Harawi was written in 1945 and forms the first part of the Trilogy of Love and Death, based mainly on the Tristan and Isolde myth.
Judith Vindevogel about ‘Harawi’: ” a word only exists by the coexistence of a vowel and a consonant. Similarly, ‘Harawi’ can only exist in my mind when voice and movement come together; as a stutter, possibly unfinished, primitive.”

The word ‘Harawi’ is a Quechua word (Quechua is the ancient language of Peru), meaning a love-song which ends with the death of the lovers. The cycle consists of 12 songs for soprano and piano and tells of the passionate and fatal love which ends in death.
The dual symbolism of love and death runs like a thread throughout ‘Harawi’, and the eternal significance of these ideas is expressed through the poems in a manner which is surrealist rather than dramatic. Messiaen takes the contours of Peruvian melodies and transforms them into his own melodic and modal language, the musical style and technique is typical of his music up to this time, making use of Indian rhythms derived from the thirteenth century çarngdeva system and a harmonic and melodic style derived from his ‘Modes of limited transposition’ and other sources which are described in his theoretical treatise, ‘La technique de mon langage musical’.