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PAST, PRESENT, AND NOWHERE: THE CONCEPT OF TIME IN QUARTET FOR THE

END OF TIME

MUS 3542

Decker

Final Project

Kim Mathews

5/5/15
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Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time connects the past and present

together in a delicate array of sound. This essay discusses those main two influences

that Messiaen used to achieve the tenuous connection between past and present,

which are his interests in ornithology and his devote catholic faith. Through careful

execution of these two items, Messiaen conjures up images of the end of time, and

takes listeners form the now into a place where tangible time is nonexistent.

Oliver Messiaen was born December 10th, 1908 in Avignon, France. He came

from a family versed in the arts, as his father was an English literature scholar and

his mother was a poet. Around age 7, Messiaen began composing, and soon taught

himself piano. In 1918, after a move to Paris, Messiaen entered the Conservatorie.1

After WWII broke out, Messiaen was drafted into the French army and later held in a

prisoner of war camp, where he met a cellist, a clarinetist, and a violinist.

Consequently, he composed Quartet for the End of Time for violin, clarinet, cello, and

piano. The piece first premiered in 1941 for the prisoners and guards of the camp,

and was formally published in 1942 following his departure from the camp.

Quartet for the End of Time has several influences, two of the most prominent

being Messiaen’s interest in ornithology, or the study of birds, and his resolute faith.

In score order, the two higher pitched instruments, clarinet and violin, are

representative of bird song. The clarinet and the violin often find themselves

executing fast trills, grace notes, and accomplishing all this through a wide range of

notes typically in a high register. The clarinet in the very first measure exemplifies

1"The Olivier Messiaen Page." The Olivier Messiaen Page. 2001. Accessed May 3, 2015.
http://www.oliviermessiaen.org/.
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this well; it sets the tone for the piece by opening on a syncopated entrance that

peaks on a trill, all qualities very reminiscent of a birdcall. This is shown in figure 1.

Figure 1

Figure 2

In the third measure, the violin joins in (figure 2) with a rapid succession of 32nd

notes in a very high register. A short almost random phrase is set as a tag in the next

measure, and in the next measure 16th notes helps build back up to the 32nd notes.

Again, these fast, high and shrill notes are all qualities of bird song. Messiaen in

particular had the calls of the Blackbird (violin) and the Nightingale (clarinet) in

mind for this piece. To Messiaen, birds were the bridge between heaven and earth.

In other words, they could transverse the secular and the divine, something humans

cannot do without dying. This translates to time in regards to the heavenly realm,

because in paradise time is not as we know it. According to 2 Peter 3:8 from the

Holy Bible, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like

a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day....”2. This is a simile used to

state that God is outside the realm of our conventional notions of time. By including

2Sarfati, Jonathan. "Creation Magazine." Creation. Accessed May 4, 2015.

http://creation.com/.
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birdsong in his piece, when he believes birds to be the bridge between heaven and

earth, Messiaen is attempting to transverse the tangible notion of now to a time that

is not time at all, and thus not of this world. However, birdsong is not the only

means that Messiaen attempts to use to convey a relationship with time.

Messiaen uses a different approach with the cello and piano, and utilizes it to

capture the finicky nature of life. Here, he introduces a medieval concept known as

isorhythm. Isorhythm is the technique that arranges a fixed pattern of pitches with a

repeating rhythmic line. It hails back to the 13th century to describe polyphonic

motets, but was still in use in the 14th and 15th century. Thus, it is a connection to the

past. In the cello for example, the talea, or the rhythmic repetition, has 15 durations

before repeating. Additionally, the color has 5 separate pitches that it cycles through

before repeating. While the talea and the color do line up in some places, they do not

always, nor do they have to. Figure 2 displays the numberings used to show the

repetitions/statements of the talea and color, with the talea

Figure 3

consisting of the numbers above the music, and the numbers for the color being

below the music. Messiaen is using this isorhythm to represent the cyclical nature of

life. It is stated, seen through, and then ends only to be brought back in a different

environment with new factors governing its existence, in this case those new factors
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being the possibility of the new notes and rhythms it may find itself lined up against

on its new repetition. However, at the end of the piece the talea in the cello remains

unfinished. The piece ends on only the 5th rhythmic statement out of 15 in total. This

begs the question, why? This unfinished talea is used by Messiaen to represent the

finite nature of life. While it is always repeating, always replenishing itself, at the

end of the world it will cease to do that. This piece is based around the belief that

the world will most decidedly end, as detailed in chapter 10 verse 6 of the book of

Revelations, “And he swore by Him that liveth for ever and ever, who created

heaven and the things that are therein, and the earth and the things that are therein,

and the sea and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer.”3

Together, the four instruments of this piece come together to represent “that

there should be time no longer”, or the end of the world. Through the use of

birdsong, the clarinet and violin transcend the time of now, the present that is kept

in constant check, and they take flight to heaven, where time is eternal and does

need to be sought for and pined after. In the isorhythms found in the lower voices,

they call us back in time and display the delicate nature of life itself. Together these

features work in harmony to produce an ethereal piece that cannot help but make

listeners ponder about their roles in life, and the thin balance that holds our time

here in place.

3"BibleGateway." .com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 100 Versions

and 50 Languages. Accessed May 4, 2015. https://www.biblegateway.com/.
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Works Cited

"BibleGateway." .com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 100 Versions and

50 Languages. Accessed May 4, 2015.

https://www.biblegateway.com/.

"The Olivier Messiaen Page." The Olivier Messiaen Page. January 1, 2001.

Accessed May 3, 2015. http://www.oliviermessiaen.org/.

Sarfati, Jonathan. "Creation Magazine." Creation. Accessed May 4, 2015.

http://creation.com/.