LDV49.1

Did he give much advice about how to perform his music? Not a lot. He was extremely kind. He has sometimes been described as a complicated person. Personally, I didn’t notice that. He wasn’t very fussy about details. He himself took a lot of liberties. The recordings of his own music that he left us are proof of that. The notation he uses may sometimes restrict players if they feel bound to respect everything to the letter. But for Messiaen, what mattered was the spirit, the drive, the grand gesture. One very telling fact is that he didn’t put any precise metronome marks in his scores. 67 LOUIS THIRY