Conversations with the Performers


 		 

Main - Conversation with Christopher Cullen - Jonathan Faiman

Christopher Cullen - Clarinet

On Messiaen’s rhythmic technique:

You don’t have to be aware of those techniques to feel like something is very much the same in the rhythm. You can feel the parallels in the rhythm from the first half to the second half of these rhythmic patterns. So there is something afoot. There’s a pattern and a plan in the music that you don’t have to sit down and analyze every measure to have a sense of.

On theology:

As I understand this, he is often categorized and even dismissed as a mystical Catholic. And that doesn’t really mean anything without some understanding. It just makes him sound fervent. His Catholicism was important in his music, as later birdcalls became important in his music because they felt very organic to him.

On “the end of time”:

When he talks about the end of time, it’s true that he lifts the lines from the book of the apocalypse. But it’s not an apocalyptic vision in the way the movies tell us when an asteroid hits the planet. It’s not the day the earth is destroyed or the day all life ends. It’s about superceding the concept of time. It’s the end of time as the thing that binds us. For Messiaen, that’s what eternity is. He might argue that we are in eternity right now, and just can’t see beyond what the clock tells us, where we have to be next. And for Messiaen and the other prisoners in the POW camp it was particularly poignant because no matter how you slice it time was the enemy. Either time is going to end very abruptly for a prisoner, probably in a very violent or frightening way, or they have time on their hands. It’s monotony, despair, and worry. All of that preoccupies them and fills their days. The end of time means the end of worry. And that is what joy is. According to Messiaen, that is what our endpoint is. And that is love. Love is perhaps the absence of anxiety, and understanding that you are here now and that is enough. So he employs all of these techniques to try to voice something that is very difficult to define.

On the “Abyss of the Birds”:

The juxtaposition is between this abyss in which there is no motion, there is very little movement, very little emotion. It’s actually marked desolate. And that’s cut by these birdcalls. What he does just in terms of range with the slower parts is, it starts in a middle range. Then that material comes back about two thirds of the way through even an octave lower. So he’s done everything he can to establish that this is the lowest point. And that comes after a bunch of activity. So it’s not a steady incline from despair to birdlike freedom and hope.

On experiencing the music:

In trying to communicate things about the piece, sometimes we – because Messiaen himself was so specific in naming the movements and describing in detail how he did what he did – it is easy to describe it in such a way that robs it of its impact. You were saying before that it isn’t programmatic, and that is very much true. Even though the movement titles are essentially programmatic, it is important to remember that several of these movements didn't begin as part of this piece. He wrote the solo clarinet movement as a separate piece – at the same time, for the same clarinetist, at the same camp. Messiaen’s output reflects his life and his thinking arguably more than is true for some composers. But it is not programmatic in the sense that he is trying to get across an agenda.

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