Olivier Messiaen

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French composer and musician, one of the most influential French composers of the 20th century. A prolific and distinctive composer, he sought to capture in music both the beauty of the natural world and the spiritual secrets of Roman Catholic mysticism. His style drew on everything from bird song (of more than 250 species) to Indian and Balinese rhythmic moces, as well as more conventional forms of Western chromaticism and Serial techniques. His best-known and most frequently played work is a chamber piece, the "Quartet for the End of Time." Messiaen composed the work in 1940, when he was a prisoner in a German Stalag in Silesia. Using the violin, clarinet, cello and piano, he created a work that described the Apocalypse, in both its terrifying and heavenly manifestations. The work, with Messiaen playing the piano, had its premiere before an audience of 5,000 prisoners. Messiaen was the son of a professor of literature and a poet. He began composing at the age of seven and entered the Paris Conservatory in 1919. He served as the principal organist at the Church of the Trinity in Paris from 1930 to the early 1970s. He began teaching in 1936 when he joined the faculty of the Ecole Normale de Musique. His career was interrupted by the outbreak of WW II in 1939. He joined the French army and was taken prisoner in 1940. Released in 1942, Messiaen began teaching harmony at the Paris Conservatory. As a teacher, he exerted considerable influence on such composers as Pierre Boulez and Stockhausen. His classes were legendary for their scope. One of his early students was pianist Yvonne Loriod, whom he married in 1961, two years after the death of his first wife, Clair Delbos. He had one son, Pascal, with his first marriage. Messiaen died on 4/27/1992, Paris, France. Link to Wikipedia biography