Emotional Landscapes
Summary
Joy is not often an emotion associated with the 20th-century musical avant-garde, which tended to dwell on the horror and existential absurdities of the human condition, but in Messiaen, who had faith, it is a particular feature.
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Extract
Emotional Landscapes
O fall the mad avant-garde composers of the 20th century, Olivier Messiaen was surely the maddest. The organist at a large church in Paris for nearly 60 years, he interrupted his duties only for the second World War. As an army medic, he was captured and imprisoned in Silesia, where h...
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