UA News

The two-day festival begins with a symposium featuring the country's leading scholars on the music of Olivier Messiaen and George Crumb.

The University of Arizona School of Music presents a free Olivier Messiaen and George Crumb Music Festival, "Musical Mystics of the 20th Century," in celebration of the musical composers' birthdays. Messiaen's 100th birthday was earlier this year and Crumb's 80th birthday will be celebrated in 2009.

The festival will begin with a symposium featuring the country's leading scholars on the music of these composers. The symposium will take place on Sept. 27 and 28 and is open to the public.

The first day's events begin at 2 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall with an introductory symposium, followed by an organ recital at 4 p.m. and an ensemble concert at 7:30 p.m. at Crowder Hall.

Events on Sept. 28 begin at 4 p.m. at Holsclaw Hall with a chamber music recital and continue with another recital at 7:30 p.m. at Crowder Hall.

Directed by UA music professor Daniel Asia, the festival offers the opportunity to enter the musical realm of two of the finest, personal and most approachable composers of the last hundred years. The audience will hear music from the beginning of their creative journey to the most recent and mature work.

Faculty performers and major UA ensembles will participate, including the Arizona Symphony Orchestra, the Wind Ensemble and the Contemporary Ensemble, which will give the audience a sense of these composers' creative development.

"Messiaen's music is filled with his love of the natural world, music of both the West and East, and his religious understanding of the world as expressed through his devotion to Catholicism," Asia said. "One finds in his music bird songs from around the world, complex rhythms based on his study of Indian classical music, and prismatic reworkings of ancient liturgical chant texts. His music is immensely colorful – he sees harmony in terms of visualized color, and often uses huge batteries of percussion in his larger works – and sensuous." 

According to Asia, Crumb's music also is an eclectic mix. "One finds influences of American folk and Appalachian (he grew up in the hills of Virginia) music (pentatonic scales, "Amazing Grace"), sounds and instruments of Japanese court music, quotes of older music and a harmonic language that moves effortlessly from the tonal to the nontonal. The music is incantatory, and ultimately, beguiling," Asia added.