Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Piano Music Volume 3

Olivier Messiaen is among the most influential figures in the music of the twentieth century. At first alarming and shocking audiences, he later won an unassailable position, respected at home in France and abroad for his achievement through a musical language that is intensely personal, emotional and informed by a deep Catholic piety. Born in Avignon in 1908, he started piano lessons in 1917 and two years later entered the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included Marcel Dupré, Maurice Emmanuel and Paul Dukas. In 1931 he was appointed organist at La Trinité and held this position until his death, writing, particularly in the 1930s, a number of important compositions for the organ. In 1940, as a prisoner-of-war in Silesia, he wrote his Quatuor pour la fin du temps (‘Quartet for the End of Time’), returning, on his release in 1942, to the Conservatoire. There he taught harmony but exercised