Olivier Messiaen and the Ondes Martenot

In my personal journey through 20th century classical music I've now started to seriously explore the works of Olivier Messiaen. I've never really gotten around to listening to his stuff before, mainly because the only things I knew about him were that A) he was a Christian and wrote a lot of devotional music, and B) he became obsessed with the sounds of birds and tried to emulate it in his music. It sounded a bit... uh... well... gay.... anyway, after spending a couple of days exploring his stuff I can already say that it's actually quite magnificent. And some of that devotional music... it's quite insane... Messiaen believed that not only regular minor and major chords should be used in the church... according to him, crazy dissonantic chords could be used too. And some of that stuff is awesome.

But never mind the dissonance for now, whats even more cool is that Messiaen also wrote some pieces for the early French proto-synthesizer, the Ondes Martenot.

The Ondes Martenot was an early electronic instrument that was invented in 1928. It sounded somewhat similar to the slightly more well known Theremin (used in the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" and lots of old sci fi soundtracks). In recent years the sound of the Martenot has reached a large audience thanks to Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, who's used it on Radiohead albums since "Kid A", and also used it on the acclaimed soundtrack for "There Will Be Blood".

But Messiaen was one of the first composers to champion the instrument.

Here are two clips of a group of people performing his "La Fête des Belles Eaux" written for six Martenots.





Here is a clip that demonstrates how the instrument works:



And here's another clip, an excerpt from the large orchestral work, the Turangalila Symphony: