Les Mages (La Nativité du Seigneur)

Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. One of the major composers of the 20th century, he was also an outstanding teacher of composition and musical analysis.

In his nine-movement depiction of the birth of Christ, La Nativité du Seigneur, Messiaen produced one of the 20th century’s great organ works.

La Nativité du Seigneur is also a work full of dense theology and includes a sombre reflection on Christ’s suffering. La Nativité is no be-tinselled festive offering in the spirit of the 18th-century French organ Noëls. It is subtitled ‘Nine meditations’ and, like J.S. Bach who knew a thing or two about embedding coded messages in his music, Messiaen has a complex cosmology up his sleeve as he unwraps a thoroughgoing interpretation of the mysteries of the Incarnation.

In his Technique of my Musical Language published in 1944, Messiaen declared La Nativité to be the first work to enshrine the essential characteristics of that language – in a sense, his Op. 1. But heads had already been turned by the orchestral Les Offrandes oubliées and by L’Ascension, a work for orchestra which he subsequently repurposed for the organ loft

He had recently been appointed ‘titulaire’ organist to Paris’s Église de la Sainte-Trinité, a singular feather in the 22 year-old’s cap, and he would continue to preside over its famous Cavaillé-Coll instrument until his death some six decades later. Re-worked, L’Ascension stimulated a stream of major organ works, of which La Nativité du Seigneur was the next installment.

Messiaen describes ‘Les Mages’ (The Magi) as a ‘night piece illuminated by grace’.

The notes above are from the writing of Paul Riley.

Two photos of Messiaen, and one of the Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris are attached below.