Peter Varley wrote:

>I find Messiaen's music boring.  OK, there are other composers whose music
>I find boring, but they aren't played anywhere near so frequently.  The
>music I find especially boring is the Catalogue des Oiseaux (sp?).  That's
>subjective, of course.  Objectively, I would also question whether, given
>the availability of tape-recorders, transcriptions of birdsong can properly
>be called compositions and have any value as music.

I cannot believe anyone could listen to the Catalogue D'O.  and feel like
they're just hearing a transcription of birdsong!  If you'd asked Messiaen,
he'd have said all he was doing is simply transcribing the birds just as
they are out in the french fields; but in typical self-contradictory
fashion, there is SO much more than just birdsong in there.  Just listening
to it as pure music you know there's much more, but if you read some
detailed notes on the Catalogue you find out he's trying to convey the kind
of landscape the bird is in, the forms of stationary features of that
landscape, other motions and sounds happening around it, anthropomorphized
aspects of the bird's "personality", even the colors of the bird's plumage
and surroundings (Olivier had synaesthesia his whole life).  Much more than
just transcribed song.  Please drop $14 on Hakon Austbo's complete 3cd rec.
on Naxos and listen to "La Roussarole Effarvette" as if it were pure music
without programme.  I swear you'll be converted.

Raising my crest for Messiaen,
Jon Lewis
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