(Music) Catalogue d'Oiseaux (1 Viewer)

This is piano music by Messiaen inspired by birdsong. I'd heard references to it for some time, but only just noticed that an outfit who used to be called selections was offering it as a reasonably priced 3-CD set (Regis RRC 3008). Nice pictures on the front, and good programme notes. Disclaimer: my tastes are fairly conservative; I like music with a melody and rarely spend time doing nothing else but listening to music. I could be persuaded that it's all been downhill since Bach died, with the exception of some popular music that doesn't make a nuisance of itself. To me, Catalog d'Oiseaux sounds like somebody tinkering on the piano, playing bits by ear and now and then trying to find a tune. Given the lack of a tune, or much harmony, it's surprisingly pleasant, but I wouldn't go much further than that. Oh well, it was a nice idea.

Now I'd better crouch down while all the serious defenders of modern music tell me what a philistine I am. As it happens, yes, I do like country music. It has a tune you can sing along to, and the words very often make sense. How did you guess?

Messiaen went a bit mental after about 1951. He wrote a piece called Mode de valeurs et d'intensites in which everything in the piece was pre-determined by a complex series of modes, almost like writing music using maths, and totally eliminating the role of the composer - listening to it is something somewhere between your worst ever nightmare and Hell. Before that he actually had a pretty good ear for a decent tune. Listening to Turangalila Symphony from 1948 is probably the best way to first get into his music (if you can sit still for an hour or so), and that has some birdsong in as well, there's a big bit of Nightingale in the sixth movement that sounds nothing whatsoever like a Nightingale.

Catalogue is not Messiaen's greatest work by a long shot, but the novelty factor has made it one of his most famous. He actually used "accurate" transcriptions of bird song in stacks of his other music, often much more tastefully and in a better crafted manner. Chronochromie is a massive orchestral work that has a full movement of what he reckoned was an accurate transcription of a dawn chorus... hmm, not convinced Olivier! Even in his earlier stuff like Quartet for the end of time he was using birdsong. Oiseaux Exotiques is my favourite of Messiaen's birdy pieces, but it really won't float everyone's boat.

Messiaen is a hugely important figure in mid-twentieth century music, mainly because he was such an influential teacher (he taught electro nut-case Karlheinz Stockhausen and billionaire conductor/composer Pierre Boulez) and had really radical ideas about compostion, but I reckon much of his music is very overrated. Kind of like The Beatles

Give me a bit of Iron Maiden over that any day!

Messiaen also wrote some really difficult choral music. I know - I've sung some it