ABSTRACT
‘Il faut aimer la musique de Messiaen’, said Henri Dutilleux in 1991. But I am sure the composer would not wish this to be translated as, for example, ‘It is compulsory to love Messiaen’s music’, not least because he continued: ‘What is most interesting is its logic. Even composers who cannot stand his music cannot deny its logic, or rather its coherence; it is impossible to change a single note or harmony’ (Nichols, 1991). 1 This essential stylistic unity is the quality that Dutilleux perhaps prizes above all others in a composer. Certainly, Messiaen was inspired by many extremely diverse sources, but his music could never be mistaken for that of any other composer. Dutilleux has also said that he admires the quantity as well as the quality of Messiaen’s oeuvre, no doubt partly because his own list of work is comparatively short.
