Treatment for Messiaen Overdose

Olivier Messiaen is one of the great Catholic mystics of our time, and his music isn't bad either. Apparently, if you were to do something nutty like play all of the music that Messiaen composed for the organ—he played from the grandes orgues at the Église de La Trinité in Paris for most of his life—it would take nine hours to do it. If you are in New York on Saturday, you could hear young organist Paul Jacobs do just that, the so-called Messiaen Marathon, for free at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Manhattan. (See the write-up on Mr. Jacobs, The Organ as Extreme Sport, by Craig Whitney, April 18, in the New York Times.)