Revelations
Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time'
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French composer Olivier Messiaen Web photo |
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By Jim Lowe Times Argus Staff - Published: November 7, 2008
The "Quartet for the End of Time" is the stuff of legends. Not only is Olivier Messiaen's masterpiece one of the most important works of the 20th century, it is one of the most striking and spiritual. It was also written and premiered in some of the most trying of circumstances – in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.
The Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble will perform Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," the group's signature work, Friday, Nov. 14, at Montpelier's Unitarian Church, and Saturday, Nov. 15, at St. Michael's College's McCarthy Arts Center in Colchester.
In this season celebrating the 100th year of both Messiaen and Elliott Carter, the VCME will also present the latter's "Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi" for solo violin, and "Gra" for solo clarinet.
Messiaen was already a respected composer when, as a French soldier, he was captured by the German Army during World War II. While traveling to the prisoner-of-war camp, Messiaen shared with the clarinetist Henri Akoka, also a prisoner, the sketches for what would become "Abîme des oiseaux (Abyss of the Birds," the third movement of the quartet. Two other professional musicians were also among his fellow prisoners, violinist Jean le Boulaire and cellist Étienne Pasquier. (Pasquier was the uncle of violinist Regis Pasquier of the Paris Piano Trio, which, with New York clarinetist Allen Blustine, delivered a powerful and intensely beautiful performance of the quartet for the Vermont Mozart Festival's chamber music series a number of years ago.)
At the prison camp, Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany (currently Zgorzelec, Poland), Karl-Albert Brüll, a music-loving guard, was so impressed by the presence of a composer such significance, he provided Messiaen with pencils, erasers and music paper, and an empty room so that he could work undisturbed. A guard stood at the door to turn away intruders.
The quartet was premiered in an unheated space in Barrack 27 on Jan. 15, 1941, to an audience of about 400 fellow prisoners. One prisoner created a program in Art Nouveau style, to which an official stamp was affixed: "Stalag VIIIA 49 geprüft (approved)." Sitting in the front row were the German officers of the camp.
Messiaen later recalled: "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension."
After the premičre, Brüll arranged for Messiaen's rapid return to France, conspiring in the forging of documents.
The "Quartet of the End of Time" has taken its place among seminal works of the 20th century.
"The title does not exaggerate the ambitions of the piece, critic Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker in 2006. "In the end, Messiaen's apocalypse has little to do with history and catastrophe; instead, it records the rebirth of an ordinary soul in the grip of extraordinary emotion. Which is why the quartet is as overpowering now as it was on that frigid night in 1941."
Messiaen (1908-1992), a student of Paul Dukas at the Paris Conservatory, became organist of La Trinité in Paris in 1931, and, after several other teaching posts, became a professor at the Paris Conservatory (where he returned after the war). His music took the harmonic language of French Impressionist Claude Debussy, expanded upon it, and added more complex rhythmic language in a unique way. Messiaen's music reflects his devout Catholicism, as well as his fascination with bird songs.
In the preface to the score of the "Quartet for the End of Time," Messiaen wrote that the work was inspired by the 10th chapter from the Bible's "Revelation of St. John" (translated from the French):
I saw a mighty angel descending from heaven, clad in mist, having around his head a rainbow. His face was like the sun, his feet like pillars of fire. He placed his right foot on the sea, his left foot on the earth, and standing thus on the sea and the earth he lifted his hand toward heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever saying: "There shall be time no longer, but at the day of the trumpet of the seventh angel the mystery of God shall be consummated."
Messiaen, introducing his music, wrote in his preface:
Its music is essentially transcendental, spiritual, Catholic. Certain modes, realizing melodically and harmonically a kind of tonal ubiquity, draw the listener into a sense of eternity of space or time. Particular rhythms existing outside the measure contribute importantly toward the banishment of temporalities.
The quartet is in eight movements representing the six days of creation, the seventh of the Sabbath, prolonging itself into eternity with the eighth: I. "Liturgy of Crystal"; II. "Vocalise, for the Angel who Announces the End of Time"; III. "Abyss of the Birds"; IV. "Interlude"; V. "Praise to the Eternity of Jesus"; VI. "Dance of Fury, for the Seven Trumpets"; VII. "Cluster of Rainbows"; VIII. "Dance of Fury, for the Seven Trumpets."
Messiaen ends his preface: "All this is mere striving and childish stammering if one compares it to the overwhelming grandeur of the subject!"
VCME members performing the "Quartet for the End of Time" will be pianist Paula Ennis, clarinetist Steven Klimowski, violinist Thomas ("Larry") Read and cellist Bonnie Thurber Klimowski. Steven Klimowski, the VCME's artistic director, will talk about this remarkable 50-minute work before the concert. He will discuss the origins of the work, the remarkable people it was written for and offer the listener insight into Messiaen's music in general and the quartet in particular.
Also on the program will be two small works by Carter. Read will perform "Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi" (1984) for solo violin, written for the 80th birthday of Italian composer Goffredo Petrassi. And Klimowski will perform Carter's "Gra" (1984) ("play" in Polish) for solo clarinet. This was also an 80th birthday gift, this time to Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski.
A reception with the performers will follow both concerts.