8 Préludes

Historical context

Messiaen wrote his 8 Préludes for piano in 1928–29, as a teenage student at the Paris Conservatoire, and they were among the first of his works to be published. Their eight titles — La colombe, Chant d’extase dans un paysage triste, Le nombre léger, Instants défunts, Les sons impalpables du rêve, Cloches d’angoisse et larmes d’adieu, Plainte calme and Un reflet dans le vent — and their hazy, sensuous keyboard writing show an open debt to the Préludes of Debussy.

Yet the young composer’s own voice is already present: the harmony moves through his “modes of limited transposition,” and he later said the music was conceived in terms of specific colours. The sixth prelude, Cloches d’angoisse et larmes d’adieu, is dedicated to the memory of his mother, the poet Cécile Sauvage. Henriette Puig-Roget gave the public première at the Salle Érard in Paris on 1 March 1930.

Drawn from public reference sources (Wikipedia, standard organ-repertoire references).