Olivier Messiaen - Quatuor pour la fin du temps
(for clarinet (in B-flat), violin, cello, and piano)
(πηγή κειμένου: wikipedia.org)
The work is in eight movements. Quotations are
translated from Messiaen's Preface to the score.
Liturgie de cristal
I. "Crystal liturgy",
for the full quartet. In his preface to the score, Messiaen describes the
opening of the quartet:
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.
The opening movement begins with the solo clarinet
imitating a blackbird's song and the violin imitating a nightingale’s song. The
underlying pulse is provided by the cello and piano: the cello cycles through
the same five-note melody (using the pitches C, E, D, F-sharp, and B-flat) and
a repeating pattern of 15 durations. The piano part consists of a 17-note
rhythmic pattern permuted strictly through 29 chords, as if to give the
listener a glimpse of something eternal.
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.
The first and third parts (very short) evoke the
power of this mighty angel, a rainbow upon his head and clothed with a cloud,
who sets one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth. In the middle section
are the impalpable harmonies of heaven. In the piano, sweet cascades of
blue-orange chords, enclosing in their distant chimes the almost plainchant
song of the violin and cello.
Abîme des oiseaux
III. "Abyss of birds", for solo clarinet.
The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness.
The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars,
for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.
A test for even the most accomplished clarinetist,
with an extremely slow tempo marking quaver (eighth note) = 44.
Intermède
IV. "Interlude", for violin, cello, and
clarinet.
Scherzo, of a more individual character than the
other movements, but linked to them nevertheless by certain melodic
recollections.
Louange à l'Éternité de
Jésus
V. "Praise to the eternity of Jesus", for
cello and piano.
Jesus is considered here as the Word. A broad
phrase, "infinitely slow", on the cello, magnifies with love and
reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle, "whose time never
runs out". The melody stretches majestically into a kind of gentle, regal
distance. "In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the
Word was God." (John 1:1 (King James Version))
The music is arranged from an earlier, unpublished
piece, "Oraison" from "Fêtes des belles eaux" for 6 Ondes
Martenots, performed at the Paris World Fair in 1937. The tempo marking is infiniment
lent, extatique ("infinitely slow, ecstatic").
Danse de la fureur, pour
les sept trompettes
VI. "Dance of fury, for the seven
trumpets", for the full quartet.
Rhythmically, the most characteristic piece of the
series. The four instruments in unison imitate gongs and trumpets (the first
six trumpets of the Apocalypse followed by various disasters, the trumpet of
the seventh angel announcing consummation of the mystery of God) Use of added
values, of augmented or diminished rhythms, of non-retrogradable rhythms. Music
of stone, formidable granite sound; irresistible movement of steel, huge blocks
of purple rage, icy drunkenness. Hear especially all the terrible fortissimo
of the augmentation of the theme and changes of register of its different
notes, towards the end of the piece.
Toward the end of the movement the theme returns, fortissimo,
in augmentation and with wide changes of register.
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.
Recurring here are certain passages from the second
movement. The angel appears in full force, especially the rainbow that covers
him (the rainbow, symbol of peace, wisdom, and all luminescent and sonorous
vibration). – In my dreams, I hear and see ordered chords and melodies, known
colors and shapes; then, after this transitional stage, I pass through the
unreal and suffer, with ecstasy, a tournament; a roundabout compenetration of
superhuman sounds and colors. These swords of fire, this blue-orange lava,
these sudden stars: there is the tangle, there are the rainbows!
Louange à l'Immortalité
de Jésus
VIII. "Praise to the immortality of
Jesus", for violin and piano.
Large violin solo, counterpart to the violoncello
solo of the 5th movement. Why this second eulogy? It is especially aimed at
second aspect of Jesus, Jesus the Man, the Word made flesh, immortally risen
for our communication of his life. It is all love. Its slow ascent to the
acutely extreme is the ascent of man to his god, the child of God to his
Father, the being made divine towards Paradise.
The music is an arrangement of the second part of
his earlier organ piece "Diptyque", transposed up a major third from
C to E.
Richard Nunemaker, Clarinet
και το
Trio Oriens
Johnny Chang, Violin
Olive Chen, Cello
I-Ling Chen, Piano
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