Prima Facie Records is pleased to announce the release of a recording of Olivier Messiaen’s monumental organ work La Nativité du Seigneur, played by Richard Tanner on the organ of Blackburn Cathedral. Composed in 1935 and published the following year, La Nativité was Messiaen’s fourth published work for organ. The nine meditations are a powerful expression of Messiaen’s devout Roman Catholic faith and reflect on Christ’s nativity both figuratively and devotionally. Each meditation is headed by carefully chosen Biblical texts that are at the heart of Messiaen’s musical creation. He prefaced the published edition with an explanatory note outlining the theological aims of the work and detailing some of the unconventional techniques, such as added note values, unusual scales and modes of limited transposition, sometimes derived from non-western music, and the organ sonorities he employed.
Olivier Messiaen was born in Avignon in 1908, and entered the Paris Conservatoire when he was just 11 years old. He studied the organ under Marcel Dupré and composition under Paul Dukas (among his fellow students were Jean Langlais, Jehan Alain and Maurice Duruflé). In 1930 he became the principal organist at La Trinité in Paris, a post he held for more than 40 years. In addition to his celebrated and very individual works for organ, he composed orchestral music, chamber music and songs, works for piano and an opera. He was among the most significant and influential figures in French music of the 20th Century.
The Organ at Blackburn Cathedral was built by J W Walkers of Ruislip in 1969. It was overhauled and enlarged from three to four manuals in 2002 by the organ builder David Wood of Huddersfield. It has sixty speaking stops.
