Olivier Messiaen was a French composer steeped in the solitude and ecstasy of Catholic mysticism: everything he wrote was ...

Probably the only classical composer to have a mountain named after him (Mount Messiaen, Utah, 1978), Messiaen is among the most strikingly individual of 20th-century composers. Probably the only ...

Meet Olivier Messiaen – the bird-mad composer who used birdsong to create some of the most startlingly original music of all time. It all started in springtime... in a prisoner of war camp ...

In March 1945, the classical music world in Paris split into warring camps after the premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s two-hour devotional suite for solo piano, Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus. The ...