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Olivier Messiaen was one of the most innovative and influential composers of the twentieth century, a master teacher who counted Stockhausen and Boulez as his students, among others, an ornithologist who studied and imitated the musical properties of birds, and a Roman Catholic mystic who played the organ at Trinity in Paris virtually every Sunday from 1931 until the last year of his life before his death in 1992. Messiaen left an aural soundtrack for his unusual faith, literal icons of sonority that are rapturous doorways to the sacred. But you don’t have to be religious to appreciate them as the great art as they are, and these pieces fail to leave even a die-hard atheist such as his former student Boulez unmoved. This first concert of the University of Chicago Presents’ ten-day Messiaen Festival created to celebrate this Messiaen centennial year features Dame Gillian Weir on the newly refurbished Rockefeller Chapel E.M. Skinner organ and will spotlight Messiaen’s “Messe de la Pentacoste,” organ meditations for use during the Mass of Pentecost, or the fortieth day after Easter that marks the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles. In Messiaen’s sound world, this is no ordinary descent but portrayed in sound, the offertory uses the lowest foot pedal of the organ with its deepest stops to evoke a cross between, as Messiaen himself described it, Fafner the Dragon and the Beast of the Apocalypse to evoke “everything that we cannot discover and will never understand.” The five movements will be interspersed with movements by Bach and Couperin which comment on the same liturgical ideas and the program will also include Liszt’s “St. Francis Walking on the Waves” and Toccatas by Peeters, Slonimsky, Musehl, and Lanquetuit. A pre-concert lecture takes place at 6:15pm. (Dennis Polkow)
October 2 at University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn, (773)702-8068, 7:30pm. $5-$35.
Dennis Polkow is an award-winning veteran journalist, critic, author, broadcaster and educator. He made his stage debut at age five, was a child art prodigy and began playing keyboards in clubs at the age of fourteen. He holds degrees in music theory, composition, religious studies and philosophy from DePaul University in Chicago. Polkow spent his early years performing and recording in rock and jazz bands while concertizing as a classical pianist, organist and harpsichordist and composing, arranging and producing for other artists. As a scholar, Polkow has published and lectured extensively and taught at several colleges and universities in various departments. As an actor, narrator and consultant, Polkow has been involved with numerous films, plays, broadcasts and documentaries. As a journalist, Polkow helped co-create the experiential Chicago Musicale and Spotlight, the award-winning tabloid arts and entertainment section of the Press Publications chain of newspapers, which he later edited. He also created and ran the nationally recognized journalism program at Oakton College and was faculty advisor to its award-winning student newspaper; many former students went on to major media careers, including Channel Awesome’s the Nostalgia Critic. Polkow’s research, interviews, features, reviews and commentaries have appeared across national and international media and he has corresponded from the Middle East, Asia and Africa for the Chicago Tribune. Contact: dpolkow25@aol.com
