Olivier Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps

Time’s End: A Walk Through Messiaen’s Quatuor

“Then I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven wrapped in a cloud, with a halo around his head; his face was like the sun and his feet were like pillars of fire. […]. He placed his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, […] he raised his right hand to heaven and swore by the one who lives forever and ever […]: ‘There shall be no more delay. At the time when you hear the seventh angel blow his trumpet, the mysterious plan of God shall be fulfilled’ […]”. Revelation, 10, 1- 7

The relationship between sacred text and music is a consistent theme throughout human history. Across religious traditions, one finds examples of texts intended for liturgical use. In the West, as a result of the predominance of Christianity, and the evolution of sacred vocal music, the Bible has been a primary source of inspiration for composers—from medieval and Renaissance motets, and Baroque oratorios (Carissimi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Bach, Händel), to more recent periods (Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Perosi, Britten, Pärt).

Yet expressing a purely theological subject in music, even when drawn from the Bible, can be a complex undertaking. There are few examples of this found in the history of Western music.

Masterpieces of Renaissance music, as well as certain baroque works, used symbolic designs in their scores to express mystical concepts contained in the texts. But these were elements intended more for the analyst’s eye than for a listener’s ear.

With Quatuor pour la fin du temps, the French composer Olivier Messiaen provides his own answer to the problem, and in doing so leaves an indelible mark on the way we process musical time. In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Messiaen found himself called to the front. A year later, he was captured by German forces near Nancy and interned at Stalag VIII A near Görlitz, in Silesia, on the site now within Zgorzelec, Poland. During his imprisonment, the French composer made the acquaintance of three other musicians: Jean Le Boulaire (violinist), Henri Akoka (clarinetist) and Etienne Pasquier (cellist). The habit of carrying music paper with him in his soldier’s backpack, enabled him to compose a work for himself and the other three musicians: the Quatuor, which was first performed on January 15, 1941 before an audience of fellow prisoners and guards. “I have never had more attentive and sympathetic listeners” Messiaen recalled.

As Iain G. Matheson wrote, “the dissolution of time announced by Messiaen implies a type of rhythmic music, which avoids repetitions, metric divisions and equal subdivisions, and ultimately takes inspiration from the movements of nature, movements that are free and of unequal length: in other words the exact opposite of what rhythm traditionally means”.

Two very important rhythmic aspects appear in the first movement, Liturgie de cristal.

The first is found in the organization of the cello and the piano parts. In fact, both instruments utilize the medieval composition technique of isorhythm—that is, “a rhythmic sequence superimposed on a melodic profile, each of which recurs in a continuous but independent way from one to the other”.

The cello part presents a melody of five notes subjected to a rhythmic ostinato of fifteen rhythmic values, while the piano presents a sequence of twenty-nine chords superimposed upon nineteen rhythmic values. This procedure is very reminiscent of the technique of talea and color in the motets of the 13th and 14th centuries, repertoire that Messiaen always claimed not to be aware of, at least during the period of composition of Quatuor. All of this involves dissociation of the rhythm from melody and harmony, elements deeply established in the Western tradition. A further consequence of this isorhythmic process is that the material is not developed in the conventional sense: it is subjected to choices made before composition begins.

For the listener, the result is a sense of stasis, of apparent suspended immobility, which creates a link between the temporal dimension of music (defined by Salvatore Sciarrino as organized time) and the eternal dimension, in which time no longer exists.

The continuous process established by the use of isorhythm is interrupted in the first movement by the violin and clarinet, which sing songs of birds, animals considered by Messiaen to be the symbol of eternity and freedom. The second innovation introduced by the composer is the use of non-retrogradable rhythm. These rhythms are palindromes, which also occur in the first movement, particularly in the cello part. Additionally, the choice of sequences of this type contributes to the prolongation of time.

The second movement, Vocalise, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps, is the most symmetrically structured: “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”. In the third movement, Abîme des Oiseaux, the composer describes “the abyss of time, its sadness and discouragement in contrast to the birds that are the opposite of time; they are our desire for light, stars and heavenly things”. This vigorous and dynamic movement aims to prepare the way for Louange à l’éternité de Jésus, the first of two movements for a string instrument and the piano. This fifth movement, and then the eighth, Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus, are related by their key (E major; they are the only two movements with a defined tonality in this work), and the theological idea on which they are based (a tribute to the eternal Jesus and a tribute to the humanity of Jesus) but are especially connected by their extreme slowness.

The sixth movement, Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes, is another furious dance, this time for all four instruments in unison, in which the composer often employs the addition of rhythmic values, further forcing the time to slow down.

The seventh movement, Fouillis d’arcs-en-ciel, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps, uses two themes. The first is new, while the second is derived from the second movement. One of the ways Messiaen combines the two themes is to present the notes of one in the rhythm of the other, in such a way that the independence of the rhythm from melody and harmony is once again affirmed. Messiaen manages to write a work that focuses the public’s attention on time and rhythm. Certainly it is another matter to evaluate whether he succeeds in demonstrating the link—present in his mind—between time as a musical problem and time as a theological problem.

The Bible is clearly the starting point for Quatuor—its inspiration—and the composer wants the performers and the audience to be aware of it, but the only means of guaranteeing this is the use of titles that create expectations in the performers—and in the listeners. The titles of the movements direct their thoughts in a certain direction, while the title of the work itself is an inescapable clue to the composer’s intentions; any audience would have perceived the work differently if it had simply been titled Quatuor. In composing a non-vocal piece, Messiaen seems to avoid the link between word and music made simply by singing the text of the Bible. However, to make his intentions clear he is inclined to use words, which influence the performance and reception of the work.

Album notes by Marco Benetti. Original English translation by Bill Whitley; language and historical details revised for this online edition.