French Flute Music between 1935 and 1955: Varèse, Messiaen and Jolivet

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French Flute Music between 1935 and 1955: Varèse, Messiaen and Jolivet


Table of Contents

Page

Acknowledgements                                                                        3

Preface                                                                                4

Chapter One:

Traditions of the solo flute                                                                5

Chapter Two:

The Impact of French and other Predecessors: Debussy and Stravinsky        10

        Varèse                                                                                10

        Messiaen                                                                        12

        Jolivet                                                                                15

Chapter Three:

Beyond Music                                                                        17

        Varèse                                                                                17

        Messiaen                                                                        19

        Jolivet                                                                                22

Conclusions                                                                                28

Bibliography                                                                                30


Acknowledgements

        This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of lecturers at Keele University and without the continuing support of my family and boyfriend. Thanks, first of all, are due to Barbara Kelly and Rajmil Fischman in the music department of Keele, both of whom guided me and kept me on track and also Deborah Mawer of Lancaster University who was a great pillar of strength when it came to Jolivet. Secondly, a very special thanks to my parents and Phil, without whom I would have gone quietly insane and given up a long time ago. Thanks also to my fellow students who read several drafts and gave me advice whilst writing their own dissertations.

Thank you everyone.


Preface

        This study originated in my interest from the perception of twentieth century music, particularly the flute music of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) and Andrè Jolivet (1905-1974). I imagined that the studies already done on these composers would provide me with an analytical and historical view of their works and lives. Early in my study it became apparent that very little study had been completed on Andrè Jolivet in general. There are also only small amounts written on the individual works that I have chosen to study by the selected composers. The main works that I am concentrating on are Density 21.5 by Debussy, Le merle noir by Messiaen and Jolivet’s Cinq Incantations. When reading this thesis it must be remember that, although Varèse was born in France, he emigrated to America in 1915 when he was thirty-two and Density 21.5 was not written till 1936 so can be classed as part American. Le merle noir by Messiaen is also written for flute and piano whereas the other works are for flute alone.

        This thesis will consist of three parts, or approaches to the flute music of Messiaen, Varèse and Jolivet. The first part considers a more general view of the solo flute and how, over time, the music written for flute has moved away from the orchestra and become more experimental, not only for the performer but also the listener. I will move through centuries and look at how different composers had various approaches and opinions of the flute. The second part of this thesis looks at Stravinsky and Debussy as the main influences for the writings of Messiaen, Varèse and Jolivet. It will look at the individual works that I am studying and try to establish what, if anything, they have in common. The last part is an analysis of Varèse’s Density 21.5, Messiaen’s Le merle noir and Jolivet’s Cinq Incantations. In conclusion to this section I will look at comparisons that these pieces have before writing a full conclusion of this thesis.

The Traditions of the Solo Flute in France

        France set the cultural fashions for the rest of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries so that woodwind, and increasingly flute, music would be appreciated at the French court. In turn this had important consequences for countries and musicians all over Europe and indeed the rest of the world. Mainly the composer Lully started this new French innovation in 1678 when he scored the flute into his ballet Le triomphe de l’Amour although developments out of the eyes of the public had been going on for centuries before this major emergence into the public. Almost a century after Lully’s composition, Sir John Hawkins wrote ‘The German or transverse flute still retains some degree of estimation among gentlemen whose ears are not nice enough to inform them that it is never in tune’. Moving briefly away from France, at the same time as this statement was released, Mozart was at the peak of his composition. Mozart backs up the statement by Hawkins as he is reputed to have disliked the flute, the main reason being for its unreliability of its intonation, yet he still wrote on of his most famous operas based on the flute. The Magic Flute therefore tells us that maybe it was not the instrument he was displeased with but the unreliability of the players. Other music that Mozart wrote for the flute included two Concertos, four quartets with Strings and a Concerto for flute and Harp. ‘Mozart’s music seems intended to display the powers and personality of the instrument itself, its agility, its ability to combine high speed with spinning out legato melodies’. All this fantastic sounding flute music from a composer who supposedly disliked the flute.

