Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps

Cambridge Music Handbooks

by Anthony Pople

This book is about one musical work, the popular Quartet for the End of Time by the great French composer Olivier Messiaen. Like virtually all of his works, the Quartet combines the striking technical achievement of Messiaen's rich and attractive musical style with a deeply felt theological inspiration. Anthony Pople's book provides an introduction to Messiaen's style through an examination of this great work, showing how it came to be composed while Messiaen was a prisoner-of-war and premiered under extraordinary conditions in Stalag VIIIA in 1941. He gives an in-depth assessment of each of its eight movements.

Genres: Music

128 pages, Hardcover

First published July 2, 1998

Reviews

[kaelan · Rating 4 out of 5]

With its sublime thematic content, its bizarre harmonies and plodding rhythms, and, of course, its well-known compositional history, I've never known quite what to make of Messiaen's Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps. But thankfully, I have this impressive little book, in which Pople does an excellent job of contextualizing—both thematically and theoretically—a difficult but fundamental work of 20th-century classical music.

But in regards to guides such as this one, we can ask the following question: just how significant are they to one's enjoyment of a particular work of art? Here, I'm reminded of a certain poet-turned-literary critic—his name escapes me at the moment—who once admitted an initial aversion to the critical study poetry, fearing that it would kill the magic of his favourite poems. But the fact of the matter, he explained, is that a good poem will never be ruined by a knowledge of meter and structure and so forth. Rather, a good poem will only become more confusing and more astonishing the more you learn about it. And after reading Pople's guide, I feel that I'm able to apply a comparable sentiment to Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps: I can honestly say that my enjoyment of the piece has increased.

However, a quick disclaimer: the musical analyses in this book occasionally (and necessarily) grow fairly technical. But like Messiaen himself, Pople is not interested in technique for technique's sake, and the theory is always related back to the thematic content of the work. As a result, a strong background in theory shouldn't be required for one to get something out of this book—although at least some background will be needed.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthony Pople's work on Olivier Messiaen's war-time masterpiece "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" is, like all entries in the Cambridge Music Handbooks series, a rigorous musicological examination.

The introduction of the work gives some background on Messiaen, speaking about his life and earlier works (useful for understanding where some of the material of the fifth movement came from). The the Quatuor's creation, within the Stalag prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany, is legendary and receives some discussion here, although those hoping for even more information on the setting should turn to Rebecca Rishin's "For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet" (Cornell University Press, 2003).

Each of the eight movements of the Quatuor has its own chapter, and the analysis differs based on the special properties of each. For example, form and colour are the focus of the second movement ("Vocalise..."), while birdsong is the major topic of the third ("Abime des oiseaux"). The quartet was written as Messiaen was conducting the experiments that led to his early book "Technique", and Pople carefully charts the innovations of rhythm and pitch that Messiaen was developing at this time. As with all entries in the CMH series, quotations from the score abound.

If you have some musical training, Pople's book will vastly expand your appreciation of the "Quatuor". I went from thinking it a juvenille work compared to "Des canyons aux etoiles" or "Eclairs sur l'aux-dela" to seeing it as a piece of marvellous ingenuity.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Cambridge Handbook, this one covers one of my most favorite pieces of music, Messiaen's Quatuor Pour La fin Du Temps, famously written in a German POW camp. Pople devotes a chapter to each of the seven movements, plus gives illuminating introductory and concluding sections. His analyses are very detailed, but never feel like a slog. Plus, he uses musical examples very effectively. It's a wonderfully illuminating explanation of the techniques Messiaen used and how they play out musically.