Chapter XII: Fugue, Sonata, Plainchant Forms
Original: Pages 40–46 in Satterfield translation
Musical Examples:
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Overview
This expansive chapter concludes the melodic section by addressing large-scale formal organization, demonstrating how Messiaen adapts traditional forms (fugue, sonata-allegro) and plainchant structures (anthems, alleluias, psalmodics, Kyrie, sequence) to his compositional system. By passing rapidly over well-known forms (fugue and sonata) to focus on "less usual forms," Messiaen reveals his interest in plainchant liturgical structures as primary formal models, reflecting his Catholic faith and organist background. The chapter presents five distinct formal approaches: traditional development-based forms derived from sonata (standard sonata-allegro, development of three themes preparing a final, variations of first theme separated by second-theme developments), and plainchant-derived forms (various anthem, alleluia, psalmody, Kyrie, and sequence structures). Through detailed analyses of movements from his own works (La Nativité du Seigneur, Les Corps glorieux, Quatuor pour la fin du Temps), Messiaen demonstrates that his modal-rhythmic innovations function within recognizable formal frameworks while transforming them through characteristic techniques. This chapter bridges from melodic construction (Chapters VIII–XI) to harmonic language (Chapters XIII–XIX), showing that complete movements organize melodic materials (developed through elimination, interversion, registral change) within sentence structures (song-sentence, binary, ternary) to create large-scale forms serving both structural coherence and expressive/spiritual purposes.