Le Merle noir ("The Blackbird") is a chamber work by the French composer Olivier Messiaen for flute and piano. It was written and first performed in 1952 [1] and is one of the composer's shortest independently published works, lasting just over five minutes. It has neither time signature nor key signature.
The composition originated in a commission for a test piece for flute for the Paris Conservatoire, at which Messiaen was a professor. [2] The winners of the premier prix in the Concours de flûte that year were Daniel Morlier, Jean Pierre Eustache, Jean Ornetti, Régis Calle and the British flute player Alexander Murray. [3] Messiaen had a consuming, lifelong interest in ornithology and particularly bird songs. While not his first work to incorporate stylised birdsong, Le Merle noir was the earliest of his pieces to use authentically transcribed birdsong, [4] foreshadowing Messiaen's later, more extended birdsong-inspired pieces.
Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex. Harmonically and melodically, he employed a system he called modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from the systems of material his early compositions and improvisations generated. He wrote music for chamber ensembles and orchestra, voice, solo organ, and piano, and experimented with the use of novel electronic instruments developed in Europe during his lifetime.
Yvonne Louise Georgette Loriod-Messiaen was a French pianist, teacher, and composer, and the second wife of composer Olivier Messiaen. Her sister was the Ondes Martenot player Jeanne Loriod.
The Conservatoire de Paris, also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France. The Conservatoire offers instruction in music and dance, drawing on the traditions of the 'French School'.
Gérard Henri Grisey was a twentieth-century French composer of contemporary classical music. His work is often associated with the Spectralist Movement in music, of which he was a major pioneer.
The Schola Cantorum de Paris is a private conservatory in Paris. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d'Indy as a counterbalance to the Paris Conservatoire's emphasis on opera.
Henri Benjamin Rabaud was a French conductor, composer and pedagogue, who held important posts in the French musical establishment and upheld mainly conservative trends in French music in the first half of the twentieth century.
Louise-Justine Messiaen, more commonly known under her pseudonym Claire Delbos, was a French violinist and composer, and first wife of the composer Olivier Messiaen.
Éclairs sur l'Au-Delà... is the final completed work of the composer Olivier Messiaen. Scored for a very large orchestra of over a hundred players and unusually lacking a solo piano part, it was written from 1988 to 1991.
Messe de la Pentecôte is an organ mass composed by Olivier Messiaen in 1949–50. According to the composer, it is based on twenty years of improvising at Église de la Sainte-Trinité, where Messiaen was organist since 1931.
Des canyons aux étoiles... is a large twelve-movement orchestral work by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. American Alice Tully commissioned the piece in 1971 to celebrate the bicentenary of the United States Declaration of Independence 1976.
La Nativité du Seigneur, neuf méditations pour orgue is a work for organ, written by the French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1935 in Grenoble.
Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine is a cantata by Olivier Messiaen for women's voices, piano solo, onde Martenot, percussion battery, and small string orchestra, in three movements. Its libretto was written by Messiaen himself, who composed the work from 1943 to 1944.
Elsa Jacqueline Barraine was a composer of French music in the time after the neoclassicist movement of Les Six, Ravel, and Stravinsky. Despite being considered “one of the outstanding French composers of the mid-20th century,” Barraine's music is seldom performed today. She won the Prix de Rome in 1929 for La vierge guerrière, a sacred trilogy named for Joan of Arc, and was the fourth woman ever to receive that prestigious award.
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum is a suite for wind orchestra and percussion instruments by Olivier Messiaen, written in 1964 and first performed the following year. It is composed of five movements.
O sacrum convivium! is a short offertory motet for four-part mixed chorus by French composer Olivier Messiaen, setting "O sacrum convivium". It was composed and published in 1937.
The Verset pour la fête de la Dédicace is a short composition for organ by French composer Olivier Messiaen. It was completed in 1960.
The Prélude, usually affixed with the subtitle pour orgue, is an organ piece in E major by French composer Olivier Messiaen. The work, which dates from the 1920s, is, along with the Offrande au Saint Sacrement, the earliest surviving organ work of the composer. Scholars differ as to the exact date and purpose as to when and why it was composed.
Diptyque : essai sur la vie terrestre et l'éternité bienheureuse is a piece for organ by French composer Olivier Messiaen.
Réveil des oiseaux is a work by Olivier Messiaen for piano and orchestra written in 1953. Messiaen invoked birdsong in this composition, as he had in the earlier Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941). In Réveil des oiseaux he used bird song motifs throughout.
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