Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time

Olivier Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps / Quartet for the end of time (1941;2000) Performers: GIl Shaham (violin), Paul Meyer (clarinet), Jian Wang (violoncello) and Myung-Whun Chung (piano) Deutsche Grammophon

Background

Historical context and mythology must be important factors in the popularity of classical works I reckon, given that unlike pop songs, they usually contain no explicit or direct narrative of their own. Without a story of some kind to follow, it's difficult for listeners to attach meaning or to relate personally to the music. Hence the great interest in Beethoven's deafness, Mozart's poverty and Bach's dangerous obsession with monkeys, which far outweighs most people's interest in the actual music of these 'great' composers. Of course, a good story is only really an accompaniment to good music; deafness and poverty aren't much of a draw on their own.

As further evidence of this theory, it was the incredible story behind Messiaen's Quartet for the end of time that made me want to hear it in the first place, and the ghosts that inhabit the work which still give the music, as I hear it, much of its character. I can't help but picture the scene when I listen. Famous classical blogger Alex Ross tells the tale best:

The most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century was first heard on a brutally cold January night in 1941, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp, in Görlitz, Germany. The composer was Olivier Messiaen, the work “Quartet for the End of Time.” Messiaen wrote most of it after being captured as a French soldier during the German invasion of 1940. The première took place in an unheated space in Barrack 27. A fellow-inmate drew up a program in Art Nouveau style, to which an official stamp was affixed: “Stalag VIIIA 49 geprüft [approved].” Sitting in the front row—and shivering along with the prisoners—were the German officers of the camp.

[...]

I was just kidding about Bach by the way.

Music

The Quartet is split into eight movements and Messiaen utilises various configurations to get a variety of sounds that really surprised me. He also seems to have loved rests, changes of direction and crazy interjections. It's difficult to get your head around at first.

At the centre of the Quartet is a piece of music that quite possibly is the most "ethereally beautiful" of the twentieth century. The piece is called "Louange á l'Eternité de Jésus," meaning "Praise for the eternity of Jesus" (Messiaen was a devout Christian and was apparently inspired by his faith in almost everything he did). While the rest of the Quartet is playful, lively and full of variety, the "Louange á l'Eternité de Jésus" is, I think, all about chords. They pulse slowly and beautifully from the piano, while the violin forges sky-trails above. It really is as simple as that, but some of those chord changes are like soft suckerpunches to the stomach. When I first listened to the "Louange", on an old LP through headphones in my university's library, I was rooted to the spot.

I'd like to write more about the music itself, but basically it's beyond me. I'm not well versed in the language of classical music; either in describing it, or in the 'language' of the music itself. And most importantly, after about ten listens, I still don't feel very familiar with the Quartet anyway. No point in hurrying though.