In May 1952, Olivier Messiaen began to systematically notate and catalogue French birdsong, an endeavour that would soon find expression in the Catalogue d’Oiseaux (Catalogue of Birds), composed over an approximately two-year period between 1956 and 1958. This sounds like a clinical collection of transcriptions, akin to a field guide for bird-listeners, but although Messiaen took a characteristically exacting and precise approach to his notations, this monumental work was far more poetically ambitious than its title suggests. He explained, “I have tried to render exactly the typical birdsong of a region, surrounded by its neighbours from the same habitat, as well as the form of song at different hours of the day and night… accompanied in the harmonic and rhythmic material by the perfumes and colours of the landscape in which the bird lives”.