Messiaen

[mes-yahn]

noun

1. Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles 1908–92, French composer and organist.

Messiaen

/ mɛsjɑ̃ /

noun

1. Olivier (ɔlivje). 1908–92, French composer and organist. His music is distinguished by its rhythmic intricacy; he was influenced by Hindu and Greek rhythms and bird song

Example Sentences

And then there were moments of “11,000 Strings” that sounded like the musical aviaries of Olivier Messiaen emanating from a far away lath house.

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This is no longer the uptight atmosphere where John Adams was angrily booed and where people noisily walked out as Zubin Mehta premiered major new works by Olivier Messiaen and Iannis Xenakis.

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In the late ’50s, Jones relocated to Paris, where he studied composition with the highly regarded teacher Nadia Boulanger and composer Olivier Messiaen.

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Bullock took a spectacular deep dive into a seldom-heard song cycle by Olivier Messiaen, an hour of agony and ecstasy full of obscurities about the European Tristan myth, using a French text peppered with Quechua, an indigenous South American language.

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A lot has been made of the circumstances of Messiaen’s hourlong cycle, for which he wrote his own song texts.

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