ABSTRACT
Ever since Messiaen proudly claimed that his birds were ‘parfaitement authentiques’ in the preface to his first all-bird composition, Réveil des oiseaux (1953), musicians have wondered whether his imitations are indeed accurate. Until now, measuring his accuracy has proved impossible because his live blackcaps and chiffchaffs have long since flown away, and their descendents are unreliable substitutes because songbirds learn their songs, and learned songs change over time and across space. In the absence of Messiaen’s own models, conclusions about his accuracy have been restricted to three positions: his birds are accurate, inaccurate, or the issue does not matter. In 1960 Norman Demuth argued that the birds are accurate, calling the style oiseau‘impressionistic verism’ (Demuth, 1960). Pronouncing verism ‘irrelevant’, however, Trevor Hold compared a real nightingale to one from Réveil des oiseaux and found the imitation inaccurate (Hold, 1971, p. 119). Meri Kurenniemi (1980) argued that the question of accuracy is ‘not essentially the problem at all’, because it rested on the subjective issue of the listener’s perception. Paul Griffiths went a step further, conceding Messiaen’s ‘relative accuracy’ because his birds were more complex than previous birds in the repertory. Though he wrongly assumed that the most complex depiction must be the most accurate, he agreed with Kurenniemi that the ‘accuracy of the copy seems rather beside the point’ (Griffiths, 1985, pp. 168–9, 174 and 188). 1
