Olivier Messiaen

Michael Kieran Harvey Collection cOlaitvialer Moessiguaene d’oiseaux Australian Peter Cundall premiere live narrates performance Messiaen’s texts by Michael that accompany Kieran Harvey each tableau, of the complete exploring the Catalogue of Birds environment and sounds of 13 bird species CD-A “… Catalogue d’oiseaux is a work of prodigious dimensions, a phantasmagoria of 1 Peter Cundall introduction / part 1 2’53” sounds and forms, some airy and mysterious, others monumental, incandescent 2 NarrationMD 3272 and motifs 4’13” with emotion, framed by the composer to reveal with crystalline acuity the 3 I. The Alpine Chough 7’21” 4 Narration and motifs 3’08” birdsong he recorded for years and the creatures’ characters and habitats. … The 5 II. The Golden Oriole 7’33” narrator, ABC gardening expert Peter Cundall, was, like Messiaen, a naturalist, 6 Narration and motifs 3’24” bird-lover and prisoner of war in the 1940s. The empathic Harvey-Cundall 7 III. The Blue Rock Thrush 13’02” 8 Narration and motifs 6’54” partnership, and its championing of nature, was generous and sincere.” 9 IV. The Black-eared Wheatear 14’21” Lee Christofis, The Australian q0 Narration and motifs 2’00” qa V.x The Tawny Owl 5’48” u This recording of the performance by Michael Kieran Harvey with narration by e a u Peter Cundall of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux was presented by Ten Days on the CD-Be s g 1 Peteri Cundall introduction / part 2 1’52” Island over the 2nd and 3rd of April 2005 at Morrilla in Tasmania. The event was o o 2 Narration’ and motifs 1’42” sponsored by Hydro Tasmania. For further details about Ten days on the Island al d 3 t VI. The Woodlark 7’12” a visit their web site at tendays.org.au 4 Narration and motifs 10’57” c 5 VII. The Reed Warbler 27’54” 6 Narration and motifs 2’22” 7 VIII. The Short-toed Lark 5’22” 8 Narration and motifs 5’57” 9 IX. Cetti’s Warbler 10’33” CD-C 1 Peter Cundall introduction / part 3 0’27” 2 Narration and motifs 5’16” 3 X. The Rock Thrush 16’33” 4 Narration and motifs 3’26” 5 XI. The Buzzard 9’43” 6 Narration and motifs 3’04” 7 XII. The Black Wheatear 8’01” 8 Narration and motifs 4’43” 9 XIII. The Curlew 12’14” TOTAL PLAYING TIME 3 HOURS 30 MINUTES MD 3272 Released 2005 by Move Records … for more information on recordings by Michael Kieran Harvey, move.com.au gentle lament for the destruction of habitat for instance, La Rousserole Effarvette, became clear to me and gave the immense describes a complete 27 hours in just half effort of performing it, and listening to it, an hour. Like a fractal equation, even one powerful meaning. It seems we cannot chord of Messiaen presages a cosmos change the course of global desertification of creation. It is the complete antithesis because we cannot control ourselves, but of the ‘easy listening’ trend in much some gifted individuals such as Olivier contemporary music, the outcome of the Messiaen can capture the disappearing application of blinkered market strategies species as music, which may live on a little to an art form. Be courageous and open, longer. and your patience will be rewarded, just Messiaen to me represents a lynchpin as the heroic ornithologist must wait of the history of music, a direct link to seemingly eons for the satisfaction of one the great genius and breadth of spirit of glimpse, one snippet of glorious melody. Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt. Recently it was proved scientifically through tracking Michael Kieran Harvey mitochondrial DNA that 45 million years ago the ancestor of all the songbirds in the world migrated from Gondwana and It was the brilliant Barrie Kosky who first spawned the 4600 species of songbirds Each piece in the put the idea of performing the entire in the world – Australia holds special Catalogue d’oiseaux in my head in the mid significance as the crucible of the world’s Catalogue d’oiseaux 90s, but at the time the prospect scared the songbirds, and one could extrapolate, the cycle follows a daylights out of me – how could anyone birth of music itself. Written at the same perform these seven volumes at once, time as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, the descriptive program, and more to the point why? Why subject harrowing vision of a world made silent set out in prose by by human’s war on nature, the Catalogue an Australian audience and oneself to the Olivier Messiaen as a most notoriously difficult, monumental and d’oiseaux seems to be particularly pertinent uncompromising French piano cycle ever to us now – a period of accelerating preface to the score. written simply for the sake of a premiere? species extinctions – as a symbol of the The commentary