端山貢明＋メシアン夫妻写真 (Photograph of Hayama Kōmei with Monsieur and Madame Messiaen)

Notes

From the 端山貢明アーカイブ (Hayama Kōmei Archive), item 124965 in the 写真 category, registered 2023-08-18: https://d-commons.net/hayama/?c=&p=124965. Published by the 端山貢明アーカイブプロジェクト (Hayama Kōmei Archive Project), directed by 前川道博 (Michihiro Maekawa) of Nagano University, on the D-Commons platform, and licensed CC BY (表示). The source documents come from the 端山文庫, the papers kept in Hayama's laboratory at Tohoku University of Art and Design, digitised by the project with the agreement of his family; his autograph scores were given to the University History Archives of the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2026. Source: Black-and-white snapshot print, thought by the archive to have been taken at Messiaen's home during Hayama's study in France (October 1957 – July 1959). The archive publishes this item as 1 separate page scan rather than as a PDF; the download here was assembled from those scans in page order, each taken at the higher of the two resolutions the archive serves. A single black-and-white snapshot of three people seated side by side on a sofa behind a low table spread with a lace cloth. At the left a woman in a white embroidered blouse, her dark hair pinned up, wears glasses with upswept frames and a pendant. In the centre sits Olivier Messiaen in a dark jacket over an open-necked white shirt, hands clasped in his lap, looking straight at the camera through rimless spectacles. At the right is the young Hayama in a light herringbone jacket, white shirt and striped tie, his hair thick and unruly, turned slightly towards the others. The print is worn: a band of scratches and emulsion flecking runs across the middle of the image, worst over Messiaen's face and the left of the frame. The archive identifies the sitters as Hayama with Messiaen and Madame Messiaen, and dates the picture to about 1959, taken — it believes — at the teacher's home during Hayama's period in France, October 1957 to July 1959. It is the only image in this group of papers from the Paris years, and the direct counterpart to the written record of that relationship elsewhere in the archive: the biography on the 1962 handbill names Messiaen and Noël Gallon as his teachers at the Paris Conservatoire, and the programme book for his June 1962 Tokyo concert prints a congratulatory message from Messiaen, who was then in Japan and attended the concert. People named: 端山貢明 (Hayama Kōmei), オリヴィエ・メシアン (Olivier Messiaen), メシアン夫人 (Madame Messiaen — not named on the print). Noted: Nothing is written on the print: the date 'about 1959', the location (Messiaen's home) and the identification of the sitters all come from the archive's description. The woman is identified only as 'Madame Messiaen'. Messiaen's first wife, Claire Delbos, died in 1959 after years of illness, and he married Yvonne Loriod in 1961, so the identification cannot be confirmed from the photograph itself.