There are few works that stand as musical monuments to the human soul. This is one of them. From his preface to the Quartet, Messiaen has written the following:

“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 swore by Him that liveth forever 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 his trumpet, then the mystery of God shall be finished.” The Revelation of St. John, chapter 10.

Conceived and written during my time as a prisoner-of-war, the ‘Quatour pour la fin du Temps’ was first performed at the POW camp Stalag VIII A in Gorlitz on 15th January 1941: the musicians were Jean le Boulaire (violin), Henri Akoka (clarinet), Etienne Pasquier (cello) and myself at the piano. The work was directly inspired by the above-cited passage from the Book of Revelation. The musical language is immaterial in essence, spiritual, catholic. Modes, which produce a kind of tonal ubiquity in harmonic and melodic terms, bring the listener closer to eternity in space, to infinity. Special rhythms, without any specific time signature, play a powerful role in taking the listener away from the temporal sphere. (But all this is no more than a stammering attempt, if one thinks of the overwhelming grandeur of the subject!) The Quartet consists of eight movements. Why? Seven is the perfect number: the six days of Creation, sanctified by the divine Sabbath. This seventh day of rest extends into eternity and becomes the 8 of the inextinguishable light, of everlasting peace.

1st movement: Liturgy of crystal The birds wake up between three and four o’clock in the morning: a blackbird or a nightingale, surrounded by musical pollen and a halo of trills lost high up in the tree-tops. Transpose this to the religious plane, and you will find yourself hearing the harmonious silence of heaven.

2nd movement: Vocalise for the angel who announces the end of time The first and third parts (very short) evoke the power of this mighty angel, his head crowned with a rainbow and dressed in a cloud, standing with one foot on the sea and the other on land. The impalpable celestial harmonies form the middle (part). On the piano, soft cascades of blue-orange chords, surrounding the almost plainsong recitative of the violin and cello with their distant carillon.

3rd movement: Abyss of the birds For solo clarinet. The abyss is time itself with all its sadness and weariness. The birds are the opposite of time: they are our desire for light, for stars and rainbows and songs of rejoicing!

4th movement: Interlude Scherzo, more outward in character than the other movements, but nevertheless linked to them by a number of melodic ‘recollections’.

5th movement: In praise of the eternity of Jesus Jesus is considered here to represent the Word of the Lord. A long and infinitely slow phrase played by the cello glorifies with love and reverence the eternity of this powerful yet tender Word, whose years shall never come to an end. The melody spreads out majestically in a kind of distant landscape that is tender and sovereign. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God, and the Word was God.

6th movement: Furious dance for the seven trumpets Rhythmically speaking, this piece is the most characteristic of the whole series. Playing in unison, the four instruments imitate the sound of gongs and trumpets (the six trumpets of the Apocalypse, each of which heralds a new catastrophe, and the trumpet of the seventh angel, announcing the consummation of the mystery of the Lord). Use of added values, augmented or diminished rhythms and irreversible rhythms. Music made of stone; formidable, sonorous granite; an irresistible movement of steel, of huge blocks of purple fury, of icy ecstasy. Listen in particular to the terrible fortissimo of the theme achieved by the augmentation and the change of the register of the theme’s different notes, towards the end of this movement.

7th movement: Tangle of rainbows for the angel who announces the end of time. Certain passages from the second movement reappear here. The angel appears full of power, and above all the rainbow that covers it (the rainbow as a symbol of peace, of wisdom, and of every vibration of sound and light). In my dreams I hear and see ordered chords and melodies, familiar shapes and colours, then, after this transitory stage, I pass into the unreal, and am surrounded and penetrated in a state of ecstasy by superhuman sounds and colours. These swords of fire, this lava flowing blue and orange, these sudden stars: behold the tangled maze of the rainbows!

8th movement: In praise of the immortality of Jesus An expansive violin solo, a pendant to the cello solo in the fifth movement. Why a second song of praise? This one specifically addresses the second aspect of Jesus, namely His human aspect, the Word that has become flesh, resurrected immortal in order to give us life. The song of praise is all love. Its slow ascent to the highest point is man’s ascent to his God, it’s the ascent of the Son God to His Father, it’s the ascent of the creature made divine to Paradise.

Let me finish by repeating what I said before: all this is no more than a stammering attempt, if one thinks of the overwhelming grandeur of the subject!

--Olivier Messiaen