Paean Of Love-Studies Of Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony

Messiaen is a composer who shows prominent artistic personality and charm in the western music surge of twentieth century, and before he died in 1992, he had been known as "The greatest living musicians". His works include a wide range of music genres, while Turangalila is the only symphony in his works. Meanwhile, it’s the representative work which integrates his early styles with large and complex structure, sound effect and the mysterious and deep emotional performance as its prominent feature. It’s the outstanding work of western modern music in the twentieth century.The article takes this symphony as an object of study from three points of views: Messiaen’s artistic life, musical language of Turangalila, and emotional connotation of Turangalila. The first part makes a basic introduction of Messiaen’s artistic life and works, and also summarizes his original technique, which enables us to have a more overall understanding of Messiaen’s creational path. The second part is the music analysis of Turangalila, Based on grasping the basic situation of this work, it analyses the ten movements from the perspective of music theme, rhythm, structure feature, orchestration feature and so on. Of the ten, "limited transposition mode","non-retrogradable rhythms","role rhythms"and the use of Gamelan orchestra style are individual, novel and outstanding. The third part which establishes on the basis of the forenamed parts makes a deep exploration of the emotional connotation in Turangalila It processes the emotional contents of "Tristan and Isolde"’s "love", symbolism and surrealistic "love", god’s "love" and universe and samsara’s "love". Thus the author makes a comprehension on the aesthetic value of this symphony. In the end of the article, it proves the spiritual world of Messiaen and the development situation in western music of the twentieth century.