Vocalise, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps2nd Movement from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (1941)

Oliver Messiaen (1908-1992) stands as one of the most influential composers of France

and the twentieth century, and among the foremost religious artists of any era. His

music is rhythmically complex, featured rhythms from ancient Greek and Hindu

sources, and is harmonically and melodically based on modes of limited transposition.

He drew deeply on his Catholicism, travelled widely, and claimed he perceived colours

when he heard certain chords (a phenomenon known as synaesthesia), in which

combinations of these colours were important to his works.

On the fall of France in 1940 in WW2, he was made a P.O.W, during which time he

composed one of the most significant and famous chamber music compositions of the

20th century, The Quartet for the End of Time, for the four available instruments (piano,

clarinet, violin, cello). It consists of eight movements, inspired by Chapter 10 of St.

John’s Revelation, and parallel the seven days of creation and the eighth day of timeless

eternity. The second movement describes the seventh angel whose trumpet will

announce the end of time:

I saw an angel full of strength descending from the sky, clad with a cloud and

having a rainbow over his head. His face was like the sun, his feet like columns of

fire. He set his right foot on the sea, his left foot on the earth, and standing on the

ocean and the earth, he raised his hand to the sky and swore by Him who lives in

the centuries of centuries, saying: “There shall be no more Time”, but on the day of

the seventh Angel’s trumpet the mystery of God shall be accomplished.

In a preface to the score, Messiaen describes the movement:

The first and third sections, 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. On the piano, soft cascades of blue-orange chords envelop in their distant

chimes the song of the violin and cello, which is almost like plainchant.

In the first section, powerful dissonant chords alternate with disjunct trills played by

the clarinet and fast string passages, reaching loud dynamics (fff). The second section

portrays a very lyrical, angelic song, slow and distant, played by a muted violin and

cello in double octaves accompanied by very soft dissonant chords in the piano (ppp to

pppp). The third section returns after a slow static line, with the original fast tempo and

descending line in violin and cello becoming louder, and the trills in the clarinet and

strings answered by another lightning flash in the piano. Loud dissonant chords lead to

the last clarinet motive.

Messiaen was a noted ornithologist, and his use of birdsong is evident in this

movement. Blackbirds can be seen in the trills and the semiquaver triplets in the

clarinet (derived from the clarinet opening motive in the 1st movement).

In the ternary form of this movement, there are many instances of repetition, and

reversed ordered in most cases, especially in section A. In bars 14-16, an A major triad

(decorated by trills) is built and sustained, with violin (top), then cello (bottom), and

then clarinet (middle). This is repeated in bars 51-53, with a D major triad, however in

reverse order – cello (bottom), violin (top), and then clarinet (middle). The ascending

flourish in the piano in bar 16 is repeated in bar 53, however it then descends. The

ascending semiquaver passage in bars 12-13 is repeated in bars 49-50, however it then

descends. The descending chords in the piano at bar 17 are then seen in reverse at bar

54.

The harmony in the Quartet is atonal, with a ‘disturbed’ harmonic progression. This

effect created a very dramatic piece of music, which tells a story of suspense, terror,

and peaceful resolution. Dynamics are used tremendously throughout the piece, as the

sound fluctuates up and down, sometimes very soft or startling loud. The combination

of instruments was not the first of its kind however, as Hindemith (1938) and Walter

Rabl (1896) had done before.

A vocalise is typically defined as a work sung by a singer, but without words and the

singer would sing the melody on a single syllable in most cases. In this case, however,

the vocalise is not being sung, but played on instruments. Messiaen's choice to identify

this movement as a vocalise suggests that the instrumentation represents the angel's

actual voice, rather than the instrumentation reflecting the event of the angel

announcing the end of time. In the middle section, Messiaen experiments with creating

musical colour with the chords of the piano, a technique that was used by other

composers, such as Debussy, Stravinsky and Bartok, composers whom Messiaen was

influenced by in his compositions.