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MessiaenQuatuor

pour la fin du temps

Ensemble Walter BoeykensChamber music occupies a minor position in Olivier Messiaen’s output. The Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) remains his most significant work in this domain.In fact, the circumstances of its composition were highly exceptional: Messiaen wrote it in 1940 while he was a prisoner of war in an internment camp in Silesia. The rather unusual combination of instruments, violin, clarinet, cello and piano is due to the fact that Messiaen was obliged to write for the musicians at his disposal.The structure, too, of the Quartet differs widely from the customary patterns of chamber music. Eight distinctly contrasted movements employ either the entire ensemble or only a part of it. The number eight is not arbitrary, as Messiaen explains: ‘Seven is the perfect number, the Creation in six days sanctified by the divine Sabbath; the seven is prolonged into eternity and becomes the eight of indefectible light, of unalterable peace.’There can be no doubt as to the poetic and religious symbolism. The Quatuor pour la fin du temps was inspired by a passage from the Revelation of St. John (X, 1-7):‘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 lifted up his hand to heaven. And sware by him who liveth for ever and ever (saying) there should be time no longer. But in the days of the trumpet of the seventh angel, when (it) shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished.’Messiaen attempted to transpose the powerful phrase ‘there should be time no longer’ into musical terms by making time the object of reflection, an area of experimentation. Perhaps also a way of exorcising the daily physical ordeals of the time spent in the Stalag.The meditation on time was thus to lead Messiaen to create an essential link between theo-logical and musical concepts.In the Preface to the work the composer clarifies his intentions: the quest for an ‘essentially immaterial, spiritual, catholic language’, desiring to bring the listener closer to ‘eternity in space’ by ‘modes realising, melodically and harmonically, a kind of tonal ubiquity’. The rhyth-mic procedures to be employed were also to contribute to ‘banish the temporal’.Liberated from the traditional metrics of symmetry and from any kind of subordination to other parameters, rhythm acquires an autonomy of its own. Augmented and diminished rhythms, polyrhythms, non-retrograde rhythms, rhythmic pedal points: the Quatuor pour la fin du temps sets forth the sum of Messiaen’s rhythmic experiments and innovations.

1. ‘Liturgie de cristal’The four instrumentsThis movement takes place in a mood of serenity which Messiaen describes as follows: ‘A bird soloist extemporizes surrounded by motes of sound, by a halo of har-monics lost very high up in the trees.’ This song is given to the clarinet and sec-ondarily to the violin, the other instruments creating a sonorous environment. This is the first time that reference is made in Messiaen’s work to birdsong which he was later to explore in such minute detail.

HMA 1951348

olivier messiaen (1908-1992)

quatuor pour la fin du temps

Ensemble Walter Boeykens

‘There will be no more time.’

This concept, taken from the Apocalypse, presides

over the celebrated Quartet for piano, violin, cello

and clarinet – the instruments of the musicians

who shared Messiaen’s life in a prisoner of camp

in 1940. Created under trying circumstances, the

Quartet remains an unequalled masterpiece.

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MessiaenQuatuor

pour la fin du temps

Ensemble Walter Boeykens

2. ‘Vocalise pour l’Ange qui annonce la Fin du Temps’The four instrumentsBetween two brief and biting outer sections there is the static and linear development of the ‘almost plainchant-like song of the violin and cello’, carried by ‘the distant carillon of the piano. They are the impalpable harmonies of heaven.’

3. ‘Abîme des oiseaux’ClarinetDestined for the solo clarinet, this movement is in three sections and plays on the contrast of the Abyss, ‘time with its sadness, its lassitude’, and the birds (the middle section) that symbolize ‘our yearning for light, stars, jubilant vocalises’.The instrument is exploited to its utmost limits, requiring an extremely slow tempo that severely tries the instrumentalist’s breath control. As a result of this study of the various parameters and the enhancing of the sound potentials of an instrument – sometimes taking it as far as a virtual transfiguration – Messiaen paved the way for an entire dimension of future musical experimentation.

4. ‘Intermède’The four instrumentsAn earlier composition, this short piece in the form of a scherzo serves as a tran sition. Its rhythmic and aloof character creates a brisk contrast at the heart of the surrounding imma-teriality.

5. ‘Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus’Cello and pianoA long contemplative melody develops in an inexorably slow tempo that is made even more ponderous by the rhythmic ostinato of the piano. The composer makes use of the power and the tenderness of the cello in the evocation of the eternity of Jesus looked upon as the Word.This piece, a transcription of a movement of La Fête des Belles Eaux, gradually increases in tension, expressing a growing fervour before returning to infinite appeasement and rest.

6. ‘Danse de la fureur pour les sept trompettes’The four instruments‘It is a study in rhythm’, Messiaen says.And in fact, the absence of harmonic density due to the unison playing of the four instru-ments, focuses attention mainly on the rhythm. The persistently repeti tive melody is created rhythmically, completely independently of either pitch or duration, giving a strange impression of renewal within an identical framework.

7. ‘Fouillis d’arcs-en-ciel, pour l’Ange qui annonce la Fin du Temps’The four instrumentsThe image of the rainbow frequently returns in Messiaen’s musical poetics. ‘It is the symbol of peace, of wisdom, of the vibration of light and sound.’This is one of the most organically structured and elaborated movements in the entire work, the one in which the instruments really become fused, beginning with a series of restrained exchanges and leading up to ‘a whirl of sound and colours’.It is in the form of alternating variations on two themes in which reminiscences of earlier movements glimmer through. Could it be that the powerful, almost orchestral sonorities of this movement, its inventiveness, its jubilatory feverishness, are the musical reflections of those ‘coloured dreams’ produced in Messiaen by the ordeal of hunger?

8. ‘Louange à l’Immortalité de Jésus’Violin and pianoThis second extolling of Jesus, Jesus in his strictly human definition, is a counter part to the song of praise in the fifth movement for cello and piano. It marks a return to inner meditation. In this transcription of the Diptych for organ (1930), the two instruments move together in a progressive ascension towards the extremely high register. Immobility, fixity, abolition of time.

The work was first performed at the place of internment in January 1941 before an audience of 5000 fellow prisoners.‘Never waq I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension’, the composer, who reported in great detail the memorable conditions of this performance, was to write. ‘The cold was excruciating, the Stalag buried under the snow. The four performers played on broken-down instruments: Etienne Pasquier’s cello had only three strings, the keys of my piano went down but did not come up again. Our costumes were unbelievable: they rigged me out in a green jacket completely in shreds, and I wore wooden clogs...’

ElisabEth bourgognE Translation J.O. Wootton