Olivier Messiaen’s early organ works helped establish him as a towering figure of 20th-century music. L’Ascension is the most significant of these, with its solemn majesty, dazzling colours and near-static serenity and timelessness. These qualities were already present in Le Banquet céleste, Messiaen’s first published organ work, and in Apparition de l’Église éternelle—a powerful representation of the eternal church emerging and fading from view. The two works discovered posthumously in 1997, Prélude and Offrande au Saint-Sacrement, show the influence of Dupré and Tournemire. Tom Winpenny’s acclaimed recording of Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur can be heard on Naxos 8.573332.