fight for a song: Olivier Messiaen: Harawi

Dorota Nowak SopranMartyna Zakrzewska piano

“Harawi. Olivier Messiaen's Chant d'amour et de mort was written in 1945 as an extensive cycle of twelve songs for soprano and piano. It is the first part of the so-called “Tristan trilogy”, which also includes “Turangalîla-Symphonie” and “Cinq rechants”. Messiaen returns in these works to the myth of Tristan and Isolde, but he is primarily interested in its fundamental paradox: love so absolute that its fulfillment becomes possible only through death. Already the subtitle “Harawi” — “a song of love and death” — indicates the indissolubility of both experiences.

The inspiration was the Peruvian harawi — a love song whose story ends with the death of lovers. Messiaen, however, creates a fantastic world of his own, combining French texts he wrote with words taken from the Quechua language and onomatopoeia. Their meaning is less important than the sound itself: the voice becomes an instrument, and the syllables can evoke the sound of bells, the rhythm of dance or the cries of animals. The line between a meaningful word and a pure sound is gradually blurring.

“Harawi” is therefore not a simple transfer of the Andean tradition or another retelling of the story of Tristan and Isolde — Messiaen built a personal love mythology out of these elements.

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Dorota Nowak photo by M. Dudek