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Introduction:

• Olivier Messiaen was born Dec. 10, 1908 in Avignon and raised in Grenoble. He adopted Roman Catholicism as a child of his own volition; his faith and art form a crucial part for the rest of his life form.
• He joined the armed forces in 1939 and was captured in May 1940 and imprisoned at Stalag VIII-A near Gorlitz in present-day Poland.
• At the age of 32, with the discreet support of a German officer, Karl-Albert Brüll, who provided him with staff, paper, pencils, and erasers, Messiaen wrote the piece secretly after his obligatory five hours labour each morning, recycling a few parts from previous compositions.
• He created it specifically for himself and three other prisoners; violinist Jean Le Boulaire (who survived the war and became an actor, clarinettist Henri Akoka (an Algerian Jew who managed to escape in April 1941), and cellist Étienne Pasquier.
• The unfortunate band performed it on January 15, 1941 in an unheated barrack for several hundred of their fellow inmates and their guards, members of all classes and many nationalities - on passable instruments to rapt attention.
• Messiaen was released a few months after the performance, due in large part to the campaigning and advocacy of his former teacher Marcel Dupré.
• Quatuor pour la fin du temps was a tribute to the Angel of the Apocalypse, who raises his hands to Heaven saying: "There will be no more Time."I saw an angel full of strength, descending from heaven, covered in a cloud, his feet like pillars of fire. He put his right foot on the sea, his left foot on the earth, and, standing on the earth and on the sea, he lifted his hand towards Heaven and swore by Him who speaks in the ages of ages, saying: "There will be no more Time; but on the day of the seventh Angel's Trumpet, the mystery of God will be consummated" (Apocalypse of Saint John, Chapter X).
  
  1) Crystal Liturgy.
  Four o'clock in the morning, the awakening of the birds: an improvised solo blackbird, surrounded by sonorous dust, a halo of trills lost high up in the trees. Transpose this on the religious level: you will have the harmonious silence of Heaven.
  
  2) Vocalise for the Angel who announces the end of Time.
  The first and third parts (very short) evoke the power of this strong angel, head-dressed in rainbows and clothed in cloud, who places one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth. The middle section, the song the impalpable harmonies of the sky. On the piano, soft cascades of blue-orange chords, surrounding with their distant chime the almost plain-chantesque dirge of the violin and violincello.
  
  3) Abyss of birds.
  Clarinet alone. The abyss is Time, with its sadness, its weariness. Birds are the opposite of Time; it is our desire for light, stars, rainbows of jubilant vocalizations.
  
  4) Interlude.
  Scherzo, more exterior in character than the other movements, but linked to them, however, by a few melodic reminders.
  
  5) Praise to the Eternity of Jesus.
  Jesus is here considered as the Word. A great sentence, infinitely slow, from the cello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the powerful and gentle Word, "whose years will not be exhausted." "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God" (Gospel according to Saint John).
  
  6) Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets.
  Rhythmically, the most characteristic piece of the series. Use of added value, increased or decreased rhythms, non-retrogradable rhythms. Explanation of these three terms: the added value is a brief value, added to any rhythm, either by a note, or by a rest, or by a dot - the increased or decreased rhythms use increases or decreases different from the increases by doubling and decreases by half, known from the classics: these are increases by adding a third, adding a dot, adding double and triple durations; it is about reductions by withdrawal of the quarter, withdrawal of the dot, withdrawal of two-thirds and withdrawal of three-quarters of the durations - for the non-retrogradable rhythms: whether they are read from right to left or from left to right , the order of their values remains the same; this particularity exists in all rhythms divisible into two retrograde groups with respect to each other with a common central value. Listen especially, towards the end of the piece, to the fortissimo of the theme by augmentation, with a change in the register of its different notes.
  
  7) Disorder of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of Time.
  Some passages from the second movement return here. The Angel full of strength appears, and especially the rainbow that covers it (the rainbow, symbol of peace, wisdom, and all light and sound vibrations). In his dreams, the author hears and sees chords and classified melodies, known colours and forms; then, after this transitory stage, it passes into the unreal and undergoes with ecstasy a whirling, a gyrating interpenetration of superhuman sounds and colours. These fiery swords, these streams of blue-orange lava, these sudden stars: here is the disorder, here are the rainbows.
  
  8) Praise to the Immortality of Jesus.
  Large violin solo, matching the cello solo of the fifth movement. This second praise is addressed more specifically to the second aspect of Jesus, to Jesus-Man, to the Word made flesh, risen immortal to communicate his life to us.

Recordings:

• Quatuor pour la Fin Du Temps.
  Christina Astrand (violin), Johnny Teyssier (clarinet), Henrik Dam Thomsen (cello), Per Salo (piano).
  OUR Recordings.

• Quartet for the End of Time, Et Exsoecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum.
  Vera Beths (violin), George Pieterson (clarinet), Anner Bijlsma (cello), Reinbert de Leeuw (piano).
  Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
  Bernard Haitink.
  Philips

• Messiaen Edition.
  Guy Deplus (clarinet), Huguette Fernandez (violin), Jacques Nielz (cello), Marie-Madaleine Petit (piano).
  Warner Classics.
  BBC Music Magazine (2005): Special Review.
  Presto Recording of the Week (2008).
  Radio 3 Building a Library (2017): First Choice.

• Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps.
  Martin Frost (clarinet), Lucas Debargue (piano), Janine Jansen (violin), Torleif Thedeen (cello).
  Sony.
  The New York Times (2017): Recordings of the Year.

• Quatuor pour la fin du Temps, Theme et variations, Les Offrandes oubliees.
  Gould Piano Trio, Robert Plane (clarinet).
  Chandos.

• Quatuor pour la fin de temps. The First Recording.
  Olivier Messiaen (piano), Etienne Pasquier (cello), Jean Pasquier (violin), Andre Vacellier (clarinet).
  Canary Records.

About Coram Deo

Coram Deo — before the face of God. This blog reflects on Scripture, world events, science, music, psychology, and the human mind — always through the lens of Christian faith. All of life is lived before the face of God.