Fete Messiaen Ends With Organ Premiere

Olivier Messiaen first became known, both here and in France, through the organ, and he has continued to contribute monuments to the king of instruments throughout his career. The Fete Messiaen at Pasadena Presbyterian Church ended Tuesday with the area premiere of the “Livre du Saint Sacrement” from 1984.

Part of the work, that is. Edward Murray played only two-thirds of the 18 pieces in the book, and it was not a short concert at that.

“Livre du Saint Sacrement” is not a liturgical organ Mass, but rather an integrated collection of impressions of the theological meanings behind the Eucharist and of the act of worship itself, with vignettes of the life of Christ. Ever the mystic voluptuary, Messiaen juxtaposes bird song and plainsong, literally descriptive writing and abstruse symbolism.

The first half of the work is relatively austere and slow moving, dense, sustained chords contrasting with wisps of bird song. By the 10th piece, “La Resurrection du Christ,” the drama is fully extrovert, and the forms become larger and more developed, the writing more active and technically challenging.

Murray, an organist at Immanuel Presbyterian Church and Wilshire Boulevard Temple, had it all well in hand, whether the blazing toccata of the “Offrande et Alleluia final,” the vivid pictorialism of “Les deux murailles d’eau,” or balancing the haunted melodic fragments, chromatic spirals and apocalyptic blasts of “L’apparition du Christ resuscite a Marie-Madeleine.” He emphasized clarity as well as color, exploiting the resources of the Aeolian-Skinner instrument to canny and expressive effect.