How can it be that a person at a very young age gets infected by the music virus and by the touch of the roman catholic faith, and live a long and happy life, devoted to his faith and to his music? This is my story of Olivier Messiaen.

These are the reasons I got interested in Olivier Messiaen [1908- 1992 ]

When I was a teenager I, by accident, heard an organ piece with very dense harmonic colours, warm and dark, and it wouldn’t let go. This piece is called ‘Le Banquet Céleste‘, and Olivier Messiaen wrote this piece that was published in 1928, when he was only twenty years old!
Years later I heard an album by a band called ‘ Naked City’, the album’s title ‘Grand Guignol’. On this album, that featured the eclectic composer John Zorn who wrote almost all of the 41 songs, was an instrumental song called ‘Louange à l’éternité de Jésus‘. A beautiful interpretation of a composition by Olivier Messiaen. Here we hear the same mystique but arranged for a rock ensemble. [ The same song ‘Louange à l’éternité de Jésus‘ [ from Quatuor pour la fin du temps ] is also beautifully played by Charles Curtis on cello and Reiko Uchida on piano.]

With ‘Le Banquet Céleste’ starts my love for the organ, hearing this organ composition played on a particular organ opened a door and it entered my own musical universe and future.
The recording I am referring to is Olivier Messiaen Par Lui Même. Recorded in 1956
Messiaen plays his early organ works on the organ of the ‘Église de la Sainte-Trinité‘

There she is the organ of the ‘Église de la Sainte-Trinité‘

Église de la Sainte-Trinité’

Earliest organ works
Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatory in 1919, at the age of eleven.
From his childhood Messiaen’s vocation was to be a composer. It was not his faith that led him to take up the organ. His skill as an improviser prompted his harmony teacher to recommend Messiaen to Marcel Dupré [ Organ teacher at the Paris Conservatory ]
Messiaen was 18 years old before he first played an organ. Dupré later recalled:

” he sat stupefied in front of my organ keyboards. He had never seen an organ console before. After an hour of explanations and demonstrations, I gave him the Bach C minor Fantasia to learn. He came back a week later and played it to me by heart, perfectly; an astonishing feat! “

His first organ work ‘Le Banquet Céleste‘ dates from his years at the Conservatory.

Barely four years after learning that first piece of Bach he gained his post at the Trinité.
In 1930 Messiaen became the chief organist of the Trinité. A position he was to hold for more than 40 years

‘Le Banquet Céleste’