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Like many classical music lovers, I often struggled with twentieth century music, especially that which was thought of as avant-garde. In 1973, I became a student at Victoria University in Wellington NZ, and at that time, Wellington and the university enjoyed a reputation for championing this kind of music. With increased exposure came an appreciation that became an enjoyment. One of the pivotal works in this awakening was Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time). Whilst it was written more than thirty years earlier, it received very few performances, especially in New Zealand, and I remember vividly attending a live performance of this work that changed my conception entirely. Until this time, the only Messiaen works I had heard were organ works, which I regarded as indigestible.
The work was conceived when Messiaen was interred in a prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, and was performed in the camp for the first time, by fellow detainees and with the composer at the piano. The circumstances, influences and make up of the piece are described in the accompanying booklet which makes fascinating reading. Needless to say, the composer, being an expert ornithologist, religious yet with a bent towards mysticism and attracted also by Eastern philosophies, created a unique work that has, over the course of time, come to be regarded as one of the great achievements of twentieth century music.
The short opening 'Liturgie de cristal' reminds me a bit of the beginning of a dawn chorus, with its repetitive yet varied birdsong-like motives on the clarinet, the strings playing high with interjections and counterpoint, and the piano really just providing an accompaniment. Messiaen describes it thus:
Between three and four in the morning, the awakening of birds: a solo blackbird or nightingale improvises, surrounded by a shimmer of sound, by a halo of trills lost very high in the trees. Transpose this onto a religious plane and you have the harmonious silence of Heaven.
Listen — Messiaen: Liturgie de cristal (Quatuor pour la fin du temps)
(95393 track 1, 0:02-0:40) ℗ 2025 Brilliant Classics :
Of the second movement, 'Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du temps', Messiaen writes:
The first and third parts (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. In the piano, sweet cascades of blue-orange chords, enclosing in their distant chimes the almost plainchant song of the violin and cello.
It starts dramatically and powerfully, then this changes into a song-like, almost dream-like state. I find it quite chilling in its detachment. The final few bars are as dramatic as the opening.
Listen — Messiaen: Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du temps
(Quatuor pour la fin du temps)
(95393 track 2, 2:40-3:25) ℗ 2025 Brilliant Classics :
The third movement, 'Abîme des oiseaux', scored for clarinet alone, is very slow, and is a test for any clarinettist, needing a wide dynamic range. There are bird song episodes which are often florid and exultant. When I heard it performed in New Zealand all those years ago, I think the clarinettist was Murray Khouri. Messiaen writes of this movement:
The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.
Listen — Messiaen: Abîme des oiseaux (Quatuor pour la fin du temps)
(95393 track 3, 4:36-5:19) ℗ 2025 Brilliant Classics :
'Intermède' is very short, at under two minutes. As the composer states:
Scherzo, of a more individual character than the other movements, but linked to them nevertheless by certain melodic recollections.
It is scored for violin, cello and clarinet. This provides relief and is the most light-hearted in nature of the movements, but the relationship to the other movements is obvious.
Listen — Messiaen: Intermède (Quatuor pour la fin du temps)
(95393 track 4, 0:00-0:27) ℗ 2025 Brilliant Classics :
'Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus', scored for cello and piano, is drawn from a 1937 work which Messiaen wrote for six ondes martenots and this was a movement called 'L'eau'. Slow and ecstatic and over eight minutes in length, it is quite substantial. Of this movement, the composer writes:
Jesus is considered here as the Word. A broad phrase, 'infinitely slow', on the cello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle, 'whose time never runs out'. The melody stretches majestically into a kind of gentle, regal distance. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (John 1:1, King James Version).
This movement radiates peace and acceptance.
Listen — Messiaen: Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus (Quatuor pour la fin du temps)
(95393 track 5, 1:46-2:42) ℗ 2025 Brilliant Classics :
'Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes' is scored for the full ensemble. This is the most varied and dramatic of the eight movements and, as the title suggests, depicts a key moment in the apocalypse. It is quite rhythmically complex, written in unison through its entirety and reminds me of some of the sections of the slightly later Turangalîla-Symphonie. Messiaen writes:
Rhythmically, the most characteristic piece of the series. The four instruments in unison imitate gongs and trumpets (the first six trumpets of the Apocalypse followed by various disasters, the trumpet of the seventh angel announcing consummation of the mystery of God). Use of added values, of augmented or diminished rhythms, of non-retrogradable rhythms. Music of stone, formidable granite sound; irresistible movement of steel, huge blocks of purple rage, icy drunkenness. Listen especially to all the terrible fortissimo of the augmentation of the theme and changes of register of its different notes, towards the end of the piece.
Listen — Messiaen: Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes
(Quatuor pour la fin du temps)
(95393 track 6, 4:48-5:26) ℗ 2025 Brilliant Classics :
The seventh movement, 'Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du temps', is summed up by the composer:
Recurring here are certain passages from the second movement. The angel appears in full force, especially the rainbow that covers him (the rainbow, symbol of peace, wisdom, and all luminescent and sonorous vibration). In my dreams, I hear and see ordered chords and melodies, known colors and shapes; then, after this transitional stage, I pass through the unreal and suffer, with ecstasy, a tournament; a roundabout co-penetration of superhuman sounds and colours. These swords of fire, this blue-orange lava, these sudden stars: there is the tangle, there are the rainbows!
This is a varied movement, with a number of contrasting sections, but it does not have the frenetic energy of the previous movement, but at a few moments there is considerable tension.
Listen — Messiaen: Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du temps (Quatuor pour la fin du temps)
(95393 track 7, 3:53-4:36) ℗ 2025 Brilliant Classics :
The final 'Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus' is an arrangement and transcription of the second part of a 1930 work for organ called Diptyque and is a duet for violin and piano. The composer writes of it:
Large violin solo, counterpart to the violoncello solo of the 5th movement. Why this second eulogy? It is especially aimed at the second aspect of Jesus, Jesus the Man, the Word made flesh, immortally risen for our communication of his life. It is all love. Its slow ascent to the acutely extreme is the ascent of man to his god, the child of God to his Father, the being made divine towards Paradise.
Listen — Messiaen: Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus
(Quatuor pour la fin du temps)
(95393 track 8, 3:54-4:54) ℗ 2025 Brilliant Classics :
The performances, recording quality, accompanying literature and the music itself are all very compelling reasons to buy this album, and it is really one of the best recordings you could ever hope to hear. This is a work that I thought was shockingly modern when I first heard it, but to listen to it now, it sounds reasonable and as mainstream as any other of my favourite composers. I think it will do the same for any of you who have never heard it before, and it will open the doors for that tremendous Turangalîla-Symphonie.
Copyright © 17 January 2025
Geoff Pearce,
Sydney, Australia