By spring 1940 France and Britain had been at war with Germany for more than six months; Belgium was already occupied by the Nazis. On 9 June some fifty divisions Of the German Army under von Rundstedt, a commander so formidable that even Hitler is said to have treated him with considerable respect, struck southwards from Belgium towards Rheims. The French forces behind the Aisne resisted heroically, but were far outnumbered. On 11 June they began a strategic withdrawal south across the Marne, then east into the Vosges. But the situation was hopeless, and on 22 June they were forced to surrender.
The Messiaen Companion edited by Peter Hill. Olivier Messiaen: Music and Colour. Conversations with Claude Samuel translated by Thomas Glasow. The violin does a nightingale, the clarinet a blackbird. The movement does not develop in any way; the isorhythmic sequences continue for a time, the birds chatter and gurgle. Then it stops. It is as if one had been shown a sample of acoustic eternity as one might be shown a sample of cloth: ‘it will be like this, but there will be more of it.’