The Universe of Symbolic Images in Olivier Messiaen’s Early Vocal Cycles

The purpose of this study was to reveal the secret of the names in “Poèmes pour Mi” and “Trois Mélodies” as the bearers of the highest meaning of Messiaen’s musical and poetic works. Decoding the symbolism of the text in the studied vocal cycles is a necessary condition for performers. Understanding the symbolic and conceptual content of the musical works allows the author’s idea to be conveyed to the audience as accurately as possible. For this, approaches and methods proven in musicology were used. Among them, there were a historical approach and biographical method, which allowed us to determine the place of these vocal compositions in the creative heritage and identify their connection with Messiaen’s life circumstances, as well as structural-functional and onomasiological analyses, that revealed the features of musical dramaturgy. A study of individual numbers from “Three Melodies” and “Poems for Mi” proved that in his early works, Messiaen had already declared himself as a composer-poet, in whose works images of Eternity, symbols filled with joy, which became a deep source of understanding had been recorded. The features of his thinking are manifested at all levels of meaning formation: musical, poetic, including onomasiological.