A work of incredible power and royal magnificence. A work of awe-inspiring grandeur. A work of profound faith expressed with great passion. A paradoxical work — infinitely long but perfectly compact. A war-time work that meditates on eternity.

Reinis Zariņš writes: For me, it is easy to find these and many more superlatives to describe Messiaen’s magnum opus Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus which translates, with difficulties, as Twenty gazes on the newborn Jesus. The regard or gaze here is one that lingers and carefully considers its object, meditates on it, and leaves changed. Messiaen has created a collection of such perspectives — the direction of the gaze is always the same: the newborn wonder, the Godman, the promised saviour, the child in the manger; meanwhile, the watchers change. And as we gaze at the gazers, we participate in the gazing, we consider, with them, what this child may mean for us. Messiaen’s work is a collection, but it is also a story with a narrative. It begins at the source, the Father of all, it journeys through the Creation process, it meets the Cross, and it concludes with the renewed humanity in a renewed world. It’s a story unlike any other.

I have lived with this opus for close to 15 years, so I feel natural with it, as with an old friend. But this friendship is never casual. It is more like the "friendship" of a mountain climber and Everest. Even if the climber has reached the top many times, there should remain in them a very real sense of awe and fear, mixed with adventurousness and strong love. I have climbed the Regards many times, but it still requires my all every time.

It is worth considering that this monumental meditation on Nativity was written in 1944 in Paris while it was occupied, with shooting and fighting in the streets. To me, Vingt regards does not seem to reflect on those events directly; however, I think one can observe an unusual courage on Messiaen’s part in considering his topic so thoroughly. The topic is the meaning of Christ’s coming — a topic bound to be challenging in a largely secular West. And Messiaen did not write for the church, either — his preferred audience is the concert hall audience. Therefore, in my opinion, Messiaen’s courage in pulling out all the stops in investigating the Incarnation has to do with the proximity of war — that war and crises in general tend to bring out the best and the worst in us. When one sees loaded tanks rolling through one’s streets, it brings a certain sense that you must do only the most important things — either you care only for your personal survival, regardless of others’ needs, or you care for the survival of our common humanness, regardless of the sacrifice to you personally. What Messiaen chose was to meditate on the event that has left the most lasting positive effect on humankind in history, as opposed to the war that was going on locally at the time. And, by doing so, I think Messiaen cared for the survival of our humanness, rather than for a narrow personal gain.

Sometimes people ask me if it is important to sympathise with Messiaen’s religious faith to fully appreciate this piece. I think this is an important point to consider, so let me go beyond a simple yes or no.

Most instrumental music works on its own musical terms: it holds together and doesn’t fall apart, even when we don’t know anything about it — we catch something playing on the radio and then we are either caught by it or not, and afterwards we would probably say that we really liked it or didn’t like. Now, Messiaen has been quite explicit that he composed a lot of his music for the purpose of sharing important theological truths, rather than providing a kind of mystical, sensual experience. His material is highly emotional and imaginative, and mystical and sensual too, but it nevertheless has been created in a very deliberate manner to reveal and contemplate certain theological propositions, the careful consideration of which can change one’s life. 

The form he uses in Regards is somewhat reminiscent of a Wagner opera, on a truly grand scale interwoven with memorable leitmotifs, but if we remove the theological content from the work, we could just as well remove the story from an opera — let the singers simply vocalise meaningless syllables as long as they provide us with all the high notes. The theological content is the plot of this piece, it makes sense of it, it has been arranged in such a way that there’s a grand arc from the first to the last, with several wild climaxes in between and a true catharsis in the end — and this is directly related to what each of the 20 contemplations is meant to contemplate. It is like an opera in 20 scenes.

People go and listen to Bach’s Passions or Handel’s Messiah where there’s a much more explicit Christian message, and I’m quite sure most listeners do not sympathise with the Christian faith of these composers, but they allow the works to speak to them. I think it is the same with Messiaen. He didn’t write for Christians — his music is for everyone! I think he assumed that the Western audiences know how the basic story goes about the Messiah, the Son of God becoming man and sacrificing himself to redeem a people for himself. In Regards, Messiaen added to that basic outline some quite simple theological ideas — likely to help us think deeper about the story — for example, he helps us contemplate the incredible transaction between God and man. Or he helps us contemplate God’s triune nature most beautifully in the way he has built his main leitmotif, the Theme of God, of three inwardly different but outwardly unified chords. Some of these truths will remain hidden to most because of their nature — the Regard of the Cross, for instance, is written in such a way that the pianist’s palms are as if nailed to the keyboard and must stretch in a painful way to reach the chords. The pianist is given the terrible grace to physically share in the feeling of being crucified while playing about the cross that will one day kill Christ. What an incredible idea!

There are many such things in Regards that can speak meaningfully to everyone, not just Christians. But I can say with certainty that Messiaen shares these truths with such absolute passion that it is not easy to remain indifferent! And this is especially true in regard to those perspectives that are terrifying and awe-inspiring and beyond our normal experience — those especially make us sit up and contemplate. Among the Twenty Regards, there are plenty of lovely moments, like lullabies or nocturnes, with deep tenderness, but when we hear the creation of cosmos with Big Bang and its twin brother, the Big Contraction, it is quite terrifying in its truthfulness!