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 January 1941—The End of time?
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Page 1 - Page 2 Quatuor pour la fin du Temps Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) Finally, there is that break towards the beyond, towards the invisible and unspeakable, which may be made by means of sound-color, and is summed up in the sensation of dazzlement. If I composed this quartet, it was to escape from the snow, from the war, from captivity, and from myself. The greatest benefit that I drew from it was that in the midst of thirty thousand prisoners, I was the only man who was not one. 5 It is well known that Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps was written while the composer was in captivity in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II. For many, it is the first thing that comes to mind in that it is perhaps one of the great inspirational stories of twentieth century music; that of a masterpiece created under the most dire circumstances, an affirmation of life in the face of the last century’s bleakest horrors. Though Messiaen resolutely downplayed this aspect of its genesis, it is worth mentioning as a starting place for this piece. As with so much else in Messiaen’s music, historical and theological issues become manifest in the structure of the work. In May of 1940, at the age of 31 and serving in the medical corps, Messiaen was captured by the Germans in a forest near Nancy. He was eventually sent in a convoy of prisoners by rail to the prisoner of war camp Stalag VIIIA at Gorlitz, a small town in Silesia (now in Poland). Despite the infinite deprivations of life in a prison camp, Messiaen was permitted to compose (keep in mind, this was not a concentration camp). Also in the camp were three other musicians for whom he began to compose. For these three, cellist Étienne Pasquier, clarinetist Henri Akoka, and violinist Jean le Boulaire, Messiaen said, “I immediately wrote for them an unpretentious little trio, which they played to me in the lavatories, for the clarinetist had kept his instrument with him and someone had given the cellist a cello with three strings. Emboldened by these first sounds, I retained this little piece under the name of ‘Intermède’ (‘interlude’) and gradually added to the seven pieces which surround it, thus taking to eight the total number of movements in my Quatour pour la fin du Temps.” 5 next >> |
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