This output to me sounds a lot like a contemporary "lots of complicated dramatic notes"-style of composer imposing that specific style on snippets that loosely resemble bird calls. It doesn't sound like birds at all. Maybe I'm just not smart enough for this stuff. Or maybe the composer has a particularly dramatic imagination and is using the birds just as a starting point.

I don't think its a question of intelligence. you have to spend some time listening to messaien and late romantic/contemporary music in general before you start to 'learn the language'. I think its worth the minor effort if you think there is nothing new under the sun, but it all your choice :)

To get into Messiaen, try his Turangalîla symphony. It's more accessible, and --if you're so inclined-- almost ecstatic. Then the Quator pour le fin du temps, which was written under particularly difficult conditions. His more religiously oriented work is also more accessible.

Well, when I write "more accessible" that indeed means the rest is harder to get into. No shame, though. It's a bit of an acquired taste. There are many 20th century composers (especially the serialists) I cannot stand. I can't hear the music in it. But Messiaen did get to me. Perhaps it's his "colours" or the Debussy-like chords.

I think the dynamic range of multiple instruments naturally invites "lots of complicated dramatic notes", which you can find even in romantic music. Of Messiaen's works, my favorite remains "Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus". Of course the symphony also introduces many new and alluring timbres not found in the piano. In "Catalogue d'Oiseaux" I myself also struggled to find more than a passing resemblance to bird song (i.e. beyond more familiar song found in the treble of l'Alouette Lulu), so thanks for those links.

As for ecstatic music, I wonder how you'd appreciate the music of Maurice Ohana, specifically "Messe", which despite being an operatic (or choral?) piece, I find calming.

I believe John Sichel's "Oiseaux Ordinaires" is homage to Messiaen's "Oiseaux Exotiques", though once again I'm not sure how much actual birdsong it incorporates.

I've always wondered how much of music's aesthetic is inherent, and how much relates to extrinsic factors. Normally you hear a piece and if you like it, you think, "hmm, that's good music". But maybe you only liked it because you're used to that type of music. So if you want to listen to music from a new genre perhaps you listen to it a few times, letting an appreciation percolate from whatever place we draw our musical inspiration. Then, because a lot of people say "this is a good genre; good music" and the genre is large with some shit pieces but also masterpieces, you come to believe that the genre has value. But some genres very few people come to appreciate, and that includes serialism, and I wonder... Is serialism lacking an inherent aesthetic, or is it just too different to easily appreciate? For example I played, and came to love, Schoenberg's "Six Little Pieces for Piano" (op 19). My interpretation was idiosyncratic; like no one else's. But looking on YouTube I can't find any performances that I enjoy or would recommend. So does my appreciation for this music reflect the blood and sweat that I've put into it, or does it reflect the beauty and understanding of the underlying musical theory? The question is: does serialism need to be played to be appreciated?

> "Vingt regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus"

Great work. I also like l'Ascencion. I even try to play bits on the organ (not that I'm a good organist).

> I wonder how you'd appreciate the music of Maurice Ohana, specifically "Messe"

That didn't do it for me. I found it a bit too wandering, amorphous. I listened to some of his guitar work, which is much more concise, somewhat Webern-like. That spoke more to me. Then autoplay put on 12 etudes d'interpretation, which I predominantly found to be too "forced".

> Is serialism lacking an inherent aesthetic, or is it just too different to easily appreciate?

Composers, musicians, and musicologists have tried to push it long enough, and it never got hold, so I guess it just can't work apart from some gimmicky use. It's too rigid. E.g., the dynamics, rhythm, melody and harmony of a piece should be related to each other, but in serialism, they're simply tossed around as if every preconceived change between pp and ff and then mf and then a bunch of sfz will always be musical.

Music thrives under limitations, because it's basically repeated time, and limitations can provide direction. But if I were to start a school of composition that only allows one tone per part, I think nobody would be able to write a meaningful piece (except as a gimmick, again, by picking the instruments that fit with the chord you want). Some limitations are simply not musical, and I guess serialism is among those.

When I sang in the cathedral back in the 00s, the organist would often play Messiaen as a postlude. There were some pieces where with the pedal work, multiple manuals and adjusting stops that it was like watching Keith Moon on the drums.

Oh that was fantastic, thanks. It's not often I have reason to listen to organ music. Almost makes one want to purchase an organ.

I don't care for the 12 études d'interprétation, but neither do I care for Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableux. I find both to be too pedagogical. Which makes no sense; according to Wikipedia they're meant to be "picture pieces". So I haven't always put much stock in études.

someone else hints at this but one of the easiest Messiaen pieces to understand is his "Quartet for the end of time", written while he was a prisoner of the germans during WW2. The wikipedia article for the piece is actually pretty good "liner notes" if you want a guide to each movement.

One other thing about whatever you want to call the contemporary continuation of classical music - you're right that there's often a lot going on. I've heard it described as "fragile" music: in contrast to pop songs that still work if you're on a train, if they're interrupted by an announcement, if you only listen to the second half, etc., a lot of this music is written to be listened to by someone who is relatively calm and undistracted, in a quiet environment. And honestly some of it has additional expectations of its audience, like a better than average ability to remember melodic snippets and recognize their transformations, or an ability to track "advanced" harmonies and key changes. But imo the general rule "90% of everything is crap" applies in this genre as well, and most of the pieces that everyone will speak of in glowing terms have a way of 'working' for most listeners without demanding advanced education, study, or above average musical-listening abilities.

Good to know. I should add that I actually liked the stuff that I heard, much more so than most contemporary Western "classical"/concert music, and I'm happy to follow up on this particular composer. I was just disappointed at how little it sounded like bird song to me, and instead fell into what seem to be some stereotypical tropes of this style.

I think a lot of it also helps to be inside of. I had the good fortune for a few years around the turn of the century to sing in the Holy Name Cathedral choir in Chicago and the choir director programmed a lot of 20th-century classical work alongside the blue-haired lady standards and renaissance works. One of my favorite pieces had the choir singing a C chord while two sopranos sang a descant of Db-Ab above it. Aside from sounding really cool, it was also a really difficult feat technically speaking as those are not intervals that are easily sung. It was quite the education, although I started to realize as I worked on my own music that I was no longer hearing dissonances the way I used to.