r/messiaen

69 archived posts · Nov 2013 – Dec 2025

Tous les oiseaux des étoiles…

r/messiaen

All things related to this unique and ineffable genius.

Created Nov 4, 2013

111Members (last snapshot)

69Archived posts

What could be said about Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen? Quite a lot, actually - he was an artist, a poet, who found solace in the laboratory that is nature, who listened to the birds, who evoked the human condition, the perspectives of the world above and beyond... but overall he was a man who was a painter and poet. However, the quill was his brush and the sheets were his canvas. Colour, time, and rhythm are something, although initially not easily discernible to some, that prevalently feature in the work of the composer. Must we forget as well his fascinations with the east, with birds, with things that are, as he said, "beautiful"?

Was it not that his works were among the most uniquely original of the century? That it was so rich and thorough, "so infinitely complex yet so infinitely simple", and the fruit of utter and objective genius? There are those who can and can't understand Messiaen. Those who don't have their opinions, but to those who do - the world he has created is one of the most sublime pleasures the ear can taste. He, so amazingly idiosyncratic, remains beyond all doubt the most renowned French composer of the second half of the 20th century and one of the greatest who ever lived.

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