BBC Radio 3 drama Messiaen and the Birds airs Monday 23rd February 8pm. Listen live or catch up later on with BBC Sounds.
Poet Michael Symmons Roberts goes on a creative pilgrimage to get to the heart of Olivier Messiaen’s obsession with birdsong, creating an imaginative sonic journey through drama, poetry and Messiaen’s music. One of Messiaen’s main inspirations was the early, pioneering sound recordist and specialist in birdsong Ludwig Koch. Messiaen transcribed many of Koch’s birdsong recordings, but he also listened to birds in the streets and parks of Paris and nearby forests, and the exotic birds in the bird market and the aviary in the zoological gardens. Increasingly Messiaen wanted to see the birds in their own habitat and so, together with his second wife the pianist Yvonne Loriod, he travelled the world to listen to and record birds. For Messiaen, birds were more than a purely musical interest. His mystical experiences led him to believe that birds – alone of all creation – had escaped the Fall, so when he heard birdsong he was hearing the unaltered music of the garden of Eden. Michael travels to Paris to retrace Messiaen’s steps and to see the famous ‘Cahiers de notations des chants d’oiseaux’ – the birdsong notebooks held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in order to understand his own obsession with Messiaen.
Get more information and listen HERE
