Quatuor pour la fin du temps
The Quatuor pour la fin du temps (German: Quartet for the end of time ) is an eight- movement chamber music work by the French composer Olivier Messiaen . It has the instrumentation clarinet , violin , violoncello and piano , but all instruments only appear in four movements. The performance lasts about 50 minutes.
Origin and premiere
Messiaen completed the quartet as an inmate of the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VIII-A in the Görlitz district of Moys at the end of 1940 / beginning of 1941. The camp commanders had given Messiaen the opportunity to compose, and a piano was made available to him; rehearsals took place in the washrooms. The unusual instrumentation resulted from the musicians available in the warehouse, the clarinetist Henri Akoka , the violinist Jean Le Boulaire and the cellist Étienne Pasquier . The Louange sentences were written earlier and Abîme des oiseaux Messiaen wrote for Henri Akoka in a temporary camp in Toul . The first performance of the entire work took place in the camp in Görlitz on January 15, 1941 in front of about 400 prisoners of war, the composer himself took over the piano part. The French premiere came soon after Messiaen's return to Paris, on June 24, 1941. In addition to Pasquier and Messiaen, the violinist Jean Pasquier and the clarinetist André Vacellier played in this performance. On May 15, 1942, the quartet was published by the French publisher Durand.
background
The title of the quartet and the 2nd, 6th and 7th movements refer to the Revelation of John (chapter 10, verses 1-7):
- And I saw another strong angel come down from heaven, clothed in a cloud, with the rainbow on his head and his face like the sun and his feet like pillars of fire. [...] And he put his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the earth [...] And the angel, whom I saw standing on the sea and on the earth, lifted his right hand to heaven and swore by him there lives from eternity to eternity [...]: From now on there will be no more time, but in the days when the seventh angel will raise his voice and blow his trumpet, then the mystery of God will be completed ...
sentences
| title | German translation | instrumentation |
|---|---|---|
| Liturgy de cristal | Crystalline liturgy | Quartet: violin, clarinet, violoncello, piano |
| Vocalise, pour l'ange qui annonce la fin du temps | Vocalize for the angel who announces the end of time | Quartet: violin, clarinet, violoncello, piano |
| Abîme des oiseaux | Abyss of birds | Solo: clarinet |
| Intermède | Interlude | Trio: violin, clarinet, violoncello |
| Louange à l'éternité de Jésus | Praise the eternity of Jesus | Duo: violoncello, piano |
| Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes | Dance of Wrath for the Seven Trumpets (meaning the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse ) | Quartet: violin, clarinet, violoncello, piano ( unison ) |
| Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'ange qui annonce la fin du temps | Vortex of rainbows for the angel who proclaims the end of time | Quartet: violin, clarinet, violoncello, piano |
| Louange à l'immortalité de Jésus | Praise the immortality of Jesus | Duo: violin, piano |
Edits
The composer and conductor Clytus Gottwald arranged the 5th movement Louange à l'éternité de Jésus for mixed choir of 19 voices and used a text from Messiaen's Trois petites Liturgies de la présence divine .
literature
- Rebecca Rischin, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet , Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-8014-7297-8