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The Shock of the Positive: Olivier Messiaen, St Francis and Redemption through Modernity

This article was commissioned by the Theology through the Arts research group, a major enterprise engagement based at the University of Cambridge and St Andrews and directed by Prof Jeremy Begbie (Cambridge and Duke University). While the project had a strong public focus, it also had several academic wings and outputs.

Resonant witness was the musical output and forms part of a growing body of work in music and theology. My brief from Prof Begbie was to provide a benchmark and point of reference for theologians who wish to understand Messiaen's music and think through the rigors of Christian doctrine as applied to a musical case study (in this case Messiaen's opera St Francis of Assisi (1975-83).

The chapter gives an overview of Messiaen's aesthetics and shows how the character of St Francis in Messiaen's opera can be understood metaphorically as sacramental (a somewhat radical diremption of theology and music).

Finally, the chapter gives an introduction to the notion of Messiaen as the godfather figure of religiously-inspired late twentieth-century music. This article was also translated into Dutch for a special edition of De Gids (a peer-reviewed comparative literature journal) for the Holland festival in 2008.