"Les offrandes oubliées" by Olivier Messiaen

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"Les offrandes oubliées" (1930) is a major achievement of a newly graduated composer, a work that points out the essential traits of Messiaen's music: his preoccupation with rhythm, his modal language (Messiaen is not tonal or atonal composer, but modal) and his Catholic Christian faith. These features, with the later extensive use of birdsong, prevailed throughout Messiaen's career until his death in 1992.

Messiaen commented on his faith in an interview in 1961 as follows: "God for me is manifest. and my conception of sacred music derives from this conviction. God being present in all things, music dealing with theological subjects can and must be extremely varied. The Catholic religion is a real fairy-story, with this difference, it is all true. I have therefore, in the words of Ernest Hello, tried to produce 'a music that touches all things without ceasing to touch God'. But, if my music is a spontaneous act of faith, without premeditation, it is by no means a mystical music."

Being incapable of deeper musical analysis, I concentrate upon the theological notions of the work. Fortunately, they abound here, in the score and in the composer's comments.

As a systematic theologian, I am curious to know why Messiaen reverses the order of sin and redemption. The three parts (played attacca) are  "The Cross" (La Croix), "Sin" (Le Péché), and "The Holy Supper" (L’Eucharistie). As anyone with some acquaintance of the Christian faith knows, the Cross of Christ was due to sin of humankind, as God's response to it, so that sin would not remain unpunished and that humans could be saved. However, this kind of interpretation is just another option, although a dominant one in the Western theology since Cur Deus homo by Anselm of Canterbury. Messiaen takes another route. He sets the Cross as the key of it all, as the beginning. This is equally a Christian view of the Cross. It indicates that the suffering and death of Christ was not an emergency solution that God was forced into, but a part of his original, eternal plan. St Paul calls the cross "mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God" (Eph 3,9), a thought that is conspicuous in Messiaen's works like La Nativité du Seigneur or Vingt Regards.

The tempo marking in the beginning is Douloureux, Profondement triste. Messiaen depicts the suffering of Christ with music of strings that has a resemblance with Gregorian chant. His own commentary for the first section is:

 Les bras étendus, triste jusqu'à la mort,
sur l'arbre de la Croix vous répandez votre sang.
Vous nous aimez, doux Jesus, nous l'avions oublié.

The Cross is the first "forgotten offer" that the tite of the piece invokes. Apparently, Messiaen is not focused on the doctrine of atonement, but on love as the driving force of "sweet Jesus" (doux Jesus) and his sorrow. What was Christ mourning for? The misery of humankind moved him to the Cross. Perhaps he was sad for what was coming to happen, the sin.


 Poussés par la folie et le dard du serpent,
dans une course haletante, effrénée, sans relâche,
nous descendions dans le péché comme dans un tombeau.

The middle section bursts out fierce, désesperé, haletant in Stravinskian vein. Sin is portrayed as a gravitational force, something inevitable, yet regrettable. Brass instruments cry a breathtaking decline. This is a danse macabre. But that is not the end. The final part begins avec une grande pitié et un grand amour. The Holy Supper sings an extremely slow and beautiful melody in contrast to the frenzy music of the sin. Ultimately, the piece ends up to be a theological commentary of the Eucharist. It is the meal of consolation, where our Lord offers us His love, in spite of that we tend to forget Him, again and again. Christ is forever sorry for us and his love never fails us.

Voici la table pure, la source de la charité,
le banquet du pauvre, voici la Pitié adorable offrant
le pain de la Vie et de l'Amour.
Vous nous aimez, doux Jesus, nous l'avions oublié.

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