Last week I passed along the French Mediterranean coast on the latest leg of my writing project The Long Spring.  I crossed the border on foot from Portbou in Spain, walking over the Colls dels Belitres, into Roussillon.  This is where Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) found the inspiration for two of the masterpieces in his collection of solo piano pieces Catalogue d’Oiseaux. 

Messiaen’s introductory notes to Le Merle Bleu (Blue Rock Thrush) and Le Traquet Stapazin (Black-eared Wheatear) describe the landscape on the coast near Banyuls-sur-Mer in vivid detail, along with the birds he heard, and whose voices he transcribed, and the impressions he gained from the colours and sounds of the sea and the cliffs.  I decided to devote a day of The Long Spring to finding the very places he describes, and listening out for the birds he found in June 1957.

Messiaen is specific in naming where on the coast he based himself:  “Near Banyuls:  Cap l’Abeille, Cap Rederis.”  I set out on Tuesday morning and walked south from Banyuls.  I was looking for a cliff face among the many minor capes and inlets that make up the main headlands he mentions.  “In an echoing rock crevice, the blue rock thrush sings....his song blends with the sound of the waves.”

​I wasn’t at first even sure there would still be blue rock thrushes there, sixty years on, but I need not have worried about that.  They were there, and singing away.  Just inland from the cliff edge, in the heathy garrigue vegetation, a Thekla lark sang, just as it did in Messiaen’s day, playing the same accompanying role as it does in the piece.  And the herring gulls he noted (today we would call them yellow-legged gulls) were there, too. 

​I was struck by the way distance, and the angle of the cliffs, and the way the sea masked certain pitches at times, made a big difference in the sounds that reached me.  The blue rock thrush song in particular, varied in timbre from rich and bell-like, to thin and dry. 

Having travelled through Spain without seeing one, I suspected that black-eared wheatears were late this year, and I was certainly too early for the swifts that feature in both pieces.  But I wanted to explore inland a little, where Messiaen worked among the terraced vines and cork oak woods, notating the wheatear’s song.  I found the place he describes easily enough:  “vineyards in terraces....the garrigue: a jumble of low, spiny shrubs, gorse, rosemary, cistus, kermes oak....cork-oak....”  As well as the birds that had not yet arrived, I missed the spectacled warbler, which Messiaen features in Le Traquet Stapazin. It should have been there, and I wonder if its absence is the main change in the last sixty years, along with evident erosion due to visitor pressure; and the two are probably linked.

Twenty-two years ago, as a keen young devotee of the music of Olivier Messiaen, I attended the posthumous UK premiere of his last completed orchestral work, the 11-movement Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà… (1987–91). The thought never remotely crossed my mind then that one day I might play a part in enabling an orchestral movement by the composer to receive its premiere. Even if it had, I would never have guessed then that the piece would have a link with Éclairs. I am thrilled, therefore, that Messiaen’s Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (oiseau Tui) - A bird from the tree of Life (Tui bird) will receive its world premiere at the BBC Proms on 7 August.

Un oiseau des arbres de Vie was originally intended as a movement for Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà...  whose ninth movement is called Plusieurs oiseaux des arbres de Vie and whose third, which features his transcription of the Australian lyrebird, was originally to be called Un autre oiseau des arbres de Vie. The new movement is also a transcription of a single bird, the tui, a New Zealand species that Messiaen also evokes in Couleurs de la Cité céleste (1963) and the incomplete Concert à quatre (1991–92).

I found Oiseau Tui to have been fully completed in 3-stave score, Messiaen writing his customary ‘Bien’ along with indications of the desired orchestration. I have realised the orchestration following the sketches, a project generously supported by Birmingham Conservatoire’s French Music Hub and the Faculty of the Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University.

Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (Oiseau Tui) is likely to be the last mature orchestral statement to emerge from Messiaen’s archive. As such, it is fitting that the music consists entirely of his transcription of birdsong, for birds held a lifelong fascination of the composer. In the works of the 1930s and 1940s, this birdsong-based material was more sophisticated than anything found in earlier composers, with the possible exception of Ravel, but it was stylised, and rarely identified with a specific species. That changed in 1952, when Messiaen sought advice from ornithologists and started to learn how to identify what he was seeing and hearing. From that point on, every single one of his works contains transcribed birdsong, with hundreds of species from across the globe named in his scores. Wherever he went, Messiaen took his cahiers, musical notebooks, and would seek opportunities to transcribe local birds. As we have learnt since his death, he also transcribed numerous birds from recordings.

In his music, the sounds of the birds are filtered through Messiaen’s highly attuned, creative ear. Sometimes they are heard in a direct reflection of nature. This might be in portraits, as in the piano cycle Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956–58), or in the form of grand choruses, as in Réveil des oiseaux - Awakening of the birds - from 1953 or in the opera Saint François d’Assise (1975–83) where the saint preaches to the birds. Elsewhere, Messiaen creates artificial aviaries, bringing together species never heard together in the wild, as in Oiseaux exotiques (1955–56).  He uses birdsong as ‘found material’, as symbols and metaphor and even, in the opera, as direct characters participating in the drama. However, it was only with the Lyrebird piece from Éclairs and Oiseau Tui that Messiaen wrote entire orchestral movements using nothing more than the sounds of a single bird.

