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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Certain passages from the second movement return. The mighty Angel appears, and above all the rainbow which crowns him (the rainbow: a symbol of peace, wisdom and of all sounding and luminous vibrations). In my dreams, I hear recognised chords and melodies, I see known colours and forms; then, after this transitory stage, I pass beyond reality and submit in ecstasy to a dizziness, a gyratory interlocking of superhuman sounds and colours. These swords of fire, these flows of blueorange lava, these sudden stars; this is the tumult of rainbows!
This climactic movement is the only one in which contemplation is subordinated to the depiction of events in a definite sequence. The principal musical consequence is that the formal structure of the music acquires something of the teleological quality that we associate with the sonata principle in the Austro-German tradition. But Messiaen's own description of the form – ‘variations of the first theme, separated by developments of the second’ – makes it clear that his conception falls short of the dialectical interplay of themes and tonalities that post-Beethovenian sonata form frequently embodies. Nonetheless, the very idea of ‘development’ alerts us to something that distinguishes the treatment of themes in ‘Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel …’ from, for example, the linkage through complementary aspects of plainsong between the melodic materials at ii/B:1–3 and D:1ff. in ‘Vocalise …’ (see pp. 29–31).
Developments
The comparison with the second movement is particularly germane because, as Messiaen makes clear, much of its material reappears here.
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