is I had first visited Tasmania in the late diversity of life and a celebration of the 1980s. After moving to Tasmania in 2003 real, the original musical virtuosos. peppered with such and seeing first hand the effects of greed The types of music in the Catalogue gifts to the performer and stupidity on one of the most pristine are rarely heard these days, and are just environments in the world (as well as as rare as the birdsongs portrayed. They as ‘ecstatic’, ‘explodes’, being almost run off the road several times require different ways of listening: different ‘mysterious’ and by convoys of logging trucks), the idea concepts of time, the ‘universe in a of performing this cycle as a personal, nutshell’ as it were. The central movement ‘jubilant’. A1 Peter Cundall introduction A4 Narration A5 II. Le Loriot / The Golden BOOK ONE Oriole (Oriolus oriolus) A2 Narration The end of June. Branderaie de Gardépée A3 I. Le chocard des Alpes (Charente), around 5.30 in the morning; / The Alpine Chough (Coracia Orgeval, around 6 o’clock: Les Maremberts graculus) (Loir et Cher) in midday sunlight. The Golden Oriole, yellowgold with black Strophe. The Alps of the Dauphiny, wings, twitters among the oak trees. Its l’Oisans: the ascent towards the Meidje and song, flowing, golden, like the laughter its three glaciers. of an exotic prince, evokes Africa or Asia, First couplet. Near the Chancel refuge the ALPINE CHOUGH or some unknown world – filled with a lake of Puy-Vacher, marvellous landscape rainbow light, the smiles of Leonardo da of summits, chasms and precipices. Vinci. In the woods and gardens, other An Alpine Chough, separated from its birds: the rapid, decisive stanza of the flock, calls as it crosses the precipice. Wren, the secretive caress of the Robin, Gliding, silent and majestic, the Golden the brio of the Blackbird, the long-short- Eagle, borne on currents of air. Raucous, long metre of the Black-throated Redstart, ferocious cawings and snarlings of the the ritual incantations of the Song Thrush. Raven, lord of the high peaks. Varied For a long while, tirelessly, the Garden cries of the Choughs, with their acrobatic Warblers pour forth their sweet virtuosity. flight (gliding, swooping, looping the The Chiffchaff adds its skipping droplets of loop) above the abyss. Antistrophe. Before water. Drowsy recollection of gold, of the St-Christophe-en-Oisans, the rocks of rainbow the sun seemingly draws its light St-Christophe: a jumble of fallen slabs, from the golden rays of the Oriole’s song boulders as if from Dante, heaped up by … the giants of the Mountain. Second couplet. An Alpine Chough surveys the landscape, hovering over the cliffs. The same calls and flights as in the first couplet. Epode. Les Ecrins: the amphitheatre of Bonne-Pierre, with its GOLDEN ORIOLE huge rocks lined up like giant phantoms … or like the towers of a supernatural fortress! A6 Narration Haughty, aristocratic, he struts on the A7 III. Le Merle bleu / The stony ground in his finery of orange silk Blue Rock Thrush (Monticola and black velvet - an inverted ‘T’ dividing solitarius) the white of his tail, a mask of deep black SHORT-TOED LARK covering his brow, cheeks and throat. A The month of June. Roussillon, the Spanish Grandee, one might say, on his Vermilion Coast. Near Banyuls: Cap way to a masked ball. His refrain is rapid, l’Abeille, Cap Rederis. Cliffs overhang the curt, abrupt. Nearby, among the vines, sea (Prussian-blue, sapphire-blue). Cries an Ortolan Bunting casts forth ecstatically of Swifts; splashing water. The headlands its flute-toned repeated notes, with their stretch into theme-like crocodiles. Echoing mournful cadence. This is the ‘garrigue’: in a rocky cleft, the Blue Rock Thrush a wilderness filled with low prickly plants sings. Its blue is in contrast to the sea: (gorse, rosemary, rock-rose, kermes oaks) purple-blue, slate, satin, blue-black. Almost from whence comes the exquisite song of oriental, recalling music of Bali, its song BLUE ROCK THRUSH an unseen Spectacled Warbler. Flying high merges with the sound of the waves. Also and far out over the sea, the Herring Gulls heard is the Thekla Lark which flutters in can be heard: their cruel screeching, their the sky above the vines and wild rosemary. dry, percussive sniggering. A trio of Ravens Herring Gulls scream far out to sea. The flies above the rocky cliffs with low, cliffs are awesome. Arriving at their feet, powerful cawings. A little Goldfinch sets its the water breathes its last – a memory tiny bells tinkling. of the Blue Rock Thrush (‘like a choir of Five o’clock in the morning. The red- women’s voices in the distance …’).

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