French: Le Merle noir ("The Blackbird") is a chamber work by the French composer Olivier Messiaen for flute and piano. It was written and first performed in 1952[1] and is one of the composer's shortest independently published works, lasting just over five minutes. It has neither time signature nor key signature.
The composition originated in a commission for a test piece for flute for the Paris Conservatoire, at which Messiaen was a professor.[2] The winners of the premier prix in the French: Concours de flûte|italic=no that year were Daniel Morlier, Jean Pierre Eustache, Jean Ornetti, Régis Calle and the British flute player Alexander Murray.[3] Messiaen had a consuming, lifelong interest in ornithology and particularly bird songs. While not his first work to incorporate stylised birdsong, French: Le Merle noir was the earliest of his pieces to use authentically transcribed birdsong,[4] foreshadowing Messiaen's later, more extended birdsong-inspired pieces.