The orchestral Les offrandes oubliées (The forgotten offerings) was completed in 1930, with a piano version. The orchestral work was first performed the following year. It is in the form of a triptych, representing the Cross, the descent of Man into Sin, and finally the offer of salvation through the Eucharist. Musically this is suggested by the use of a ternary structure. The work opens with a passage marked Presque lent, douloureux, profondément triste (Almost slow, sorrowful, deeply sad). The melancholy serenity is brusquely interrupted by a burst of sound, with the direction Vif, féroce, désespéré, haletant (Lively, fierce, desperate, gasping for breath). The last section is introduced by the return of a motif from the opening section, moving into a passage of suggested hope, marked Lent, avec une grande pitié et un grand amour (Slow, with great pity and great love). Messiaen wrote his Fantaisie burlesque in 1932 to demonstrate, not entirely successfully, as he himself admitted, his sense of humour. The opening section, which returns, framing contrasting sections, leads to jazz rhythms in the second section. The first material returns, to be followed by a gentler passage, marked tendre. This is succeeded by the return of the first and second section, before the principal material is heard again, leading to an emphatic F major conclusion. The death of Messiaen’s former teacher, Paul Dukas, in 1953 brought the solemn Pièce pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas as a tribute. Here again Messiaen makes use of harmonies from which he derived his own synthetic modes as a basis of composition. The descending contours have an elegiac implication, with the recurrent lower octave B, a resounding knell that forms the basis of the final chord. The lighter-hearted Rondeau of 1943 belongs to the period of the Vision de l’amen and the monumental Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus. It was written as a competition piece for the Paris Conservatoire, and suggests unexpected connections with an older generation of French composers. In a clear rondo structure, intervening episodes are framed by the rapid figuration of the principal material in music that makes some technical demands on the performer. The sonorous Prélude of 1964 was published posthumously in 2000 and seems to hark back to the Satie of the 1890s with his curious religious preoccupations. La fauvette des jardins (The Garden Warbler), a substantial work, written in 1972, derives its material from bird-song, like the Catalogue d’oiseaux, completed in 1958. At the beginning of the score Messiaen describes the scene, reflecting the events, as they occur in the score.

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