LDV95

24 LISZT • INSPIRATIONS We find a further exploitation of tone colours in Saint François d’Assise: La prédication aux oiseaux , which Saint-Saëns transcribed for organ. The original piece, one of the two Légendes , dates from 1863; Liszt is said to have been inspired by the sight of thousands of sparrows invading Monte Mario in Rome. The piano presents at once the setting and the story, nature and intangibility, painting and words. What about the organ version? Here too, one is totally immersed in this dreamlike atmosphere, thanks to the allegory made possible by the varied timbres of the organ. Saint-Saëns, who was, among other things, titular organist of the church of La Madeleine in Paris, had an admirable knowledge of the organ’s possibilities. At the beginning of the work, to overcome the problem of the notes that were unavailable on organ manuals of the period, he transposes the musical text down an octave while proposing a registration that restores the tessitura required; it’s very skilfully done. Elsewhere, the extended piano arpeggios, which evoke the figure of St Francis of Assisi, become full and massive chords on the organ. I had a lot of fun embellishing Saint-Saëns’s markings, in order to reproduce the chirping of the birds and all the ornaments of this music as imaginatively as I could. In devising these registrations, did I refer consciously or unconsciously, to the colours used by Olivier Messiaen in his pieces based on birdsong? It’s very likely . . .