Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
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Performer: Fred SherryPerformer: Richard Stoltzman
Composer: Olivier Messiaen
Orchestra: Tashi
Performer: Peter Serkin
Performer: Ida Kavafian
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1989-08-11
Music Label: RCA
Soundtracks:
- No. 1, Liturgie de cristal
- No. 2, Vocalise pour l'ange qui annonce la fin du temps
- No. 3, Abime des oiseaux
- No. 4, Intermede
- No. 5, Louange a l'eternite de Jesus
- No. 6, Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes
- No. 7, Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'ange qui announce la fin du temps
- No. 8, Lourange a l'immortalite de Jesus
Music reviews of Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Music Review: Beyond Time
Rating: 5 Stars
Not long ago, I listened to Olivier Messiaen's *Quartet for the End of Time* for the first time. I did not know what to make of it when it started, but by the time it ended it had made a deep impression. Since then I have listened to it several times more. Without the description provided by Messiaen, I wonder how many listeners would have guessed what the quartet was all about, or called it one of the greatest works of the twentieth century. I can't prove it, but possibly critics would have called it an interesting experiment. Yet the music taken together with its explanation (including the circumstances under which it was composed) communicates a compelling vision. I have attempted to convey some of Messiaen's vision with the aid of quotes from his description (as translated in the liner notes from the original French).
The music itself is unusual. Not only the choice of instruments (violin, cello, clarinet and piano), but the way Messiaen used them, is striking. The full quartet performs in only four of the eight movements that comprise the work. The piano has no part in the brief fourth movement; the fifth movement is for cello and piano only; the eighth movement mirrors the fifth, but this time is for violin and piano; and the third movement - lasting for about eight minutes - is for solo clarinet only. We know that music often expresses emotions, but here Messiaen apparently tried to express visions he had of celestial colors, of rainbows, of the vast cosmos. He related sound to vision. I give fragments of what he wrote: "... amid notes of shining sound and a halo of trills..." (on the first movement); "From the piano, soft cascades of blue-orange chords..." (2nd mvmt); "Music of stone ... as huge blocks of livid fury or icelike frenzy" (6th mvmt); "I pass into the unreal and submit ecstatically to a vortex, a dizzying interpretation of superhuman sounds and colors. These fiery swords, these rivers of blue-orange lava, these sudden stars: Behold the cluster, behold the rainbows!" (7th mvmt).
The third movement, 'Abyss of the birds', with its eloquent clarinet solo, provides an important key for interpreting the whole. Messiaen writes, "The abyss is Time, with its sadness and tedium." A new and strange idea, at first. Abyss is a spatial term, even when used figuratively. But here the abyss is time with a capital T, not depth. The birds or what they stand for - "they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows and for jubilant outpourings of song!" (in contrast to sadness and tedium) - are trapped in time, awaiting release. In that sense, then, time is the abyss from which there is no escape, not by our own powers. Messiaen based his work on an excerpt from the New Testament Book of Revelation, Chapter 10. Part of the excerpt reads, "There shall be time no longer, but on the day of the trumpet of the seventh angel, the mystery of God shall be consummated." In that only is the release.
Messiaen, a deeply religious Roman Catholic, was a prisoner of war in a German camp during World War II when he wrote the quartet, and had experienced the "sadness and tedium" of time, in addition to suffering the harsh conditions. We can only imagine how that must have affected his thoughts, emotions and creative effort. He dreamt of release - from prison, surely, but perhaps more so from the confines of time - and expressed it in the music. The last movement, 'Praise to the immortality of Jesus', ends with the solo violin, accompanied by soft piano atonal notes, rising upward, upward, ever more faintly, upward. "Its slow rising to a supreme point is the ascension of man toward his God, of the son of God toward his Father, of the mortal newly made divine toward paradise."
Is Quartet for the End of Time an interesting experiment? Let the listener/ interpreter decide. I think it is much more than that, although I am always wary of using superlatives such as "greatest" or "best". I will add that this was not the only time Messiaen expressed himself in this manner. About eight years earlier, he had composed *L'Ascension* (The Ascension), a set of four pieces that he termed Meditations. The last of these depicts the prayer of Christ rising toward his Father, a reference to verses taken from the Gospel of John, Chapter 17. There, as in the last movement of the quartet, the music keeps rising upward, toward heaven as Messiaen intended to signify. His religion was integral to his life and, inevitably, to his modes of expression.
Description of Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
This all-star chamber ensemble was specifically formed to play Messiaen's masterpiece. Two decades after this recording was made, it still shows the effects of their intense identification with the music. Some listeners find Messiaen's music longwinded and difficult, and my own opinion varies depending on the work and my mood. But this piece, written in a German concentration camp during the early years of World War II, is truly one of the greatest works of music of the 20th century. Although it lasts nearly an hour, its variety of color and its powerful expressiveness will engross any responsive listener, especially in this performance. --Leslie GerberMessiaen, Olivier CDs
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