Technique of my Musical Language

Being a fascinatingly unique composer, Olivier Messiaen pushed the conventions of composing to its very limits. The composer’s music remains ever-popular and The Technique of my Musical Language provides the key and necessary knowledge into the study of his delightful music.

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the mere age of 11, where he won many prizes. As a passionate ornithologist, as well as organist and composer, many of Messiaen’s works depict bird song. His music is rhythmically complex and harmonically and melodically distinct, often using modes of limited transposition. It is for these reasons that the composer compiled The Technique of my Musical Language. The book contains text with musical examples, describing unique elements of his music, such as ametrical music, his rhythmic notations and his modes of limited transposition, among many others. For all fans of Messiaen, The Technique of my Musical Language is essential to the understanding of the composer’s much loved music.