Messiaen, Olivier. (1908–1992)
Quartet for the End of Time - AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT
Autograph manuscript "Quatuor pour la fin du temps. I. Liturgie de cristal." Large open double upright musical folio, signed and inscribed on each page "très amicalement" to Pierre Tassin, 17/6/1987. Two small tears to edges, otherwise fine. Together with a related letter.A fine and detailed manuscript of the opening measures of the resplendant "Liturgie de cristal," first movement of Messiaen's "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" (1940) for violin, cello, clarinet and piano, with the indication "Bien modéré, en poudroiement harmonieux." Together with a letter from the composer to Mme Ghislaine Tassin, Paris, 17/6/1987, 1 p. 12to, sending her the manuscript: "Vous trouverez ci-jointes les premières pages de mon 'Quatuor pour la fin du Temps', copiées de ma main (...) J'espère que cela satisfera votre fils Pierre (...) Comme lui, j'ai la chance d'avoir la Foi, et cela m'a toujours soutenu au milieu des plus grandes difficultés." ["You will find here the first pages of my Quatuor pour la fin du Temps' copied out in my hand as you had asked me...I hope this pleases your son Pierre...like him, I am fortunate to have faith, and it has always supported me in the middle of the greatest difficulties."
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered World War II. He was captured by the German army in June 1940 and imprisoned in Stalag VIII-A, a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany (now Zgorzelec, Poland). While in transit to the camp, Messiaen showed the clarinetist Henri Akoka, also a prisoner, the sketches for what would become Abîme des oiseaux. Two other professional musicians, violinist Jean le Boulaire and cellist Étienne Pasquier, were among his fellow prisoners, and after he managed to obtain some paper and a small pencil from a sympathetic guard , Messiaen wrote a short trio for them; this piece developed into the Quatuor for the same trio with himself at the piano. The quartet was premiered at the camp, outdoors and in the rain, on 15 January 1941. The musicians had decrepit instruments and an audience of about 400 fellow prisoners and guards. Messiaen later recalled: "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension." In the Preface to the published score, he writes that the work was inspired by text from the Book of Revelation (Rev 10:1–2, 5–7, King James Version): "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 sware by him that liveth for ever 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, the mystery of God should be finished ...." Of the present movement, Messiaen's preface describes the opening: "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." (11374)
Manuscript Music Classical Music