Un cri de passion ne s'analyse pas: Olivier Messiaen's Harmonic Borrowings from Jules Massenet

Until the present article, Massenet's influence upon the music of Olivier Messiaen has remained entirely unexplored. During the 1930 and 1940s, Messiaen professed his love for the music of Massenet and regularly used Massenet as a model in his teaching materials. Several examples of the way in which Messiaen selects and transforms passages from Massenet's Werther and Manon are considered. The inclusion of a harmonic formula borrowed from Massenet, contrasted with a melodic formula borrowed from Mozart, in ‘Amen du Desir’, the fourth movement of the Visions de l'Amen , reveals the operatic characters hidden behind the programme of one of Messiaen's best-known works. These intersecting source materials in Messiaen's teaching and composition open new roads for the analysis of the composer's music and pedagogy.