ABSTRACT
Messiaen's birdsong cahiers run to several thousand pages and form by far the largest body of surviving Messiaen manuscripts, almost all unknown. The study of birds and birdsong consumed Messiaen's every spare moment: the weekends during the spring months when he would escape to the forests on the western edge of Paris, the summer months at his Alpine retreat at Petichet, his travels throughout France and abroad to attend concerts of his music. In Catalogue d'oiseaux, composed between 1956 and 1958 but based on research going back at least to 1953, Messiaen reconciled these two extremes, finding a way of being true to nature, or at least true to nature as he experienced it, while giving full rein to his imagination. This chapter outlines the nature of the riches contained in the cahiers, giving a detailed glimpse of Messiaen's evolving treatment of birdsong across the remainder of the decade.
