Olivier Messiaen: La dame de Shalott pour piano, après Tennyson | Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen

Yvonne Louise Georgette Loriod-Messiaen plays her husband’s first composition. Olivier Messiaen’s own commentary: This piece was composed after Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott.“ The obvious lack of experience in this work will be forgiven when one learns that I was born in December 1908 and wrote it at the beginning of 1917. I was then only eight years old! I was at Grenoble and still ignored everything about musical techniques though I played the piano (very badly) and used to sight-read at the keyboard while singing all the roles of Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust. In addition, I had read all of Shakespeare’s plays (for which I Built and colored tiny stage decors) and I knew the poems my mother, Cécile Sauvage, had dedicated to me before I was born. In this particular piece, a child’s imagination runs unleashed. Nothing is missing: the castles, the inflection of the spoken word, the song of Lady Shalott (weaving!), Sir Lancelot on horseback, the broken mirror, the tapestry which flies out the window, the falling willow leaves, and the death of the lady who lies in a boat drifting down the river (barcarole!).Despite its extraordinary naivety, this work is nonetheless my opus 1.