2 - Messiaen’s Class and New Music in Late 1960s Paris (1967–1970)

Summary

This chapter describes new music in Paris in the late 1960s, the period when the young spectral composers were students at the Paris Conservatoire. It opens with an account of Messiaen’s composition class and how elements such as neumes and Messiaen’s analyses of Debussy and Ravel informed Grisey’s, Murail’s, and Levinas’s emerging musical sensibilities. After giving a brief biographical account of those latter composers and Roger Tessier, the chapter touches on serialism’s changing status at a time when it had begun to be taught at the Paris Conservatoire; the effect of May ’68 on the Conservatoire’s pedagogy and on musical mores more generally among young composers; Fifth Republic France’s increased funding for new music festivals in regional cities such as Royan; Boulez and Xenakis’s profiles as the two most influential composers in France; and collectives, aleatoricism, and music theatre in post-1968 composition. The chapter closes with an account of Grisey’s early student works, in particular their creative adaptation of Messiaen’s personnages sonores concept towards the construction of audibly distinct musical figures, which would become a key element in Grisey’s musical style.