ABSTRACT
The monumental Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus of 1944, by Olivier Messiaen, is a musical-mystical compendium of twenty piano pieces that evoke the mysteries of faith associated with the birth and infancy of Christ. This chapter explores Messiaen's musical contemplation of silence in the 'Regard du silence', the seventeenth of Vingt regards. Messiaen's musical contemplation presents a unique triangular relationship between faith, silence and darkness: the music that reveals the mysteries of Christ in 'each silence' can be likened to faith, a type of 'knowledge of unknowing'. Faith is a theological virtue of intellect, an intellectual assent. It is always informed by love, which is the theological virtue of will. Messiaen saw colours while hearing music. For Messiaen sounds produced colours, and his synaesthetic responses were often the catalyst toward an assent of faith. Messiaen's triangulation of faith, silence and darkness in the 'Regard du silence' is musically structured in three distinct sections: an Introduction, two middle 'strophes' and a Coda.
