ABSTRACT
Drawing on the extant documentation held at the Institut de France, the manuscripts of Messiaen's concours d'essai competition entries in the Paris Conservatoire library, and contemporary press coverage, this chapter examines Messiaen's engagement with the Prix de Rome competition and discusses the possible career advantages and restrictions that winning the Prix de Rome would have brought him. Although Messiaen's Prix de Rome cantatas were written hurriedly, under stressful conditions, and although the competition expectations seem to have placed certain restrictions on his style when compared to his free compositions, they are not unrepresentative of his music of this period. The Prix de Rome competition had a three-level award structure: premier grand prix, premier second grand prix and deuxieme second grand prix. The judging of the competition was extremely complicated and involved two stages. All speculation over the possible benefits and drawbacks which winning the Prix de Rome would have brought Messiaen must be purely academic.