So why was the tui omitted from Éclairs?  We know that late in its gestation, Messiaen moved around several of the key movements of Éclairs, fundamentally altering the balance of the work in terms of both musical and theological structure. In the new layout of movements, Oiseau Tui lacked a clear purpose. However, Messiaen was clearly very attached to the movement as he resisted omitting it until a very late stage in the composition. Had he lived longer, I am certain it would have appeared in the context of another work. The bottom line is that, unlike many of the rediscoveries since his death, this piece finds Messiaen writing at the height of his powers. Moreover it was fully completed by him, just not orchestrated. While it is clearly by Messiaen, it also says something new. As such, it is a reminder that, for all he lived a long life, Messiaen still had much to say.

The northern cardinal is the state bird of seven states, more than any other species:  Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.  Undoubtedly its familiarity and bright colouration are part of the reason, but it is also one of the most loved songsters in North America.  Both sexes sing clear, whistled song patterns, which are repeated several times, then varied.

According to Olivier Messiaen who has featured many times on these pages, it was his teacher Paul Dukas who told him, “Listen to the birds; they are great masters.”  He took the advice, and turned it into a life-long obsession, becoming an expert on bird song in the process.  Most of Messiaen's style oiseau music is the product of careful notation of the birdsong he encountered in the field.

However, Oiseaux exotiques (1955-56) cites no fewer than 40 different birdsongs from far-flung lands, all transcribed from recordings.  The work, in a single continuous movement, may be regarded as a sort of avian fantasy, but is really a sound fantasy—an exploration of timbres and rhythms where birdsong meets ancient Karnatic and Greek rhythms. The northern cardinal has a prominent role almost from the start.

Robert Fallon is a musicologist based at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.  He has made a study of Messiaen's transcriptions of birdsong and compared them with spectograms of the real thing.

In this superb performance of the first part of Oiseaux Exotiques, with Messiaen's one-time student Pierre Boulez conducting, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the piano, the first two fragments above are about 3 minutes in, and the third about twenty seconds later.

Finally, a chance to hear the bird for yourself:

I am grateful to Robert Fallon for permission to use the spectogram comparison diagram.  Rob's website contains a lot of interesting information and further examinations of other species.  Another comprehensive site for fans of Messiaen is run by Malcolm Ball at www.oliviermessiaen.org

The Blue Rock Thrush of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux inhabits crevices of the cliffs overhanging the Mediterranean near Banyuls in the Roussillon. Messiaen paints a vivid picture of waves crashing below and swifts screaming above before the blue rock thrush is heard.  Its song is vaguely pentatonic but with a riot of ornamentation and flourish, leading pianist and Messiaen scholar Peter Hill to describe it as “a Balinese gamelan gone mad.” Later, a fast and brilliant section introduces the song of the Thekla lark.  Serene, beautiful chords link the main "bird" sections.  Despite the uncompromising complexity and dissonance in much of his music, these moments of calm are nonetheless classic Messiaen.

Messiaen’s introduction speaks of the bird’s song blending with the sound of the waves.  The pedal marking creates some extraordinary resonances with the accompanying bass chords. Throughout the piece these bass sonorities represent the echo given off by rock faces overlooking the blue sea.   

The blue rock thrush is a bird that can appear anything from powder blue to black depending on the light, and Messiaen undoubtedly saw in this the many moods of the sea, including terrifying waves and rough cliffs. The many depictions of birdsong are often quite sharply set against four “mood” sections which are announced in the score in characteristically vivid ways: ‘the resonance of rock faces', 'luminous, iridescent, blue halo' and so on. These exquisitely harmonious episodes, according to the composer, complement the satin texture and purple-blue, slate and blue-black shades of the blue rock thrush's plumage.  In this most joyous and visual of the Catalogue pieces, Messiaen connects birdsong, landscape and his own sensory perception in a complex but eminently shareable real-world experience.

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was one of a number of World War II prisoners of war who passed the time in captivity by studying birds.  But whereas John Buxton, Peter Conder and George Waterston went on to publish their detailed observations on the way to illustrious careers as ornithologists, Messiaen’s meticulous note-taking was of the musical kind.


Famously, he finished his ground-breaking Quartet for the End of Time in Stalag VIII-A, Görlitz.  Invoking the songs of blackbirds and nightingales, it was the first major work written in what was to become known as his style oiseau.  In the two decades that followed, he wrote dozens of works that were either explicitly studies in transcribing birdsong, or other works – usually religious – that used material from his extensive collection of birdsong notations he had amassed during regular expeditions into the countryside.



Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux comprises seven books of piano pieces based on birdsong he had transcribed in the field.  These date from the early 1950 and it was not until 1970 that he wrote another significant piano piece based on birdsong, La Fauvette des Jardins - The Garden Warbler.  Although he wrote birdsong-influenced pieces for orchestral and choral forces for the rest of his life, La Fauvette des Jardins was his last major piano work of its kind.

Peter Hill is the foremost pianist/scholar to have specialised in Messiaen, and he has performed and recorded the definitive interpretations of the birdsong pieces.  He has studied Messiaen’s original field notes as well as the finished scores, and, most importantly, the songs of the birds themselves.  In 2012, among Messiaen’s papers Hill discovered what appeared to be several pages of a draft of a previously unknown piano work, dating from the summer of 1961. 

La Fauvette Passerinette -The Subalpine Warbler - was virtually complete: the pencil manuscript indicated it was ready for rewriting as a fair copy, complete with pedalling and fingering indications.  Passerinette seems to have been intended as the start of a new piano cycle.  He would treat birdsong in a very different way to before, with the birdsong generating the harmonies rather than being scored against harmonic backgrounds that evoked the bird’s habitat.

I received an email from Peter Hill announcing his discovery and inviting me to attend that very rare thing:  a Messiaen world premiere, which took place a year ago in Sheffield.  Now the new piece has been recorded and made the top 20 classical albums chart – not bad for modernist music.  It was featured on CD Review at the weekend and can be heard for another 4 weeks by clicking the button.

Like millions of people, I first heard the incredible song of the Lyrebird courtesy of David Attenborough’s Life of Birds series back in 1998.  Those few minutes of expert mimicry have been voted one of the most popular wildlife clips ever.  This morning Sir David presented this wonderful songster on Radio 4's Tweet of the Day.

Unsurprisingly, the lyrebird features in aboriginal Australian music, in what may be a continuous tradition lasting tens of thousands of years.  Matthew Doyle, a composer and dancer of aboriginal-Irish descent, continues this tradition in a series of pieces for voice, didjeridu and percussion, issued on a CD entitled, simply, Lyrebird.

A composer who famously appropriated birdsong into many works was Olivier Messiaen, and later composers such as Harrison Birtwistle have claimed that his Messiaen’s style oiseau had a direct and lasting impact on modernists searching for more naturalistic – or at least less formal – musical structures.  It is perhaps fitting that Messiaen’s last completed work should incorporate the bird widely regarded as having the most extraordinary song of them all.

Éclairs sur l'au-delà… [Illuminations of the beyond…] is an orchestral piece composed in 1987–91.  Messiaen visited Australia during that country's bicentennial celebrations in 1988, enabling him to use the sounds of Australian birds notated in the wild.  The third of eleven movements is called L’Oiseau-lyre et la Ville-fiancée [The Lyrebird and the Bridal City].  Whereas traditional Australian music features vocal and didjeridu imitations of birds, Messiaen's works attempt to reproduce the extreme complexity of bird song through notated music.  L'oiseaux-lyre et la Ville-fiancée is among his most complex, with 67 changes of tempo and a dizzying variety of motifs.

Someone who knows these birds and their songs well is the composer Edward Cowie, who was interviewed by NATURAL LIGHT a couple of weeks ago.  He spent twelve years in Australia in the 1980s and 90s and describes an evening sitting at the edge of a cliff overlooking the King Valley in Victoria.  “Just as the light finally dipped towards an inky darkness, several male lyrebirds began to sing in a series of interlocking but combative ensemble performances”.   Cowie often contrasts himself with Messiaen:  he doesn’t attempt to note, and then notate, the exact rhythms, pitches and timbres of the bird.  He is more interested in natural sound as part of an overall experience of a landscape, a place, a moment.

For me, Lyre Bird Motet captures that smoky valley in Victoria wonderfully.  Cowie uses rather dreamy harmonies from one part of the chorus to suggest a balmy dusk scene while the other singers, like a real evening chorus, are all (seemingly) independent soloists, bringing bursts of sound, or maybe shafts of light, into the dim, cool forest.

This morning, on Tweet of the Day, we heard how the Lyrebird – a bit like Edward Cowie - is an avid borrower of sound, listening, choosing, and replaying echos of its own immediate environment. 

Recently, while preparing a talk about birds and music, I ran a search for samples of lyrebird song.  The best was from a captive bird in Adelaide Zoo.  The lyrebird enclosure was in need of repair and a pair of local builders had been brought in.  Some days later Chook, the dominant male lyrebird, gave a recital of his latest composition, based mainly on the sounds he had borrowed from the builders.  In a remarkable recording we hear the hammering of a hammer, the whirr of an electric screwdriver, a power drill, and an old-fashioned hand saw cutting through a plank.  We also hear one builder greeting the other and we can surmise that Chook’s neighbours included a whip-bird and a kookaburra, because we hear a perfect imitation of them both – simultaneously!

Update:  Edward Cowie's Lyre Bird Motet will be part of the BBC Singers' 90th birthday celebrations next Wednesday 24th September, St. Giles Cripplegate, London 6pm.