Olivier Messiaen on Daniel-Lesur

On 14 March 1990, Olivier Messiaen gave a speech at the Institut de France in Paris, when he presented Daniel-Lesur with the award of Grand Officier of the Légion d’Honneur. It is a charming and heartfelt tribute from one old friend to another, with Messiaen using the ‘tu’ form of address throughout. Nigel Simeone’s translation has been made from a typescript – apparently unpublished – in Messiaen’s private archives, and the text is reproduced here by very kind permission of Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen.

Cher Ami, Cher Daniel,

Here we are together again.

Already, our birthdays are very close.

We were both born in 1908: you on 19 November, me on 10 December. We first met at the Conservatoire de Paris, in Jean Gallon’s harmony class. We laughed together and cried together, following the ups and downs of our exercises on given melodies and bass lines, sometimes successful (with compliments from the professor), sometimes less good (with reproaches from him). On Jean Gallon’s advice, we worked together in a ‘mise-en-loge’ [under exam conditions]: that is to say we shut ourselves away, with a bass and a melody to harmonise, just like on the day of the real test. Your dear mother, Alice Lesur, herself a composer, lent us her salon for this hard labour. Our maître Jean Gallon also brought together four or five pupils for a ‘mise-en-loge’ at his house, and of course we took part in all of them!

Then, you worked at the organ and improvisation with Charles Tournemire, while I carried on at the Conservatoire with Marcel Dupré for the organ and Paul Dukas for composition. And we met again at the organ of Sainte-Clotilde, pulling out stops for Charles Tournemire, at one of the concerts devoted to his L’Orgue Mystique – one of us on the right, the other on the left of the console, and our registrations were done very conscientiously.

Then you did me the honour of playing my music, taking part in 1935 [recte 27 February 1936] in the first performance of my Nativité du Seigneur for organ, a premiere entrusted to three organists: you played the first three pieces, Jean Langlais the next three, and Jean-Jacques Grunenwald the last three. In 1936 the group Jeune France was founded: Yves Baudrier, André Jolivet, Daniel-Lesur and Olivier Messiaen.

We were four friends, united only by our love of music, since our taste and our aesthetic outlook were completely different. An inaugural concert, devoted to works for symphony orchestra by the four composers, was given in Paris at the Salle Gaveau on 4 June 1936, conducted by Roger Désormière.1939: the war! Everything stopped. 1941: I came back from captivity in Germany, and I found you demobilised, working for the Radio, where you were soon in charge of musical presentation. In 1947, you read Andrea del Sarto by Alfred de Musset and wrote incidental music for it. In 1949 it was Andrea del Sarto once again, this time a symphonic poem and later, in 1969, it became an opera.

In the meantime, you wrote a magnificent choral work, Le Cantique des Cantiques, based on the biblical poem, first performed in Bordeaux in 1953 by the Ensemble Polyphonique de Paris conducted by Marcel Couraud. Between 1949 and 1964, you harmonised a large number of French folk songs for mixed chorus: Chansons de calendrier, Chansons de métier, Chansons de marins, songs from Brittany, Savoy, Languedoc and many others. You arranged these songs, typical of the French regions, with fresh and youthful chords which never disturb the spontaneity of the melodic line.

The incidental music and symphonic poem on Andrea del Sarto by Alfred de Musset gave birth to a big opera, very well-written for the voices and very dramatic, which was first performed at the Opéra de Marseille on 24 January 1969, conducted by Serge Baudo, with Gabriel Bacquier in the title role, Andrée Esposito as Lucrèce and André Turp as Cordiani.

From 1957 you were director of the Schola Cantorum, where you taught counterpoint, fugue and composition.

In 1971, in the interim before Rolf Liebermann’s arrival, you were appointed Administrator of the Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux, and you performed this difficult function – in the midst of everything – with strength, with diplomacy, and almost with a smile.

Finally, we reach 1982: a special year, since you are elected a member of the Institut (Académie des Beaux-Arts), and you completed your masterpiece Ondine, an opera in three acts, after a play by Jean Giraudoux. Now you are a member of the Institut, so I am able to see you regularly (exactly once a week) at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. We both attend the sessions and though we no longer laugh and cry together like the old days in Jean Gallon’s class, we listen to the speeches, the discussions, the exchanges of views, and, whatever happens, we are almost always of the same opinion. And then I was lucky enough to go to the premiere of Ondine. The work was not given at the Opéra de Paris (which had commissioned it from you) but in the magnificent Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, where the colours and the decor suited this opera of fantasy and enchantment to perfection. The first performance was on 26 April 1982. Christine Porte sang Ondine, Philippe Rouillon sang the Knight and Hikotaro Yazaki conducted. It was an admirable performance and an immense success! The subject? It is the classic tale of a young knight who falls in love with Ondine, the female water-sprite of Scandinavian legend, an enchantress and seductress who is still capable of love. When the knight abandons Ondine to marry a mortal, he is condemned to death by the king of the water sprites and dies, despite the efforts made by Ondine to save him. You knew how to find just the right dreamlike quality for the music, whose harmonic language is neither tonal, nor modal, nor truly chromatic, but a little of all three at the same time. Your orchestration, rich and transparent, never covers the voices, and these, always very well treated, give back to opera its old role: to establish the supremacy of song.

Cher Ami, Cher Daniel, forgive me for rattling off this long curriculum vitae. It was perhaps a little monotonous, but your life is so filled with significant dates that I couldn’t pass over them in silence.

Before formally awarding you with the Grand Officier of the Légion d’Honneur, allow me to greet your wife, who is close beside you here, as she always is, at your concerts and all the other important events in your life. And allow me, too, to give you once again all my friendship, all my affection, and all my human and musical fraternity.