Essential Messiaen
Composer, organist, ornithologist and devout Catholic, Olivier Messiaen was one of the most influential musical figures of the 20th century. His highly distinctive music captures the beauty and majesty of the natural world, the wonders of the universe, and the mysticism and ecstasy of Roman Catholicism.
Read more…Messiaen had synaesthesia and saw colours when he heard sounds. In his music this translates into vividly-hued chords and timbres (he even included descriptions in his scores of the colours he envisioned). Coupled with his beloved birdsong, Asian idioms, innovative orchestral writing, and complex rhythms, his music is exotic, idiosyncratic and impossible to categorise.
At its most ecstatic, Messiaen’s music is exuberant and extrovert, dazzling and energetic, while his serious, more reflective works are intense, meditative and profound, but never unremittingly melancholy nor despairing. His religious music - full of apocalyptic prophecies, celestial banquets and glorious visions - expresses his own awe and joy in the presence of something so much greater than mankind can ever fully comprehend.