note of each vocal phrase. Theantecedent homophony sets in relief the consequent birdsong, whichacts as a stimulus from nature embodying the spiritual presence re-quested by the text.

Just as Messiaen uses rhythmic contrast to render many of his birdsa source of shocking stimulation within still surroundings, he taps theexpressive potential of opposing durations to mark the shock of heavenlyactivity on earth at strategic moments in select Gospel-oriented works.The aesthetics of shock undergird these momentary contrasts and unitethem with other domains of meaning constructed in Messiaen’s music,analyses, and aesthetics.

Conclusions

The correlations between Messiaen’s music and his interpretations of thepebble in the water concept are manifold, connecting simultaneously onstylistic, expressive, and aesthetic levels. Messiaen’s oeuvre contains stra-tegic rhythmic contrasts that resemble intensified versions of those high-lighted within his analyses of Debussy’s music. His interpretation ofDebussy may employ imagery distinct from the semiotic domainsexplored in his own works, but the expressive qualities that he ascribesto Debussy’s rhythms in volume six of his Traite are essential compo-nents of his own representational strategies. In both analysis and com-position, rhythmic contrast forms a shocking temporal event in whichan external stimulus initiates an accelerated temporality that contrastssharply with the preceding uneventful stillness. The modernist dis-course of shock permeates Messiaen’s aesthetics, analysis, and compo-sition, but in a positive form as he configures shock for depictions ofnatural and supernatural phenomena.

It would be tempting to account for the points of contact betweenanalysis and composition via a linear model of influence that wouldconstrue Messiaen’s uses of rhythmic contrast as direct and exagger-ated imitations of Debussy’s technique; but to define the exchange aslinear is to overlook how Messiaen’s analyses and works both involveacts of interpretation. The idea of the pebble in the water is not an

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objective classification of Debussy’s rhythms, but rather Messiaen’s wayof conceptualizing them as shocking events. Likewise, he imbues hisown rhythmic contrasts with personal assumptions about nature anddivine breakthrough, which run deeper than durational oppositionitself through his conceptions of theology and aesthetics. These actsof descriptive and creative interpretation are not necessarily boundtogether in a causal relationship but rather by their common herme-neutic template. Messiaen makes analytical observations about Debussyand constructs certain types of rhythmic contrast through correspond-ing perspectives that allow him to find and activate similar meanings indiverse interpretative contexts.

ABSTRACT

In volume six of Traite de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie, OlivierMessiaen uses the phrase ‘‘the pebble in the water’’ to identify a class ofespecially stark rhythmic contrasts in Debussy’s music that feature longdurations interrupted by rapid rhythms. He invests these contrasts withan expressive logic built around the concept of shock—that is, the sud-den stimulation of a static context by an outside presence. Messiaenunites various images—both natural and psychological—around thisexpressive pattern via analogy, suggesting that its essence is transferrablewithin a network of associated metaphors. Although for the most part involume six Messiaen refrains from linking interpretations of Debussywith his own music, many of his rhythmic contrasts manifest the sameexpressive logic that he ascribes to Debussy’s music, particularly dura-tional events that signify the interjection of birdsong within sereneenvironments and that signal the striking appearance of divine power onearth. In addition to stylistic and semiotic correlations, the logic of shocktheorized for the pebble in the water recurs more abstractly in Messiaen’sidiomatic views on musical experience and spiritual encounter. Hisinterpretation of rhythmic contrast bears the marks of his more generalaesthetics of shock, which in turn can be read as a reorientation ofa broader modernist hermeneutic.

Keywords: birdsong, Debussy, modernism, rhythmic contrast, shock


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