Messiaen was born into a literary family. His mother, poet Cécile Sauvage, wrote L’Âme en bourgeon [“The Bourgeoning Soul”] while pregnant with her son, a collection of poems which Messiaen would later recognise as having played a decisive role in shaping his identity. His father, an intellectual, literary theorist, and English-language specialist, notably translated the works of Shakespeare into French. In his early childhood, Messiaen was deeply impressed by the mountains of the Dauphiné, a region in south-eastern France to which he would regularly return, as well as by Shakespeare and the works of Mozart, Gluck, Berlioz, and Wagner, whose scores he requested as birthday and Christmas presents.

Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1919, studying organ and improvisation, as well as piano, percussion, counterpoint, accompaniment, music history, and composition. Notable among his professors were Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, and Marcel Dupré.

His career as an organist was crowned in 1931, when he was named head organist at the Sainte-Trinité Church in Paris (which houses a Cavaillé-Coll grand organ), a position he would retain for the rest his life. His work as an organist was partly motivated by his religious conviction, a core element of his identity. A devout Catholic, Messiaen held that all of his compositions, religious or secular, were manifestations of his faith. The titles of works from throughout his career illustrate his unerring devotion to the church: Apparition de l’Eglise éternelle, Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà, La transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte-Trinité, etc.

Messiaen began teaching in 1934, first at the École Normale de Musique and the Schola Cantorum (both in Paris) until 1939, and from May 1941 as a theory professor at the Paris Conservatoire. He remained at the Conservatoire until his retirement in 1978, becoming an analysis professor in 1947 and a composition professor in 1966. He famously taught the leading figures of several subsequent generations of composers from Europe and beyond, including Boulez, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Amy, Tremblay, Grisey, Murail, Lévinas, and Reverdy, among others. The desire to promulgate knowledge also led him to author several music theoretical treatises (Twenty Lessons In Harmony, The Technique of My Musical Language, and the monumental Treatise on Rhythm, Colour and Ornithology). Beyond encapsulating the theoretical principles underpinning his own compositional language, these works made significant contributions in the areas of rhythm (which Messiaen considered to be a primordial, and perhaps the most fundamental, aspect of music)—resulting from his research of Ancient Greek meters, Hindu decitalas and plain chant neumes—but also melody and harmony, largely through the creation of the “modes of limited transposition” and descriptions of the potential of complex chords to create musical colour (Messiaen famously had synaesthesia).

The 1950s heralded a new era for Messiaen, characterised by a new creative austerity (Quatre Etudes de rythme, Livre d’orgue), but also by the pervasive use of birdsong in his works (Réveil des oiseaux, Oiseaux exotiques, Catalogue d’oiseaux). Through a passion for, and methodical study of, the singing and calling of birds, he achieved a remarkable virtuosity in their transcription and setting within an instrumental context.

In 1962, Messiaen married pianist Yvonne Loriod, who had been a dedicated performer of his works since the mid-1940s and was no doubt partly responsible for the prominence of the piano in his creative output, either as a solo instrument (Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus) or as a soloist in ensemble settings (Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine, Turangalîla-Symphonie, Sept Haïkaï, Des canyons aux étoiles, etc.). Messiaen’s only opera, Saint-François d’Assise (premiered in 1983) is seen by many as his musical testament, the culmination of a life of research in the fields of rhythm, colour, and ornithology, through the prism of his Catholic faith.