Olivier Messiaen’s vocal music opens a new chapter for the mélodie. Both intimate and expansive, it unites the emotional scope of Wagner with a musical language derived from Debussy, using texts written by Messiaen himself. The present chapter considers the musical, poetic, and personal significance of each work, tracing their rapid evolution through the salon pieces Trois Mélodies (1930), the chamber cantata La Mort du Nombre (1930) and the major song cycles Poèmes pour Mi (1935), Chants de terre et de ciel (1938), and Harawi: Chant d’amour et de mort (1945). Epic in scope, with compelling narrative arcs, each cycle is more ambitious than the last, making exceptional demands of both soloist and pianist. We place each work within the context of Messiaen’s life, and analyse key musical techniques and influences such as plainchant, Indian râgas and Peruvian folksong. We also explore textual and thematic features such as Symbolist and Surrealist imagery, showing how the Catholic mysticism of these mélodies, which intertwine love and death in a yearning for transcendence, allows its cosmic drama to unfold.

Messiaen’s relationship with the press and, to some extent, with the wider musical culture within which he lived and worked, can be divided into the period before, and after, ‘Le Cas Messiaen’ in 1945#–6, in which critical responses to his Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine and Vingt Regards sur L’enfant-Jésus sharply divided critical and popular opinion. In this chapter, I explore Messiaen’s early reception in the French press of the 1930s an‘ early ’40s, up to and including ‘Le Cas’, paying particular attention to two particular concerns: the way the critics of the time chose to understand his music as a feature in the landscape of the French music of the time, and the way his public persona, including his own journalism, intersected with that understanding.