Standing as it does near the end of Olivier Messiaen's career, Des canyons aux étoiles represents both a culmination of many aesthetic elements and the melding of those elements into a mature style. Its large-scale form somehow combines the sounds of a highly idiosyncratic instrumental ensemble into a compositional whole—perhaps reflecting the unity in diversity found in the striking nature scenes that served as the piece's inspiration. Des canyons directly preceded the conception of his enormous operatic undertaking, Saint François d'Assise (1975 - 1983), whose scope overshadowed the remaining smaller pieces composed before the composer's death in 1992.

Having receiving a commission from Alice Tully to compose a work in honor of the American Bicentennial, Messiaen found himself browsing for inspiration in a book entitled Wonders of the World. He was so engaged by an entry on the national parks of Utah that he decided to visit them himself. Consequently, the names of three of the 12 movements of Des canyons aux étoiles (From the canyons to the stars) take their names from geographical wonders of the Utah desert. The fifth movement, "Cedar Breaks et le don de crainte" (Cedar Breaks and the Gift of Awe), depicts the composer's own reaction to the jagged cliffs and delicate fissures of the red rock canyon, a reaction heavily informed by his devout Catholic faith: "These features imbued in me a sense very close to Awe...the reverence of the sacred, of the Divine presence." The final movement, "Zion Park et le cité céleste" (Zion Park and the Celestial City), renders the multicolored vista of this hidden geological wonder as a metaphor for the scriptural Zion, the Celestial Jerusalem. The most evocative movement, however, is the seventh: "Bryce Canyon et les rochers rouge-orange" (Bryce Canyon and the Red-Orange Rocks). Messiaen recalls his impressions with fantastical language: "Fantastic, red-orange, purple rock formations shaped like castles, square towers, bulging towers, natural windows, bridges, statues, columns, entire cities..."

In these movements, as well as the rest of the piece, other sources of both pictorial and aural inspiration are the calls of birds—many of them from the western continental U.S., others from as far away as Africa and Hawaii; some of them lending their name to the titles of movements. An expert ornithologist, Messiaen combined strikingly accurate birdsong transcriptions with large blocks of highly systematized and stylized musical materials, lending Des canyons an appropriately geological sense of construction (and pointing up Pierre Boulez's complaint that his former teacher didn't compose, but rather juxtaposed).

Messiaen draws upon a unique instrumental ensemble to achieve the variety of timbres needed for his nature evocations: 13 individual, undoubled string parts are joined by oversized brass and wind forces, a huge battery of percussion, and soloists on piano, horn, xylorimba, and glockenspiel. The result is a sound that is at once earthy and otherworldly.

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