One of the most impressive organ works of his early years, Apparition de l'Église éternelle (1932) was written when Messiaen was 24 years old. Having graduated from the Paris Conservatoire in 1930 in both composition and organ, he was fortunate to be appointed the next year to the position of organist at the church of La Sainte Trinité in Paris, a post he would hold for the next 50 years. Apparition is a meditative piece: the tempo is very slow, and the characteristic sonority throughout is the ringing of sustained open fifths and octaves. The score exhibits a cellular approach to rhythm which would become characteristic of Messiaen's mature style: the meter is irregular, as each cell, or phrase, is repeated, expanded, or contracted. Though entirely chordal, the melodic arch of the declamatory phrases slowly climb to a highpoint, with full-voiced triads sounding out triumphantly before winding back down again. The power of the sustained sonorities, and the timelessness of the radically extended durations of these sounds could not be conveyed on anything but the organ. In this sense, Apparition de l'Église éternelle is Messiaen's first truly characteristic work for his own instrument.

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