Art review

Art Review

Introduction

The article is the review of the works of French Composer “Oliver Messiaen”. Messian is the major personality of 20th century. These compilations of scholarly essays provide new perspectives of culture, history, biography and analysis on the musical oeuvre of Messian from the year 1941-1992. These scholarly essays have been written by Robert Sholl. This article was published in the year 2007 by Cambridge University Press (Sholl, 2007).

Robert Sholl works as a reader at Thames University. Moreover, he is a lecturer at London King's College. Robert Sholl has the membership of “research project of Theology through Art” at St. Andrews and Cambridge University. He is a co-founding editor of Olivermessiaen.net. Moreover he works as an organist and he has provided recitals at many venues of Europe. Furthermore, he has performed most of organ music of Oliver Messiaen. In this volume of his book, he has provided fascinating snapshots of Life of Messiaen in France. In this paper we will review the work of Robert Sholl on “Messiaen Studies” with respect to the content and description (Sholl, 2007). Moreover this paper will discuss the detailed analysis of the significant factors of compositions of Oliver Messiaen.

Discussion

About the Book

The research of Robert evaluates the iconographical and aesthetic inspirations behind the Music of Messiaen and the approach in which the modern spiritual music gets engaged with other discourses. This book is basically based on the Surrealist poetics of song cycle Harawi of Messiaen. Moreover this book provides a chapter on iconoclastic path of Messiaen to ultramodern tradition that he left for his students. Moreover, in this book, author provides a detailed discussion on the position of music of Messiaen in 20th century together with comprehensive analysis of particular works, which include his operas. This book is the reflection of fresh insight on the style, origins and poetic of Music of Messiaen and thus this book is an inspiration and base for upcoming scholars. This book reflects and expands upon the wide range of interdisciplinary interest of Messiaen. This book is interesting for scholars and students of arts, theology and literature (Sholl, 2007).

Contents

In part 1, the author introduces Messiaen the theologian and the religious content in the personal library of Messiaen. Moreover the book provides details of Messiaen as a preacher and evangelist in the viewpoint of modernism of Europe. In part 2, the author provides information on the Messiaen's Saintly, Sander van Maas together with the details of relationship of Messiaen with theologians like Cadinal Jean Marie Lustiger. It provides the viewpoints of two theologians regarding the liturgical reforms as per the second Vatican council. In addition, it provides the details of Karin Heller and Messiaen association with neo-Thomism and musical circles of Jacques Maritain (Sholl, 2007).

Furthermore, in part 3, the book provides the details of poets, Theological themes and Messiaen as the guidance to the Gothic spirituality of Messiaen. Moreover, the books talks about the research on the still point of turning world in the war quartets of Oliver Messiaen and ...