"Poèmes pour Mi"

I want to like this. I should like this. I'm not adverse to a bit of 20th century dissonance - I'd even go as far to say that I like it. I love French. The autobiographical love story is beautiful. I love Renée Fleming, whom I first heard singing these poems which for which Olivier Messian set his own text. So why aren't I moved by this celebration of the spirituality of love?

I think, from writing that little rant about my narrow-mindedness, I've stumbled across my problem...

I imagined that listening to the Poèmes would be a similar experience to hearing Richard Strauss' Vier Lezte Lieder; being flooded with emotion and beauty from the very first note. But this didn't happen to me with the Poemes.

This Strauss/Messiaen comparison may be an odd one, but the music stereotype side of my brain wants to swap the stormy dissonance of the Poemes, and instead give them the glorious gentleness of Strauss' (also autobiographical) masterpiece, which convey love and nostalgia so perfectly.

As well as this gentle portrayal of love, (as in countless lied, especially Schubert's "Du bist die Ruh") we have become accustomed to Puccini-esque soaring strings as a musical symbol too; we hear it and straight away we go 'AH...LOVE', just like we hear a minor key and think 'AH...SAD'. Dissonance just doesn't do love...right?

But maybe it does; it's certainly growing on me! Having listened to it non-stop for about an hour, I've realised that what I first thought was dissonance, has now sort of grown into a polymodality...it's not as chromatic based as I thought it was - it simply keeps on changing. This is quite clever really, because if you look closely at the text, it’s also focused around change; going from marriage preparation to a spiritual union.

I always struggle with identifying time signatures - I don't know why, it's just always been a bit of a tough gig for me. So I thought it was just me being stupid when I just couldn't stick to a set time signature - but apparently it seems that Messiaen couldn't either; the original Piano composition didn't have one at all. This clearly suits, and helps to paint, the free spirituality of the text - the soloist liberated to float the melodic line to her heart's content - as well as have a bit of fun with those melismas!

For me, it's the text that makes this, with truly haunting words; Olivier was quite the poet! In this video clip, Renée Fleming describes the poetry with much more poise and grace than I could possibly attempt...

Despite my initial negativity, this poem cycle is far, far from a letdown - and I have a favourite poem :) "Printemps Enchaine". It just seems it's going to take a bit of work - and more than one listen - to hear this cycle's full beauty. I'd love to be able to sing this at some point - it seems like a piece you need to dive into and sing before you really get to know, and understand, exactly what it's saying.

Tomorrow: Fauré's "Cantique de Jean Racine"