For the next few weeks I have planned something of a ‘series’ of posts on musical commentaries on the major festivals that fall over one another at this time of year. Tomorrow is Ascension Day; a little over a week after that is Pentecost, the following week Trinity Sunday and then Corpus Christi. Each of these suggests to me a work by the self-consciously theological composer Olivier Messiaen, so we will use his music to guide us through some of the theology of these occasions.

Starting with the Ascension: a set of four symphonic meditations for orchestra entitled l’Ascension was premiered on 9 February 1935. Three of the four were arranged by the composed for organ, with the third replaced by a new piece more idiomatic for that instrument. The organ arrangement is arguably more popular than the orchestral original. The movements are given programmatic titles as follows:

I. Majesté du Christ demandant sa gloire à son Père

II. Alléluias sereins d’une âme qui désire le ciel

III. (Orchestral) Alléluia sur la trompette, alléluia sur la cymbale

III. (Organ) Transports de joie d’une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne

IV. Prière du Christ montant vers son Père

All of these titles suggest a reflective and prayerful approach to considering the mystery of the Ascension, and I will return to considering them in a moment. Before continuing, though, and noting that the Ascension of Christ into Heaven is what enables Him to be present to each of us unconstrained by earthly time and space while still embodied as the incarnate God, I want to pay a little tribute to a theologian and musician called Maeve Louise Heaney, who had written quite a bit about the way in which music can communicate theology. In her monograph Music as Theology she says:

‘Why an emphasis on what I would describe as affective conversion within the Christ-centred doctrine of the continued embodiment of Jesus? … A theology that works to integrate that dimension into its perspective could help to develop a spirituality that would sustain and encourage Christian music.’

This perception of the connection between the incarnation, the ascension and theology in musical form, is important to bear in mind. This blog’s claim to consider theology as illustrated by music is less ambitious, perhaps, but is guided by the same instinct that there is theological as well as aesthetic value doing so.

Let’s return, after that little excursus, to Messiaen’s Ascension themes. The Majesty of Christ in asking his glory from his father references John 17 (Father… glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee). A grand chorale for (in the orchestral version) winds and brass reflects the mutual glorification of the persons of the Trinity. The serene alleluias of a soul which desires heaven juxtaposes in title alone serenity, praise and desire; the perceptiveness of this juxtaposition in the context of the Ascension as a Christian Doctrine is worth sitting and meditating upon. Some rather less serene alleluias follow in something like scherzo form from the orchestra, and the final meditation rises with Christ, joining Him in prayer as our ascent towards the Father.

The third movement in the organ version, transports of joy of a soul before the glory of Christ which is his own, is an exciting toccata which tries to capture something of the response a Christian soul should have to the glorification of the Son. Do we live up to it in our music? Do we live up to it in our lives?