MESSIAEN – A SUGGESTED PLACING (1955)

Abstract

It has often been said that David Drew first made his critical reputation with a series of three articles on the music of Olivier Messiaen – essentially, the first informed criticism of the French composer that had appeared in English – published in The Score and I. M. A. magazine in 1955. David's friendship with William Glock, who owned and edited The Score, was long-lasting: from this time, when he was essentially Glock's assistant in its editing and production, to after Glock's death in 2000, when he acted as co-executor of his Will. ‘A Suggested Placing’ is the concluding portion of the final Messiaen article, published in The Score Number 14, the issue of December 1955. The invocations of Charles Ives – at that period hardly known to his own countrymen in the USA, let alone outside it – seem particularly prescient, and should remind us that David had already published a knowledgeable survey of ‘American Chamber Music’(in Chamber Music, ed. Alec Robinson, Pelican Books, 1955).