Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Quatuor pour la fin du temps1940

Le Banquet celeste - 1926

• This is only 25 bars long, but according to the metronome mark Messiaen added for the second edition (1960), because he found organists were playing the work too quickly, the duration should be six minutes. Lasting for seven seconds, the first chord becomes less an element in a musical discourse than an event all by itself, a harmonic atmosphere. At this speed there can be no sensation of metre, even though the phrasing is so square ... Similarly, there can be no sensation of tonal movement. This music is not going anywhere, …

The Technique of my Musical Language – Olivier Messiaen, 1944

• Indian talas - rhythmic modes• Non-retrogradable rhythms• Non-transposable modes

– Modes of limited transposition• Prime numbers

1939

Quartet for the End of Time

• 1940• Eight movements• Messiaen was a prisoner of war

– allowed to keep scores, given music paper– other musicians – cellist (3 strings), clarinet,

violin

Preface to the score text from the Book of Revelation (Rev 10:1–2, 5–7)

• 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 ....

Liturgie de cristal

• I. "Crystal liturgy", for the full quartet.

Bird song in violin and clarinet

• “Their songs . . . make extremely refined jumbles of rhythmic pedals”

• Fragment heard in many forms

Piano

• Rhythm from 13th-century text on Indian music, 17 durations repeat over and over

• 29 chords repeat• Repeated bass note described by Messiaen as

“effect of a stained-glass window”

Modes of limited transposition

• Contradicts previous idea of moving toward a tonal goal

• Whole step scale one of Messiaen’s seven modes of limited transposition—used in Movement 1

– C D E F# G# A# C– C# D# F G A B C#

Repeated melody and rhythm: cello

• Cycle of 15 notes, does not coincide with barline

• C E D F# B-flat repeats three times in 15 notes but rhythms are different

• Nonretrogradable rhythm – 4 3 4 then– 4 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 4

• 33 complete statements of piano’s rhythm for cello to coincide again at the entry point

• 29 complete statements of piano’s rhythm and melody to coincide again

• Use of prime numbers means we never reach the beginning point again

• Hypothetical 230 minutes to complete cycle

“Pedals”

• In cello and piano: A rhythmic pedal, “an independent rhythm which constantly repeats itself without paying heed to the rhythms which surround it.

• Cello repetition is a melodic pedal• Piano repetition is a harmonic pedal

Messiaen about the “charm of impossibilities”

• “It is a glistening music we seek, giving to the aural sense voluptuously refined pleasures. At the same time this music should be able to express some noble sentiments (and especially the most noble of all, . . . The truths of our Catholic faith). This charm, at once both voluptuous and contemplative, resides particularly in certain mathematical impossibilities [in] the modal and rhythmic domains.

Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps

• II. "Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of time", for the full quartet.

Movement 2, A B A’• A Some of birdsongs were also used in Movement 1• B = angel’s vocalise

– Chanted recitation of poetry or scripture like plainsong– “Only plainsong possesses at once the purity, the joy and the lightness

necessary to send the soul towards Truth. . . . – Finally, it should be sung with proper respect for the neumes . . . Neumes

are also found in the songs of birds, the garden warbler, the blackcap, the song thrust, the skylark and the robin sing neumes. And what is admirable about the neume is the rhythmic suppleness it engenders. . . . ”

– Melody in B derived from A, but A has the joy and B the flexibility– Messiaen described the piano chords in B as “Gentle cascades of blue-

orange chords. . . A distant carillon• A’ = inversion

Abîme des oiseaux

• III. "Abyss of birds", for solo clarinet.

abc-ac’-coda

• In score on fast parts: “bathed in sunshine, like a bird, very free in movement”

• “birds are the opposite of time”• Combines two birdsongs heard separately in

Mvmt 1, blackbird and nightingale

Intermède

• IV. "Interlude", for violin, cello, and clarinet.

• Regular rhythms and phrasing• Clear tonal movement and form• Rondo-like pattern

Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus

• V. "Praise to the eternity of Jesus", for cello and piano.

• Prelude to the second act: renewing the focus on eternity which provides the frame for the apocalyptic personages and events that will reappear in the following two movements.

• Inifinitely slow, ecstatic

• Originally Fête des belles eaux

• Messiaen cites this as an example of his song-sentence:

– Theme (antecedent and consequent)● In E

– Middle period (three parts in this work)● A melodic development of the theme . . . In which

some fragments of the theme are repeated in the initial key upon different degrees, or in other keys, and are varied rhythmical, melodically and harmonically.

– Final period● Return to tonic harmony

Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes

• VI. "Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets", for the full quartet.

• After fourth trumpet a brief moment of reflection in the scripture and in the music

• Principal theme = example of added value– Feel of 4/4 bar slightly off at opening– Four bar units

• Theme is anticipated in mvmt. 4• M. 5-6 “the added value . . . And Hindu melodic color are

united” “Hindu music ‘ abounds in curious, exquisite, unexpected melodic contours which the native improvisers repeat and vary following the rules of the raga.”

Anoushka Shankar

• Live at Carnegie Hall– Raga Madhuvanti

● Alap● Gat in rupak

• First section– Four statements of same material. a a’ a a’

• Middle section– Nonretrogradable rhythms– Repeating 16-pitch pattern

• Recapitulation, – but altered

• Coda– Ideas of opening and middle, conclusion

Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps

• VII. "Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time", for the full quartet.

• Depicts events in sequence• “Variations of the first theme separated by variations of the

second”• First theme recalls second movement’s second section• Second theme a direct quotation of second movement• Rhythm has regular motion, one tempo throughout• Materials presented contrapuntally, but don’t harmonize as

Brahms or Schoenberg would have• Ends on pitch of beginning

• Tempo extremely slow associated with a state of ecstasy.

• Contemplation of an eternity in which the tensions surrounding the events of the apocalypse have been resolved through the ending of time.

• When he plays organ version it takes 9 minutes (for 3 pages)

Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus

• VIII. "Praise to the immortality of Jesus", for violin and piano.

• Clear and simple overall architecture– Theme

● Two three-bar phrases– First commentary– Theme– Second commentary

• Movement in E, ends on E

Reception of Quatuor

• "In the midst of thirty-thousand prisoners, I was the only man who was not one."

• 5,000 prisoners heard it, complete silence for an hour