Featured Work (Week 6)

Messiaen, Olivier (1908-1992)
[Quatuor pour la fin du temps]
Quartet for the End of Time: for clarinet, violin, violoncello, and piano

In the library: Durand, score (piano) and parts, two copies.

The instrumentation of the quartet is unusual (which I love in a piece), the cause this time being that Messiaen was writing for the instruments at hand. The composer was a French soldier during the Second World War; when France fell, the Germans gathered French soldiers into POW camps. Messiaen spent two years in these camps, first near Nancy--where he met clarinetist Henri Akoka and cellist Etienne Pasquier--and later in Stalag VIII-A near Goerlitz, Germany (now western Poland).

During their time in the camp at Nancy, Messiaen had begun a clarinet solo for his friend Akoka. After their transfer to Goerlitz (the three musicians were transferred together, by happy coincidence), he met a violinist, Jean le Boulaire, and began to compose a trio for his three friends. The clarinet solo, Abime les oiseaux, became the third movement of this trio. At the last minute, a piano was found, and Messiaen added a piano part for himself, and the trio became a quartet, the Quartet for the End of Time.

The Quatuor is divided into eight movements, based on a passage from Revelation that describes (surprisingly or not) the end of days. Several of the movements describe the passage of an angel, who walks upon the earth announcing that time shall cease. Others--the first and third in particular--are very worldly, contrasting the sound of birdsong (one of Messiaen's favorite motifs) with the splendor of the passing angel.

Quatuor pour la fin du temps was first performed in Stalag VIII-A in 1941. Messiaen claims that his audience numbered thousands, but his estimate is probably a little over-exuberant. Four hundred, Pasquier's still-impressive estimate, seems more likely.


For further reading: program notes from the Philharmonia Orchestra, Boston University's Messiaen Project, and (as always) Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.