Saturday, January 30th, 2027, 7:30pm

“Composer Olivier Messiaen was called to active duty by the French Army in 1939, serving as a hospital nurse. Soon after, he was captured by German troops and sent to Stalag VIII-A, a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany. According to violinist Jean Le Boulaire, who performed in the quartet’s premiere, conditions in the camp were harsh: Nearly 50,000 French and Belgian prisoners were huddled in 30 barracks built to hold 500 prisoners each. Prisoners were underfed and unprotected from the brutally cold weather.

“When I arrived at the camp, I was stripped of all my clothes, like all the prisoners,” Messiaen said. “But naked as I was, I clung fiercely to a little bag of miniature scores that served as consolation when I suffered. The Germans considered me to be completely harmless, and since they still loved music, not only did they allow me to keep my scores, but an officer also gave me pencils, erasers, and some music paper.” And so he began to compose.

Messiaen started with movements that referenced passages from his earlier works. The serene “Louange à l’éternité de Jésus” (“Praise to the Eternity of Jesus”) for cello and piano was roughly based on a part of Fête des belles eaux (Celebration of the Beautiful Waters), a piece for six ondes martenots, while the roots of “Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus” (“Praise to the Immortality of Jesus”) were also in the 1930 organ piece Diptyque. The otherworldly “Abîme des oiseaux” (“Abyss of the Birds”) was composed for clarinetist Henri Akoka before the two were transported to Görlitz. Once Messiaen was given access to a piano, he began composing the remaining five movements. The Intermède (Interlude) was the first movement completely written in the camp, and it was rehearsed in the camp’s bathroom.

Messiaen wrote the piece for the instruments and players available to him: clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. This unconventional combination presented some challenges in tonal blend. He brilliantly overcame them by grouping them in more conventional chamber-music settings: clarinet, cello, and piano; violin and piano; violin, cello, and piano. Each movement relates to the apocalyptic Book of Revelation, vividly depicted in The Cloisters Apocalypse, an illuminated manuscript from around 1330. The quartet’s fury unfolds in whirling rhythms, but alongside them a vision of eternity sings beautifully in passages of ethereal calm.”

- This note is an excerpt from “Five Things to Know About Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time.’” https://www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Articles/2021/03/11/Five-Things-to-Know-About-Messiaens-Quartet-for-the-End-of-Time