A Summary of the General Inferences of the End of Time in Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time

1 “...Peasants, laborers, intellectuals, career soldiers, medics, priests...” this was the diverse crew in attendance at the now almost legendary premier of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (Golèa 63). It was a crowd that was hardly knowledgeable about Messiaen’s stylistically unique approaches to composition – most of them probably knew little about music at all.Yet approximately five thousand morale-deprived prisoners at the Stalag VIIIA Nazi prison camp, many of whom were starved or wounded, braved the -4 degrees Fahrenheit cold to form an impassioned and understanding crowd whose quiet, sympathetic temperament was like nothing Messiaen had ever experienced in his life: “...we were all brothers because we were all in the same situation.... they listened with a religious silence. Never before had I been listened to like that.... Even if these people knew nothing about music, they readily understood that this was something special” (Samama). While the mystical and eerily enchanting conditions of the infamous premier of the Quartet make the event inimitable, to say the least, audiences today, listening even in the most comfortable concert halls, continue to find Messiaen’s masterpiece portray the same passions and sensations it illustrated at its debut at the Silesian Nazi camp. Indeed, the most profound qualities of the Quartet the release from the perils of time, the hope and anticipation of eternity, and the perpetuation of the transcendental and super-temporal are quite clearly implied in the aesthetic principles found in the work and can be comprehended through attentive listening.Yet the primary subject that Messiaen sought to address in the Quartet, the cessation of mortal time, begs a thorough examination of the piece to uncover all of the instances in which the topic is addressed. Messiaen relates the topic of the end of time to the listener by focusing on the apocalyptic theme of the Biblical book of Revelation, chapter 10:1-7: And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow on his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire....Setting his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land...and, standing on the sea and on the land, he raised his right hand toward Heaven and swore by He who lives forever and ever... saying: “There will be no more Time; but in the days when the A Summary of the General Inferences of the End of Time in Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time JONATHAN GODFREY