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Friday, 10 January 2020

Le Banquet Céleste (A Recital of a Work By Olivier Messiaen)




A Bach fugue vacates the church’s still air.
Its tangled counterpoint finally uncoiled...
And now for the musical mystic…

Octatonic chords give us the colour of flowers.
They're floating, adagio, into the vacated air.
The scented tones rise into the higher air.
Our eyes closed to a sonic oration…

The flow continues.
Swelling colour-chords 
Coalesce into the timeless elsewhere.
Those below mirror rainbow colours above.
And the melody - now far above the sound-banks.
Is anyone swimming, rich and warm,
In this sweet water?...

Now the choral motion is keener.
It breaths spreading wider
- And climb higher -
Into the prior silence…
To this climax of bliss:
His take on Christian rapture,
On Christ-like love.
An expression in sound
Of a beatific state.
His own soul, naked,
Before an audience of strangers.

The conservative and prudent
Have sat through this work -
Some with a suffering, self-control.
And now, at the end and finally,
It is our right, if displeased,
To boo the work and its creator.



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