Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus


Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus is a suite of 20 pieces for solo piano by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. The work is a meditation on the infancy of Jesus. It was composed in 1944 for Yvonne Loriod. A typical performance lasts about two hours.

Movements

There are 20 movements:
  1. Regard du Père
  2. Regard de l'étoile
  3. L'échange
  4. Regard de la vierge
  5. Regard du fils sur le fils
  6. Par lui tout a été fait
  7. Regard de la croix
  8. Regard des hauteurs
  9. Regard du temps
  10. Regard de l'esprit de joie
  11. Première communion de la vierge
  12. La parole toute puissante
  13. Noël
  14. Regard des anges
  15. Le baiser de l'enfant-Jésus
  16. Regard des prophètes, des bergers et des Mages
  17. Regard du silence
  18. Regard de l'Onction terrible
  19. Je dors, mais mon cœur veille
  20. Regard de l'église d'amour

    Thèmes

Messiaen uses Thèmes or leitmotifs, recurring elements that represent certain ideas. They include:
For example, Messiaen has written that "The 'Theme of Chords' is heard throughout, fragmented, concentrated, surrounded with resonances, combined with itself, modified in both rhythm and register, transformed, transmuted in all sorts of ways: it is a complex of sounds intended for perpetual variation, pre-existing in the abstract like a series, but quite concrete and quite easily recognizable through its colours: a steely grey-blue shot through with red and bright orange, a mauve violet spotted with leather-brown and encircled by bluish-purple."