Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) was one of the most original and influential composers of the twentieth century, a devout Catholic mystic whose music sought to express the eternal and the divine. For over sixty years organist at the church of La Trinité in Paris, he developed a wholly personal musical language built on his own ‘modes of limited transposition,’ complex rhythmic systems (drawn partly from ancient Greek and Indian sources), brilliant orchestral and harmonic colour (he experienced sound as colour, a form of synaesthesia), and, most famously, the transcription of birdsong, which he regarded as the music of God’s creation. His masterpieces include the Turangalîla-Symphonie, the Quartet for the End of Time (written in a prisoner-of-war camp), and the vast opera Saint François d’Assise. As a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire he shaped a whole generation, including Boulez and Stockhausen.