69. Messiaenic Visions

Quartet for the End of Time is surprising. First of all, because of the place and circumstances of its creation. Olivier Messiaen wrote it in a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz in 1940. This explains another surprise – its unusual instrumentation. Among the prisoners were clarinetist Henri Akoka, to whom the composer showed a piece he had previously written for his instrument (namely, Abyss of the Birds, which later became the third movement of the Quartet…), as well as violinist Jean le Boulaire and cellist Étienne Pasquier. In one of the barracks stood a piano on which the composer himself performed the premiere of the work on January 15, 1941. The poetic titles of the movements may also come as a surprise, but there is nothing strange about them once one learns that Messiaen’s father was a translator of Shakespeare and an English teacher, and his mother was a poet. The composer himself, a deeply devout Catholic fascinated by theology, also wrote – for example, the lyrics to his own songs. The phrase “tangle of rainbows” from the title of the seventh section takes on greater meaning when we recall that the composer had the gift of synesthesia – that is, the perception of sound as color—and that sounds manifested themselves in his mind as colors. Perhaps the final surprise is that music composed according to numerical rules (for example, specific motifs repeat a specific, symbolic number of times, and the parts of particular instruments maintain certain relationships with one another) can sound so natural, even inspired.

– Dominika Micał (pisanezesluchu.pl)