Quatuor pour la fin du temps

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Quatuor pour la fin du temps, also known by its English title Quartet for the End of Time, is a piece of chamber music by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. It was written in 1940 and is generally regarded as one of his finest works.

Composition and first performance

Messiaen had been captured by the German army during World War II and was being held as a prisoner of war. Finding a violinist, (Jean le Boulaire), a cellist (Étienne Pasquier) and a clarinetist (Henri Akoka) among his fellow prisoners, he wrote a short trio for them. He later wrote the Quatuor for the same trio, plus himself at the piano. This combination of instruments is unusual, but not without precedent: Walter Rabl had composed for the same forces in 1896, and Paul Hindemith in 1938. The Quartet was premiered to an audience of 5,000 fellow prisoners of war and prison guards in Stalag VIII A on January 15, 1941. Messiaen later recalled the occasion: "Never have I been heard with as much attention and understanding."

Inspiration

Messiaen wrote in the preface to the score that the work was inspired by text from the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelation:

"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…"

Structure

The work is in eight movements.

I. Liturgie de cristal (Liturgy of crystal) - for the full quartet

Messiaen described the opening of the quartet as:

‘Between three and four in the morning, the awakening of birds: a solo blackbird or nightingale improvises, surrounded by a shimmer of sound, by a halo of trills lost very high in the trees. Transpose this onto a religious plane and you have the harmonious silence of Heaven’ – Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps - Preface (english translation)

And so the opening movement, Liturgie de cristal, begins with the solo clarinet imitating almost literally a blackbird's song. This is soon passed on to the violin that imitates the nightingale’s song.

While the melodies and ornamentations are left to the clarinet and violin alone in this movement the underlying pulse is kept by the cello and piano. The cello plays the same fifteen note melody continuously using only the notes C, E, D, F# and Bb (all from the same whole tone scale which Messiaen prized so much). Another point of note on the cello melody is that it is also palindromic, that is to say it is the same backwards as it is forwards.

The piano line is made up of a seventeen-note value rhythm but this time consisting of twenty-nine chords. Unlike the cello however this is simply repeated over and over.

It is thought that Messiaen chose to give the accompaniment these lines to enhance the feeling of timelessness, with no set beginning or end.

II. Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time) - for the full quartet
III. Abîme des oiseaux (Abyss of birds) - for solo clarinet
IV. Intermède (Interlude) - for violin, cello, and clarinet
V. Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus (Praise to the eternity of Jesus), for cello and piano, extremely slow and ecstatic
VI. Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes (Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets) - for the full quartet (in unison)
VII. Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps (Mingling of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time) - for the full quartet (same style as II.)
VIII. Louange à l'immortalité de Jésus (Praise to the immortality of Jesus) - for violin and piano, extremely slow and ecstatic (same style as V. but with melody in the violin range.)

A typical performance of the work lasts about fifty minutes.

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