"the music of treetop troubadours"

Birds and their songs have haunted the poet's imagination since the days of the ancient Greeks, but none have sought out the music of treetop troubadours with the combined persistence, scientific rigor, and sheer religious awe of Olivier Messiaen.

This remarkable French composer and grandfather of the 20th-century avant-garde wrote mind-bendingly original music full of radiant washes of color. He was a devout Catholic with mystical sympathies, and a man for whom ornithology was a perfect extension of religious faith. Outfitted with his notebooks, binoculars, a tape recorder, and an almost childlike sense of wonder, he traveled all over the world, transcribing bird songs and declaring himself an avid student of the grand orchestra of the skies.

"For me," wrote Messiaen, "it is here that music lives: music that is free, anonymous, improvised for pleasure, to greet the rising sun, to charm one's mate, to tell all the world that this branch and this meadow belong to you, to put an end to all disputes, bickering and rivalry, to work off the excessive energy born of love and joie de vivre, to articulate time and space and join with your neighbors in constructing rich and improvised counterpoint, to solace your fatigue and to say farewell to another portion of life as the evening falls."

…read it all:
The birds who gave a composer wings, by Jeremy Eichler
Boston Globe, 20 January 2008

The Globe article includes links to a video of Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques. I like his piano and orchestral works, they are, like many of my own thoughts and visions, strange and bold, and his attention to birdsong I find inspiring.