Releasing Messiaen's birds from their musical cages: A Study of Olivier Messiaen's birdsong transcription process and the timbral transformations that

Much research into Messiaen's musical aesthetics explores theological and socio-political issues (Boswell-Kurc, 2001; Dellosa, 2015), sometimes combining with analytical insights (Burger, 2009) or musical 'narrative'. These discussions have surprisingly not been matched in studies of birdsong. Past research on birdsong comes from either an analytical (Cheong, 2008) or a performer's perspective (Loo Fung Chiat, 2005). Very rarely are these approaches synthesised, nor is the impact of each upon the other assessed. My research intersects existing studies through the synthesis of birdsong studies and the music-theoretic, through considerations of performance and interpretation. As Cook (1999) surmises, existing work by scholars such as Wallace Berry (1989) are "not so much a cross-disciplinary exercise as an attempt to incorporate performance within the existing intellectual framework of theory." Whilst analytical applications to performance are relevant here, my fundamental aim is to reverse Berry's approach by expanding aesthetic and timbral choices in performance to reduce the analytical applications of notation back towards the 'natural' songs that inspired it. Furthermore, Messiaen's dual transcription process provides an effective opportunity for myself and performers to explore why as well as how Messiaen made his compositional choices, considering their impact on the relationship between technique and style in terms of the extra-musical and the attempt to capture something 'natural' through music (Schultz, 2008). It is through this that an understanding of technical and aesthetic interpretations can be combined to produce a plethora of new possibilities for creating a wholly musical performance (Street, 1976).