2010 Mimir Chamber Music Festival
13th Anniversary Concert Series

Program Notes

Mimir Chamber Music Festival

7:30 PM Tuesday July 13, 2010

Pepsico Recital Hall at TCU

Fort Worth, Texas

Program notes by Stephen Seleny

Olivier Messiaen (1908-92)
Quartet for the End of Time

In 1940, Olivier Messiaen was interned in a German prison camp after Germany invaded France. Among his fellow prisoners, Messiaen discovered a clarinetist, a violinist and a cellist who had all somehow managed to hold on to their instruments. The success of a short trio he wrote for these musicians, led him to add seven more movements to this Interlude. Because an old upright piano was available, Messiaen (who was a fine pianist) added that instrument to the ensemble for the resulting Quartet for the End of Time. Messiaen and his friends first performed the work for 5000 fellow prisoners and the German soldiers on a very cold winter night on January 15, 1941. “Never have I been listened to with such attention and understanding,” remembered the composer much later.

If the plain facts of the work's origins are simple, the spiritual facts are far more complex. Because of his deep Catholic mysticism, Messiaen found a point of departure for the Quartet in a passage in the Book of Revelation. Messiaen quotes chapter 10 of the Apocalypse of St. John: “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and lifted his hand to heaven and swore by him who lives for ever and ever, saying: There shall be no more time! But that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the Mystery of God shall be fulfilled.”

According to the composer, the Quartet was intended not to be a commentary on the Apocalypse, nor to refer to his own captivity, but to be a kind of musical extension of the Biblical account, and of the concept of the End of Time as the end of past and future and the beginning of eternity. For Messiaen there was also a musical sense to the angel's announcement. In this composition, Messiaen developed a varied and flexible rhythmic system, based in part on ancient Hindu rhythms, more or less literally putting an end to the “equally measured time" of western classical music. In this work, and much of the composer’s subsequent music, Messiaen often used complex rhythms, rather than the metrical symmetry more common in most Western classical music.

The architecture of the Quartet is both musical and mystical. There are eight movements because God rested on the seventh day after creation, a day which extended into the eighth day of timeless eternity. There are intricate thematic relationships, such as between movements two and seven, both of which are about the angel. There are also stylistic and theological relationships, as between movements five and eight.

In a preface to the score, Messiaen commented on each of the Quartet’s movements. Must the audience absorb, comprehend and remember these words as we listen to this music? Like all good music, this composition speaks for itself on musical terms alone. Still, the composer’s words may aid in the understanding of the origins of this particular work. After all, they represent the composer’s innermost thoughts and beliefs. What follows is my translation of Messiaen’s original French text:

1. “Liturgy of Crystal” — Between three and four o'clock in the morning, the awakening of the birds: a blackbird or a solo nightingale improvises, surrounded by efflorescent sound, by a halo of trills lost high in the trees...
2. “Vocalise for the Angel who announces the End of Time” — The first and third parts (very short) evoke the power of this mighty angel, a rainbow upon his head and clothed with a cloud, who sets one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth. In the middle section are the impalpable harmonies of heaven. In the piano, sweet cascades of blue-orange chords, enclosing in their distant chimes the almost plainchant song of the violin and violoncello.
3. “Abyss of the Birds” — Clarinet alone. The abyss is ‘Time’ with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.
4. “Interlude” — Scherzo, of a more individual character than the other movements, but linked to them nevertheless by certain melodic recollections.
5. “Praise to the Eternity of Jesus” — Jesus is considered here as the Word. A broad phrase, infinitely slow, on the violoncello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle. ... ‘In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God.’
6. “Dance of Fury, for the Seven Trumpets” — Rhythmically, the most characteristic piece in the series. The four instruments in unison take on the aspect of gongs and trumpets (the first six trumpets of the Apocalypse were followed by various catastrophes, the trumpet of the seventh angel announced the consummation of the mystery of God). Use of added [rhythmic] values, rhythms augmented or diminished... Music of stone, of formidable, sonorous granite...
7. “A mingling of rainbows for the Angel who announces the end of Time” — Certain passages from the second movement recur here. The powerful angel appears, above all the rainbow that covers him... In my dreams I hear and see a catalogue of chords and melodies, familiar colors and forms... The swords of fire, these outpourings of blue-orange lava, these turbulent stars...
8. “Praise to the Immortality of Jesus” — Expansive solo violin, counterpart to the violoncello solo of the fifth movement. Why this second encomium? It addresses more specifically the second aspect of Jesus, Jesus the Man, the Word made flesh... Its slow ascent toward the most extreme point of tension is the ascension of man toward his God, of the child of God toward his Father, of the being made divine toward Paradise.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
String Quintet in C Major, K. 515, No. 3
1.Allegro
2. Menuetto: Allegretto
3. Andante
4. Allegro

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote six viola quintets (string quartets with an additional viola) because this instrumentation allowed him to experiment with fuller harmonies. It freed the cello from its primary duty of providing the ensemble’s harmonic base and allolwed it to act as a solo instrument or to dialogue with the second viola and/or violins. Above all, Mozart could unite the grandeur of symphonies with the intimacy of chamber music. Of the six quintets, the C major is the longest and grandest in concept. In fact, the first movement of this quintet is often described as the largest sonata-allegro movement before Beethoven.

The birth of this Quintet and its pair in G minor (finished in April 1778) occurred within a year of the completions of the A-major Piano Concerto, the “Prague” Symphony, The Marriage of Figaro, and rehearsals for Don Giovanni in Prague. The speed with which Mozart composed these masterworks boggles the mind and defies rational explanation.

The opening two-octave leap of the cello is picked up by the first violin and sets the dramatic mood of the first movement. The throbbing middle voices create a tension that is heightened by the juxtaposition of the keys of C major and minor. The explosive development section is full of surprises, and in the recapitulation Mozart further intensifies his harmonic and motivic surprises. The Menuetto is the least traditional of the four movements. The tonality of its lyrical theme is ambiguous, unfolding in unbalanced four and six measure phrases. The trio section is unusually long and becomes the emotional center of the movement. The Andante is a gentle dialogue between the first violin and the first viola, exploring the contrast between the violin’s clear voice and the darker tones of the viola. The contrast between the tender first theme, the freer, flowing voice of the second and the passionate third theme create intimate and touching moments in this otherwise dramatic quintet. Although the last movement contains much complex counterpoint, its delightful melodies, rhythmic pulse and speed create a delightful immediacy, disguising the intricacies. It seems to scurry by, although measure by measure it is one of the longest in Mozart’s chamber music.