The role of the Conservatoire de Paris in Messiaen's development as a composer
Le rôle du Conservatoire dans la carrière de Messiaen
Résumé
In 1919, when he was 11 years old, Olivier Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatory. Later, he was appointed professor of harmony on March 25, 1941, in the same Conservatoire de Paris. This position was vacant since the ousting of André Bloch. The latter was removed from his post in December 1940 because he was Jewish. Later, Messiaen might have tried to hide what he did during the year 1941, which was for him a troubled page of history. He was later professor of analysis and composition until his retirement in 1978. He spent half a century (more than two thirds of his life) at the Conservatoire, both as a student and a teacher. As a matter of fact, this institution, by its esprit de corps, probably galvanized the career of the composer, considered since, according to many sources, one of the most important musicians of the second twentieth century. It was also through the mediation work of Yvonne Loriod, met at the Conservatoire, who will premiere almost all future works for piano; of Boulez, the powerful mediator, his pupil in class of harmony at the Conservatoire; of Antoine Goléa, musicologist and supporter of his modernist aesthetics. There is undoubtedly a secret within the French music community: "The Conservatoire" (of Paris) is a powerful world that builds the careers of its inductees, students and/or teachers. Even before 1945 it could be presumed from reading certain letters that the Conservatoire had begun its mediation work to launch Messiaen's development as a composer.
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