ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the various ways in which Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae influenced the compositional aesthetics of Olivier Messiaen. It considers Aquinas's theological ideas, particularly his synthesis of faith and reason, and their place in the Roman Catholic Church. The chapter focuses on the cultural milieu in which Messiaen grew up, which found the Catholic Church in France turning to Thomistic thought in order to oppose Modernism. The Summa Theologiae of Aquinas has been recognized as the most authoritative theological work for several centuries in the Catholic Church. Messiaen grew up during the post-war renouveau catholique in France, the Catholic revival associated with the Church's crusade against modernism. Messiaen's musical synthesis of varied elements in his works can be considered an analogue to Aquinas's philosophical synthesis of Christian and non-Christian writers. Messiaen employed a system of cases, as in the Latin declensions, via three musical formulas, representing, respectively, the genitive, ablative or locative; accusative or dative; and privative cases.
