Uploaded July 2017 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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-Composer: Olivier-Eugène-Prosper-Charles Messiaen (10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992)
-Piano: Roger Muraro

Prélude pour piano [Prelude for Piano], writen in 1964

Olivier Messiaen, one of the best-known French composers of the twentieth century, worked for much of his life as an organist. He was also a fine pianist, and he wrote several major works for that instrument as well as featuring it in many of his orchestral compositions. After his death in 1992, his widow, Yvonne Loriod, also a fine pianist, discovered a few unpublished manuscripts amongst Messiaen's papers. One of these was a short Prelude for piano, dating from 1964. By this point in his career, Messiaen had achieved what could be termed his mature style, including all the elements that would remain part of his music throughout the rest of his life. He had already composed most of his solo piano music by then: Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus in 1944 (religious theme, rich modal harmonies, chant-inspired melodies, distinctive virtuosity); Quatre Études de Rythme in 1949 - 1950 (serial techniques, very influential on younger composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen); and Catalogue d'Oiseaux in 1956 - 1958 (use of birdsong as primary determinant of melody, texture, and form).
While this unpublished prelude from 1964 is relatively minor, at some two and a half minutes in duration, it actually incorporates all of the features Messiaen had introduced in his more important piano works of the previous two decades. The piece opens with a stately, joyous theme, harmonized with open intervals and major triads. Low pedal points add a dissonant note, though, and soon flurries of birdsong break out of the texture. A rootless, serial passage is sounded in plain quarter notes, before the birdsong returns and swoops down to the low register. The second statement of the material includes additional elements such as high-register flutters and chordal-rhythmic elements such as a short-short-long progression. A cadential major triad closes the prelude, ornamented with one last flutter of birdcall.
[allmusic.com]