Olivier Messiaen
Quatuor pour la fin du temps
1. Liturgie de cristal ("Liturgy of crystal")
2. Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps ("Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time")
3. Abîme des oiseaux ("Abyss of birds", for solo clarinet)
4. Intermède ("Interlude", for violin, cello, and clarinet)
5. Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus ("Praise to the eternity of Jesus", for cello and piano)
6. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes ("Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets")
7. Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps ("Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time")
8. Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus ("Praise to the immortality of Jesus", for violin and piano)
Among the most significant composers of the 20th Century, France’s Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was also a noted organist, music theorist, and extremely influential teacher. He entered the Paris Conservatory in 1919 (at age 11), was organist at Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris from 1931 to 1978, and joined the faculty of the Paris Conservatory in 1941.
Just prior to this latter appointment, Messiaen, who had been serving in the French army's medical auxiliary, was imprisoned in a concentration camp when the Germans occupied France in 1940, and it was while he was a prisoner that he composed and first performed his best-known work, Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the End of Time"). The instrumentation was determined by the players who were available (also prisoners), and Messiaen, a devout Roman Catholic, states in the score that the work is directly inspired by passages from the Biblical Book of Revelation:
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 the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and swore by him that liveth for ever and ever that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished.
Of its eight movements, the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th use the full quartet, while the others use one to three instruments from the ensemble. The 3rd is a demanding slow movement for clarinet solo, and the 4th is a scherzo-like movement that omits the piano. The 5th, for cello and piano, and the 8th, for violin and piano, were both adapted by Messiaen from earlier pieces.
Like most of Messian's works, the Quartet is rhythmically complex, and the melodies and harmonies make use of non-traditional scales which deliberately avoid definite tonal centers. Messiaen considered himself as much an ornithologist as a musician, and birdsong often plays a key role in his music, as in the first movement which includes imitations of blackbirds (in the clarinet) and nightingales (in the violin). The unison instruments in the 6th movement are meant to imitate gongs and trumpets, and the movement illustrates the composer's fascination with augmented and diminishing rhythmic patterns. The 2nd and 7th movements share thematic materials, and the rainbows that Messiaen describes as accompanying the angel were more than mere fancy for the composer--he had a benign neurological condition called synaesthesia which caused him to experience colors when he heard music.
Listen at Youtube.com to the 1st movement; 2nd movement; 6th movement; 7th movement