Harawi

Harawi is a song cycle by Oliver Messiaen for soprano and piano. Harawi (1945) is the first part of Messiaen's 'Tristan Trilogy', preceding the Turangalîla Symphony and the Cinq Rechants (both completed in 1948). The cycle takes its name from the inca 'Harawi' or 'Yaravi', a love song genre which often ends with the death of the two lovers, thus providing a vehicle from the composer's exploration of the theme of love-death central to the myth of ... more

Harawi is a song cycle by Oliver Messiaen for soprano and piano. Harawi (1945) is the first part of Messiaen's 'Tristan Trilogy', preceding the Turangalîla Symphony and the Cinq Rechants (both completed in 1948). The cycle takes its name from the inca 'Harawi' or 'Yaravi', a love song genre which often ends with the death of the two lovers, thus providing a vehicle from the composer's exploration of the theme of love-death central to the myth of Tristan and Isolde. These themes are explicitly stated in the work's subtitle: "Chant d'amour et de mort" ("Song of love and death"). The ideas of love-death may have had a deeper personal significance to Messiaen, whose first wife, Claire Delbos had begun to suffer from mental illness in the years preceding Harawi's composition. Though the work bears no explicit dedication to Delbos, it is impossible to consider that her condition cannot have been at the forefront of the composer's mind while working on the cycle. The text of Harawi is... less