Haydn was another composer that was not keen on using the flute in his symphonies. Out of forty-four symphonies during the period 1762 - 1774 only seven of them had a flute scored. After 1780 all of Haydn’s remaining symphonies has a least one flute scored and in all of these works the music for the flute is expressive. In contrast to both Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven regarded the flute in an orchestra as indispensable. All of his symphonies had two flutes scored and in his fifth, sixth and ninth Beethoven included an extra piccolo. This is a tradition that has continued and most orchestras, even in the present day, generally use two flutes and a piccolo.

 

Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin was another influential French flautist and a common and widely accepted presumption is that Bach’s famous A minor Partita for unaccompanied flute was commissioned especially for him. As well as this famous Partita Bach, a notable pioneer, gave us the B minor Suite for flute and strings and several flute sonatas with continuo. Infact the B minor suite is so taxing that even for a modern player with a modern flute it remains difficult. France not only gave rise to technical innovations but also to flute virtuosi and a much wider repertoire for the flute. Better flutes led to better players, whose performance encouraged composers to write more advanced and technical pieces. The improving performance of the professional flute players prompted composers to look into something they had previously not done – the flute. They began to write for the flute as a solo instrument and as an orchestral instrument with more solos in the ensemble.

If nineteenth century composers made little use of the flute as a soloist or in chamber music, it was not so much due to their lack of interest as to the predominance of the piano and the string quartet in chamber music, and to the considerable development of the orchestra in both the symphonic and the operatic fields. The profound changes that came about in the evolution of the tonal system, (that was gradually being regarded as outdated) led composers to favour more restricted forces, revising those of traditional chamber music in favour of more original ensembles, as in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp, to mention only the two most famous examples. In this context one is struck by the special fondness modern French composers have for the flute, which has largely contributed to the exploration of new combinations and to a reconsideration of the approach to the instrument, as is borne out by various flute recitals.

‘The flute is another very important instrument in primitive cultures. When the earliest flutes perhaps hollow bones, or shells, were animated by human breath the phenomenon was thought to be magical. These natural materials were later fashioned into more elaborate flutes which were used for magic and ritual purposes.’ This statement could offer an explanation as to why Jolivet, Messiaen and Varèse have found the flute quite a prominent instrument in their music. In the late 1800s more elaborate scores were being written for the flute and these included extended techniques for a flute player such as double and flutter tonguing and this helped to expand the flute’s vocabulary. Shortly after this period the flute repertoire was introduced to two of the most evocative pieces ever written for the flute, both by Claude Debussy: Syrinx and L’Apres-midi d’un faune. Syrinx is the main piece that all flute players learn to play, it is Debussy’s one and only flute solo piece. Debussy got his inspiration from a Greek fable that shows the gods misbehaving in tiresomely human fashion. One of the inceptive works of this new approach, Edgar Varèse’s Density 21.5, was composed in 1936 and dedicated to Georges Barrère for the inauguration of his platinum flute. In his constant determination to distance himself from traditional genres, Varèse refers to the specific gravity, or density, of the metal in the title of the work, a short but dense piece in which he exploits the unusual characteristic of the flute: writing a fortissimo in the bottom and middle registers which are naturally less favoured than the treble, and integrating percussive effects by means of the sound of the keys at the beginning of the middle section of the piece. These are typical of the composer’s attempt to abolish the frontiers between sound and noise for the sake of what he called ‘organised sounds’. In the same way his particular treatment of the flute, from the use of pivotal notes around which the line progressively unfurls from the bass to the treble at the beginning, to the wide leaps in contrasting intensities, almost simulating several instruments, is part of a spatial concept peculiar to Varèse.

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Written in the same year as Density 21.5, the Cinq Incantations by André Jolivet belong to the ‘magic and incantatory’ spirit of music which also relates to Jolivet’s Mana (1935) and the Danses rituelles pour piano (1939). Attracted by certain extra-European instruments like the ney, a flute of Arab or Turkish origin, Jolivet emphasized the ritualistic aspect of the pieces whose titles bear out the ‘primitive expression of human groupings’ that fascinated the composer at the time. Where Varèse saw the opportunity for seeking new ways of playing, Jolivet, on the contrary, stresses the fluidity of the discourse of which certain sections ...

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