Sacred Music Festival. 2nd Concert. Duval, Genisson, Isserlis, Oganyan

2nd Concert 

“Pour la fin du Temps”

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): Quatuor pour la fin du Temps 

The Quartet for the End of Time, originally titled in French Quatuor pour la fin du Temps, was created by the French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). At the outbreak of the Second World War, Messiaen was just over thirty years old. Serving as a medical auxiliary in the French army, he was captured by the Germans in June 1940 and deported to Stalag VIII-A, a prisoner-of-war camp located in Görlitz, Silesia—today Zgorzelec, in Poland. During the transfer, under extremely precarious conditions, the composer showed the clarinetist Henri Akoka (1912–1976)—also a prisoner—some sketches that would later find complete expression in the movement Abîmedes oiseaux, one of the eight that make up the work. Once he arrived at the camp, Messiaen met two other professional musicians: the violinist Jean le Boulaire (1913–1999) and the cellist Étienne Pasquier (1905–1997). Meeting these performers made possible the formation of a first chamber ensemble. Thanks to the support of a German officer sensitive to music, Karl-Albert Brüll, who supplied him with materials to write, Messiaen composed a short trio. From this germinal idea then emerged the larger project of the Quatuor pour la fin du Temps, which Messiaen completed by including himself at the piano. The choice of this ensemble—violin, clarinet, cello, and piano—was unusual for the time, though not without precedent, as shown by the works of Rabl and Hindemith. The piece, divided into eight movements, is accompanied by introductions written by the composer himself. For instance, the preface includes a quotation from the Book of Revelation (Rev. 10:1–2, 5–7, King James Version) as the text inspiring the entire work: «And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire … and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth …. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever … that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished…»

1. Liturgie de cristal [Crystal liturgy]: “Between three and four in the morning, the awakening of birds: a solo blackbird or nightingale improvises, surrounded by a shimmer of sound, by a halo of trills lost very high in the trees. Transpose this onto a religious plane and you have the harmonious silence of Heaven.”

2. Vocalise, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du temps [Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time]: “The first and third parts (very short) evoke the power of this mighty angel, a rainbow upon his head and clothed with a cloud, who sets one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth. In the middle section are the impalpable harmonies of heaven. In the piano, sweet cascades of blue-orange chords, enclosing in their distant chimes the almost plainchant song of the violin and cello.”

3. Abîme des oiseaux [Abyss of birds]: “The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.”

4. Intermède [Interlude]: “Scherzo, of a more individual character than the other movements, but linked to them nevertheless by certain melodic recollections.”

5. Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus [Praise to the eternity of Jesus]: “Jesus is considered here as the Word. A broad phrase, ‘infinitely slow’, on the cello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle, ‘whose time never runs out’. The melody stretches majestically into a kind of gentle, regal distance. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ [John 1:1 (King James Version)]”

6. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes [Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets]: “Rhythmically, the most characteristic piece of the series. The four instruments in unison imitate gongs and trumpets (the first six trumpets of the Apocalypse followed by various disasters, the trumpet of the seventh angel announcing consummation of the mystery of God). Use of added values, of augmented or diminished rhythms, of non-retrogradablerhythms. Music of stone, formidable granite sound; irresistible movement of steel, huge blocks of purple rage, icy drunkenness. Listen especially to all the terrible fortissimo of the augmentation of the theme and changes of register of its different notes, towards the end of the piece.”

7. Fouillis d’arcs-en-ciel, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du temps [Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time]: “Recurring here are certain passages from the second movement. The angel appears in full force, especially the rainbow that covers him (the rainbow, symbol of peace, wisdom, and all luminescent and sonorous vibration). – In my dreams, I hear and see ordered chords and melodies, known colors and shapes; then, after this transitional stage, I pass through the unreal and suffer, with ecstasy, a tournament; a roundabout co-penetration of superhuman sounds and colors. These swords of fire, this blue-orange lava, these sudden stars: there is the tangle, there are the rainbows!”

8. Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus [Praise to the immortality of Jesus]: “Large violin solo, counterpart to the violoncello solo of the 5th movement. Why this second eulogy? It is especially aimed at the second aspect of Jesus, Jesus the Man, the Word made flesh, immortally risen for our communication of his life. It is all love. Its slow ascent to the acutely extreme is the ascent of man to his god, the child of God to his Father, the being made divine towards Paradise.”

The premiere took place on 15 January 1941 in a camp barrack, before an audience of several hundred prisoners and soldiers. The instruments were old and worn; the cello itself had been purchased thanks to a collection among the detainees. Yet, despite the poverty of means, the impact of the performance was memorable. In later recollections, Messiaen emphasized the intensity with which the audience listened to the music – a listening charged with attention and understanding, an experience he claimed never again to have encountered with such force.

Federico Foglizzo