As someone who definitely has a problem with managing his time, I am relieved to find it coming to an end, at least musically speaking. I hope you’ll join me for the next “Music from Marlboro,” as we listen to Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time.”
Messiaen famously wrote his piece, one of his most frequently performed, in a prisoner of war camp, using the only instruments at his disposal (clarinet, violin, cello, and piano). A sympathetic guard, Karl-Albert Brüll, saw to it that he had pencils, music paper, and plenty of quiet. He also helped to acquire the instruments.
The piece was first performed in an unheated space, on January 15, 1941, before an audience made up of the camp’s prisoners and guards. Messiaen recollected, “Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.” Shortly after the performance, Brüll forged papers, using a potato stamp, and liberated the musicians.
Many years later, Brüll showed up on Messiaen’s doorstep, but was told the composer would not see him. Perhaps Messiaen didn’t wish to relive the war. But Brüll was no Nazi. In civilian life, he was a lawyer, a cultivated man who spoke fluent French. In the service, he treated his prisoners humanely. Messiaen eventually had a change of heart and sent a message to the man who had helped make his masterpiece possible. But it was too late. Brüll had been hit by a car.
A devout Catholic, Messiaen drew inspiration for the quartet from the Book of Revelation. The score is prefaced by the following quote:
“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 sware 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…”
The work falls into eight movements (here in English translation): “Crystal liturgy;” “Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time,” “Abyss of birds;” “Interlude;” “Praise to the eternity of Jesus;” “Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets;” “Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time;” and “Praise for the Immortality of Jesus.”
Messiaen being Messiaen, the composer manages to include ample bird calls. Syncopated passages punctuate a kind of mystic yearning so intense that it borders on the erotic.
During this holiest week on the Christian calendar, and in the wake of the tragedy at Notre Dame, which, thankfully, could have been a lot worse, I thought it only appropriate to revisit Messiaen’s luminous, ecstatic meditations.
We’ll hear it performed at the 2005 Marlboro Music Festival, by pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute, clarinetist Charles Neidich, violinist Karina Canellakis, and cellist Soo Bae.
The music will fill the entire hour. But there’s no need for an encore when time is at an end. I hope you’ll join me for the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page