La Transfiguration was the first of Messiaen¹s works to use sacred words as its text, drawing from the bible and the missal on the subject of Christ¹s transfiguration. It is not a dramatic work, but a liturgical one, meant, as Paul Griffiths notes, to show a story rather than to tell it. It is scored for a large choir and orchestra, with a duration of about ninety minutes. This work hearkens back to Messiaen¹s music of several decades earlier: gone are the harsher twelve-note constructions of the later works, replaced by a return to diatonicism, modes, ³loose² triadic harmony, and metrical freedom. The piece consists of fourteen movements, divided into two sets of seven (more of Messiaen¹s theological symbolism). Typically, there is also the incorporation of birdsong into the melodic framework, and it is important to note that, according to Griffiths, more than a decade later there is more species of birdsong in La Transfiguration than in the Catalogue des oiseaux of 1958. The is also perhaps a recollection of Debussy through the use of the whole-tone scale. Ultimately, this work exemplifies Messiaen¹s tendency to compose music intended to be appreciated not in terms of its formal connectedness and continuity, but rather moment by moment.

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