Two Ways of Looking at Messiaen's "Vingt regards dur l'enfant-Jésus"

The analytic component of my dissertation, "Two Ways of Looking at Messiaen's Vingt Regardssur l'Enfant-Jésus," takes two points of entry into the masterwork for piano: the first examinesthe role of repetition in two of the movements, "Regard de la Vierge" and "Regard du Fils sur leFils"; the second investigates Messiaen's synesthesia, analyzing the pitch collections thatcontributed to his visual perceptions. "Regard de la Vierge" utilizes the juxtaposition ofdisparate musics in order to create a conflict; pitch-centricity and the sharing of motives unifythe movement and contribute to the resolution of the conflict. In "Regard du Fils sur le Fils",Messiaen re-contextualizes the first movement, labeled the Thème de Dieu, which provides thestructural foundations for the superimposition of two additional musics.In Baptism, the compositional component of my dissertation, I continue to explore atechnique that is for me a significant change in style: the overlapping of musical events. Somesections of the ensemble continue with one music, while other sections begin new or divergentmaterial. In most instances, the simultaneous musics are realized through metric modulations.The piece was originally commissioned by the Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble and David Stock, and after the initial performance, I revised the work in order to highlight this feature. TheUniversity of Pittsburgh Orchestra, under the direction of Roger Zahab, performed the revisedversion in February of 2007