Título: Olivier Messiaen
Seção: Birdsong and the 1960s
Background: Olivier Eugene Charles Prosper Messiaen (French: [olivje mesja]; December 10, 1908 - April 27, 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically and melodically he employs a system he called modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from the systems of material generated by his early compositions and improvisations. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, vocal music, as well as for solo organ and piano, and also experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime. He travelled widely and wrote works inspired by diverse influences ranging from Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah and the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

Conteúdo: Olivier-Eugene-Prosper-Charles Messiaen was born December 10, 1908 in Avignon, France, into a literary family. He was the elder of two sons of Cecile Sauvage, a poet, and Pierre Messiaen, a teacher of English who translated the plays of William Shakespeare into French. Messiaen's mother published a sequence of poems, L'ame en bourgeon ("The Budding Soul"), the last chapter of Tandis que la terre tourne ("As the Earth Turns"), which address her unborn son. Messiaen later said this sequence of poems influenced him deeply and he cited it as prophetic of his future artistic career.  At the outbreak of World War I, Pierre Messiaen enlisted and Cecile took their two boys to live with her brother in Grenoble. There Messiaen became fascinated with drama, reciting Shakespeare to his brother with the help of a home-made toy theatre with translucent backdrops made from old cellophane wrappers. At this time he also adopted the Roman Catholic faith. Later, Messiaen felt most at home in the Alps of the Dauphine, where he had a house built south of Grenoble where he composed most of his music.  He took piano lessons having already taught himself to play. His interest included the recent music of French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and he asked for opera vocal scores for Christmas presents. He also saved to buy scores and one such was Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt whose "beautiful Norwegian melodic lines with the taste of folk song...gave me a love of melody." Around this time he b

user: what was the birdsong?

assistant: While he had long been fascinated by birdsong, and birds had made appearances in several of his earlier works

user: did he make any pieces based on birds?

assistant: Messiaen incorporated birdsong into all of his compositions and composed several works for which birds provide both the title and subject

user: which one of them was most known?

assistant: He took this development to a new level with his 1953 orchestral work Reveil des oiseaux--its material consists almost entirely of the birdsong

user: what instruments were used in the work?

assistant: for example the collection of thirteen pieces for piano Catalogue d'oiseaux completed in 1958,

user: did he travel or have tours in the 1960s?

assistant: He began to travel widely, to attend musical events and to seek out and transcribe the songs of more exotic birds in the wild.

user: when did he begin to travel?

assistant: In 1962 he visited Japan, where Gagaku music and Noh theatre inspired the orchestral "Japanese sketches",

user: did he work with anyone else during that period?

assistant: In 1966 he was officially appointed professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire,

user: did he win any awards or accolades during this period?

assistant: Further honours included election to the Institut de France in 1967

user: what else did he win?

assistant: the Erasmus Prize in 1971, the award of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1975,

user: was he asked to do any specific work during this period?

assistant: Another work of this period, Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, was commissioned as a commemoration of the dead of the two World Wars