Carnegie Hall

French composer Olivier Messiaen was a passionate, lifelong transcriber and collector of bird songs. He must have had incredible ears, for he did this the old-fashioned way: no tape recorder, just pencil and paper, and perhaps a tree stump to sit on as he listened. In 1990, Gino Francesconi, Carnegie Hall’s Founding Archivist and Historian Emeritus, asked the 82-year-old Messiaen—along with about 35 other composers—to provide signed musical quotes in honor of the Hall’s Centennial Celebration in 1991. Messiaen submitted an example of notated bird song that he titled “Chant de fauvette à tête noire” (“Song of the Black-Headed Warbler”). At the bottom of the manuscript, he added, with his characteristic precision: “noté le 16 mai 1989—á 18 h (en France)” (“observed on May 16, 1989, at 6 PM [in France]”). He signed the manuscript “Olivier Messiaen, 17 June 1990, pour ‘Carnegie Hall.’” The manuscript is now on display in the Hall’s Composers’ Gallery on the Parquet level of Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage.

Unlike other great 20th-century composers such as Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók, Messiaen never conducted or performed his own works at Carnegie Hall; he did attend a number of performances, however, including the New York premiere on April 16, 1986, of three tableaux from his opera Saint François d’Assise (St. Francis of Assisi) with soprano Kathleen Battle, tenor Kenneth Riegel, baritone Phillippe Rouillon, bass-baritone José van Dam, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa.

Many other Messiaen works have received significant premieres at the Hall:

• Les offrandes oubliées (The Forgotten Offerings), Messiaen’s first published work for orchestra, received its New York premiere on November 21, 1936, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky.
• Alexander Borovsky gave the US premiere of two preludes for piano by Messiaen (No. 3, “Le nombre léger,” and No. 6, “Cloches d’angoisses et larmes d’adieu”) on March 17, 1947.
• Leopold Stokowsky conducted the US premiere of Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine (Three Small Liturgies of the Divine Presence) on November 17, 1949, with Ginette Martenot (ondes Martenot), Leonid Hambro (piano), and the New York Philharmonic.
• On December 10, 1949, Leonard Bernstein led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the New York premiere of what is perhaps Messiaen’s best-known work, the massive 80-minute Turangalîla-symphonie. According to The New York Times, Messiaen took a bow on stage with Bernstein following the performance.

Photography courtesy of the Carnegie Hall Rose Archives.