Meet Olivier Messiaen – the bird-mad composer who used birdsong to create some of the most startlingly original music of all time. It all started in springtime... in a prisoner of war camp ...

Probably the only classical composer to have a mountain named after him (Mount Messiaen, Utah, 1978), Messiaen is among the most strikingly individual of 20th-century composers. Probably the only ...

Born in 1960, he studied with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire and with Alexander ... including a knighthood in ...

Messiaen wrote his La nativité du Seigneur ... blooming’ – first appeared in print in 1599, though the original composer remains a mystery. Among the many to recycle the melody are ...