Messiaen: Poetics, Polemics and Politics
Olivier Messiaen is a figure we might instinctively feel we know. In a time of skepticism, he was the musical visionary; in an urban world he was the ‘ornithologist-composer’; in a complex and secular age he was the ‘simple man of faith’. This notion of the composer is underpinned by the sense that he stood apart from the rest of the twentieth century, that he was somehow different, and it is deeply ingrained: the entry on Messiaen in the second edition of The New Grove, for example, begins ‘He was a musician apart.’ 
New material that has recently come to light throws considerable doubt on the notion of the ‘musician apart’. In this article, I look at two aspects of this fresh evidence and consider the extent of Messiaen’s engagement with the aesthetic and political milieu of the 1930s. I look firstly at what new light it casts on Messiaen’s famous collaboration in La Jeune France. I then examine some work on Messiaen’s position in the highly-charged politics of the time before concluding with an analysis of Messiaen’s critical response to Darius Milhaud. 
Throughout, I argue that Messiaen’s engagement in the turbulent debates of the 1930s provides a vivid reminder that there is so much more to understand about the familiar ‘composer-rhythmician-ornithologist’, the ‘musician apart’, that we think we know so well.