Singing Analysis Of Olivier Messiaen’s Song Cycle:The Case Of Trio Mélodies

Olivier Messiaen is one of the most famous French composers of the twentieth century.He has made achievements in the fields of orchestral music,piano music,art songs and so on.Although the number of art songs he created in his life was not large,he played an important role in promoting the development of modern French art songs.The vocal suite "Trois Mélodies" is an early work composed by Messiaen in 1930.This work is an art song suite composed of three songs "Why","Smile" and "The Lost Fiancee".This article takes his vocal set "Trois Mélodies" as an example to study.The structure will be arranged as follow: The first part is an introduction of Messiaen’s life and art songs.The second part is mainly about the singing analysis of the vocal set "Trois Mélodies" from four aspects:(1)the original text and translation of the lyrics;(2)the form and melody;(3)analysis of singing difficulties,including solution of French pronunciation difficulties,control of singing style,application of singing strength and timbre and application of breathing in singing;(4)the singer’s singing version reference.The third part is the author’s own singing experience(1.Summary of the common characteristics of the vocal set "Trois Mélodies";2.The gains from singing of the set in my personal concert).Current now,only 4 articles on the research of Messiaen’s art songs are found on CNKI.To the best of my knowledge,there is no research on "Trois Mélodies".Therefore,I hope that through the research and analysis of this vocal suite,more knowledge and skills will be shared to improve people’s singing of Messiaen’s art songs.