The highest place that heaven affords is His, is His by right,
The King of King and Lord of Lords, in heaven’s eternal light.

T. Kelly (1769-1854) Hymnodist

Ascentiontide

The Ascension of Christ to sit at the right hand of God is an event which is mostly ignored by the gospel writers. Matthew and John make no mention of it as a physical occurrence. Luke deals with it in ten words (24:51), and Mark in fourteen words (16:19). The most detailed reference to the process and circumstances of Christ actually leaving the earth in a physical sense appears in the Acts of the Apostles (1:9-11). John hints at it (20:17) when he reports Christ as saying to Mary Magdalene “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians (4:8-10) and his first letter to Timothy (3:16), refers to the Ascension in passing, but clearly as an accepted historical fact. The Ascension is professed in both of the Christian creeds – the Nicene and the Apostolic. The teaching from Acts is that, forty days after the Resurrection, the resurrected Christ, in his resurrected body, led his eleven remaining disciples (according to Matthew, Judas hanged himself before the Crucifixion occurred) to Mount Olivet (the Mount of Olives) – a hill just outside Jerusalem on which sat the small village of Bethany. Here he blessed them and was taken up into heaven, out of their sight, by a cloud. As they watched this physical ascension from the Earth, two men, clothed in white, appeared and spoke to them, whereupon they returned to Jerusalem.

The Feast of the Ascension, celebrated forty days after Easter Sunday (and therefore always on a Thursday) was an established Christian festival by the 4th century. Today it is a public holiday in some European and South American countries. By the 6th century the iconography of the Ascension had been established in Christian art, and by the 9th century the scene was regularly depicted on the inside of church domes and illuminated manuscripts. The subject was popular with artists throughout the Middle Ages and the Baroque, with notable paintings depicting the scene by Rembrandt, Rublev, Dossi, Giotto and Perugino amongst others. Many artists chose to divide their canvas in two, with the upper half depicting a heavenly scene and the lower half an earthly one. Christ is usually shown in the upper scene, blessing his disciples with his right hand – a gesture which is seen as symbolic of his blessing the whole church, and therefore humankind. Some artists depict Mary in the centre of the group of disciples, although there is no biblical justification for this.

Transports de Joie

Organ Solo                                                           

Olivier Messiaen

The full title of this piece of programmatical organ music is Transports de joie d’une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne. Or, Outburst of joy from a soul before the glory of Christ which is its own glory. It is the third movement of a suite of four pieces known as L’Ascension, and completed in 1933. Each piece depicts events of, or reflections on, the Ascension. Written for the harsh and raw brilliance of French organs (which are voiced quite differently from British romantic organs, of which the organ here in St Machar’s Cathedral is a fine example), it is a dazzling reflection of the outburst of joy to which the title refers, and the music speaks for itself.  

Olivier Messiaen, (1908 – 1992) was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, and one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex, and he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and Hindu sources. Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the marvellous aspects of the faith", and drew on his deeply held Roman Catholicism. He was one of the first composers to use an electronic keyboard, the ondes Martenot, in an orchestral work.

Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and was taught by Paul Dukas, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, amongst others. He was appointed organist at the Eglise de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris in 1931, a post held until his death. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s. On the fall of France in 1940, Messiaen was made a prisoner of war, during which time he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the end of time) for the four instruments available inside the concentration camp, namely piano, violin, cello and clarinet. The piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners for an audience of inmates and prison guards. He was appointed Professor of Harmony at the Paris Conservatoire soon after his release in 1941, and Professor of Composition in 1966, positions he held until his retirement in 1978. He found birdsong fascinating, believed birds to be the greatest musicians, and considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer. He notated bird songs worldwide and incorporated birdsong transcriptions into much of his music. Famous as a composer of organ music, and wanting to represent the joy of divine love through music, he wrote programmatical sacred music for the organ, including the substantial suites linked to the key events of Christ’s life, La Nativité, Les Corps Glorieux, and L’Ascension.

Some will love this music and will find it thrilling and exciting. Others will not, and will wonder why it has been included here. I make no apology for including it, and one of my reasons for doing so is that it has much in common with the earlier organ solo by J. S. Bach and is by no means out of place alongside it. Whilst Messiaen uses a completely different musical language from Bach, both composers were using a progressive and contemporary musical language for their respective times. Both pieces display the features of a fantasia and a toccata. Both are highly celebratory and pseudo-improvisatory in their nature. Both are programmatical in the sense that they are expressions and outpourings of joy inspired by an event in the New Testament, and both were conceived from a basis of great personal religious faith and devotion. Both composers were innovators of their time. If we think of Messiaen’s musical language as unapproachable, we must remember that Bach, in the early eighteenth century, with his adoption of equal temperament, his radical harmonisations of Lutheran chorale melodies, and his extensive and complex fugues, was experimenting with, and pushing the boundaries of, contemporary musical language in a very similar way.