Harawi (Messiaen)

Translating to "You, the city that slept", this song opens the cycle on a slow and tender note; evoking past love. The lovers are sleeping in this episode.

It also borrows from the refrain of a French folk song.

The origins of this movement lie in a Peruvian folksong titled Deliria, which was then harmonised as a 'love theme' by Messiaen for organ in 1945 as he improvised incidental music to a play by Lucien Fabre about Tristan and Iseult; this same theme, now more well known as Harawi's love theme or simply the Tristan theme (which appears in the succeeding movements, seven and twelve) is also alluded to in the Turangalîla-Symphonie and is one of the bases for the latter's famous love theme.

The female lover Piroutcha is alluded to as a "green dove", hence the title "Greetings, O Green Dove". Faux birdsong appears in the movement. Symbolism occurs in the lines: "Enchained Star, shared shadow, thou, of flower, fruit, sky, and water, [of] Bird song".

This strong work, with high force from the pianist, creates musical impressions of the peaks of the Andes mountains. The singer sings in a lower range than usual.

In what is perhaps the most famous song of the Harawi cycle, the male lover performs, with crotal bells attached to his ankles, a dance of courtship, which then turns into an ecstatic serenade. It climaxes with faux birdsong.

The song's title onomatopoeically represents the ringing of the miniature bells. Contrary to popular belief, the words are at variance with Quechua phonetics and are gibberish (similar to what Messiaen practised in his later Cinq rechants).

The music itself was composed in 1945, but not originally for this cycle: the Conservatoire de Paris, where Messiaen served as harmony professor shortly after his release from Stalag VIII-A in early 1941, commissioned him to write a short examination piece for oboe with piano accompaniment. The result was titled Pièce. Satisfied by the work, Messiaen placed the work verbatim in the Harawi cycle by simply replacing the oboe part with a soprano one.

Titled "Piroutcha's love", in it, a dialogue is held between the two lovers. She flirts with the unnamed man, but he tearfully responds by saying that they can only be united in death. The man then asks Piroutcha to behead him.

The title translates to Planetary Repetition, with this song evoking a dark, vast, and chaotic vision of the universe. Eventually, the drama of the lovers begins to resonate with the grandeur of the cosmos with a planet of destruction and representations of a mental breakdown.

The Sanskrit word lîla, or 'divine play', takes a prominent part in this movement.

A sombre equivalent to the second movement 'Bonjour toi', transforming the joyous serenade into a dolorous lament of grief expressing worries of an eternal farewell. Evocations of bells and gongs are heard and Piroutcha reminisces about how they took a love potion.

As Piroutcha mourns and yearns for her lost beloved, awaiting her entry into Heaven, she dances out of grief. Notably, this uses repetitions of the word 'pia' to simulate the cries of apes, descending from a Quechua legend in which these animals' cries rescued a prince from danger. The quasi-campanological Dondou tchil chant from the fourth movement also returns.

Here, Piroutcha is associated with the number five, alluding to the Hindu god Shiva. There are numerous references to mythology and the supernatural in this movement.

('The Stairs Echo the Gestures of the Sun').

('The Lovebird of the Star').

One of the most famous parts of the cycle, it is explicitly referred to in one of Messiaen's own programme notes to the Turangalîla-Symphonie.

An excerpt of the song also appears on the gravestone of Messiaen himself and his second wife Yvonne Loriod in Saint-Théoffrey.

(Quechua: Grasshopper, French: the Stars).

('In the Dark').