DESCRIPTION:
Part 1:
0:00- Le desert (The Desert)
3:48- Les orioles (The Orioles)
9:51- Ce quit est ecrit sur les etoiles... (What Is Written in the Stars)
16:32- Le cossyphe d'Heuglin (The White-browed Robin-chat)
20:25- Cedar Breaks et le don de crainte (Cedar Breaks and the Gift of Awe)

Part 2:
27:18- Appel interstellaire (Interstellar Call)
35:02- Bryce Canyon et les rochers rouge-orange (Bryce Canyon and the Red-Orange Rocks)

Part 3:
48:04- Les ressucités et le chant de l'étoile Aldebaran (The Resurrected and the Song of the Star Aldebaran)
56:16- Le moqueur polyglotte (The Mockingbird)
1:06:49- La grive des bois (The Wood Thrush)
1:10:50- Omao, leiothrix, elepaio, shama
1:10:50- Zion Park et la cite celeste (Zion Park and the Celestial City)
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Nature, colors, lights, the universe, the desert, philosophy...Des canyons aux etoiles has got it all! A titanic work by French composer Olivier Messiaen, this twelve-movement work for mixed ensemble takes over an hour and a half to perform. It was commissioned in 1971 by American musician Alice Tully with the intent of celebrating the country's bicentennial. The music is alien and strange, and yet understandable. Among the classical composers, Messiaen is without a doubt one of the best at creating landscapes using sounds. However it is neither ambient nor minimalistic, it is still centered around development rather than process and is incredibly taxing on its musicians and listeners. Messiaen was inspired by the beauty, sight and sound of Utah's majestic Bryce Canyon. This is the beauty that he chose to represent America.

The scoring of Des canyons... shows that Messiaen doesn't fear going in unorthodox directions for the sake of attaining the proper sound. The percussion section, written for five players, is large - almost disproportionately so - and is to include a tumba (a type of traditional Latin-American drum), a guiro, a pair of maracas, a triangle, a wood blook, a set of wooden wind chimes, a set of tubular bells, a gong, a set of crotales, a set of tuned gongs, a whip, a thunder sheet, an Aeoliphone (wind machine), and a Geophone - an instrument that Messiaen himself invented. From the Wikipedia article, "[The Geophone] consists of a drum filled with thousands of small lead pellets, and is played by swirling it around slowly so that the noise of the pellets resembles the sound of dry shifting earth." The Aeoliphone is also a specialized instrument made for a very specific purpose - "One type uses an electric fan with wooden slats added to produce the required sound. More frequently, a drum covered in fabric is rubbed against wooden or cardboard rods when a handle is turned, making a swooshing sound." (Wikipedia). Its most noteable appearances are in Richard Strauss pieces such as the Alpine Symphony, and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, but forms of it appear in music as early as Rameau's "Les Boreades", an opera written during the 18th century. The xylorimba and glockenspiel are also given difficult solo parts in the piece.

Two major ideas that appear in most of Messiaen's music (especially his orchestral music) are birdsong and colors. Messiaen was an avid ornothologist, having lived near an aviary in Paris. He made recordings of (and subsequently, approximate notated transcriptions of) the songs and calls of hundreds of different birds from around the world, and incorporated them heavily into his music. In some cases - for example the Oiseaux Exotique for piano and small orchestra and the Catalogue d'Oiseaux, the pieces revolve primarily around transcriptions of bird calls, whereas in a piece like this, they are mixed in with other musical ideas. But his lifelong fascination with birds and their musicality (he believed them to be great musicians) is pervasive and inescapable. Colors were also one of his fascinations. Although he denied it, he was a classic example of a synaesthetic - he had the ability to hear colors. He did not think this to be unusual, and he believed that everybody has the ability even if they didn't know it - and that birds had the same innate ability as well. For this reason, however, he often composes colors into his compositions. Even for somebody who doesn't have synaesthasia, you can almost hear the red-orange of Bryce Canyon in the seventh movement of Des Canyons...

In this recording, the London Sinfonietta plays under the direction of Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Paul Crossley plays the solo piano part. Salonen has a wonderful grasp on Messiaen's style and modern music in general. The recording may be purchased at the following link: http://www.amazon.com/Olivier-Messiaen-Canyons-Exotiques-Couleurs/dp/B0000026OW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1367389325&sr=8-3&keywords=salonen+messiaen

Thank you for listening. Enjoy!