01	Liturgie de cristal						03:03
	02	Vocalise pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du temps						05:07
	03	Abime des oiseaux						07:34
	04	Intermede						01:50
	05	Louange a l'Eternite de Jesus						08:39
	06	Danse de le femur, pour les sept trompettes						06:51
	07	Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du temps						07:40
	08	Louange a l'Immortalite de Jesus						08:21
	09	Theme - Modere						01:17
	10	Variation 1 - Modere						01:30
	11	Variation 2 - Un peu moins Modere						00:47
	12	Variation 3 - Modere, avec eclat						00:51
	13	Variation 4 - Vif et Passionne						01:08
	14	Variation 5 - Tres modere						01:54

Quartet for the End of Time (1940)

Luben Yordanoff - violin
Albert Tetard - violincello
Claude Desurmont - clarinet
Daniel Barenboim - piano

Recorded in 1978 in presence of composer.

Theme and variations for Violin and Piano (1932)

Gidon Kremer - violin
Martha Argerich - piano

Recorded in 1990.


Olivier Messiaen

Birth - Dec 10, 1908 in Avignon, France
Death - Apr 27, 1992 in Clichy, France

Period - Modern
Years Active - 1917-1991


Biography by Todd McComb
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist, teacher, and ornithologist whose music is distinguished by his deep devotion to Catholicism, exoticism, and nature. At the age of 11 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, studying organ and improvisation with Marcel Dupre and composition with Paul Dukas. In 1930, he became the principal organist at La Trinite Cathedral in Paris, a post he held for more than 40 years. His distinguished teaching career is marked by appointments in Darmstadt (1950-53), his famous courses in harmony and analysis at the Paris Conservatoire beginning in 1947, and his appointment as professor of composition there in 1966. His impressive list of students includes Boulez, Stockhausen, and his second wife, keyboardist Yvonne Loriod, among many others.

In synthesizing an individual style, Messiaen discovered in the music of Debussy the properties of "exotic" modes such as the whole-tone and diminished scales, calling them "modes of limited transposition." The inherent symetricalities of these modes enabled Messiaen to create progressions and melodies free of the tonic-dominant polarity of traditional tonal music, while remaining independent of the 12-tone system as well. Messiaen was gifted with a strong sense of "synaesthesia" or hearing in colors. He often described his music in terms of "color progressions," also equating key signatures and collections (sets) of pitches with specific colors. At an early age, Messiaen developed a strong interest in rhythm, particularly fostered by Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. His rhythmic investigations ranged from Gregorian chant, to ancient Greek poetic meters, to Indian raga, to gamelan music. He soon left regular metric divisions behind, although repetition remained an integral part of his rhythmic vocabulary. All of these elements are explained in great detail in his 1944 publication, Technique de mon langage musical (Technique of my musical language).

In 1940, while a prisoner of war of the Germans, Messiaen composed Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time). The quartet's unique instrumentation of piano, clarinet, violin, and cello was written for, and premiered by Messiaen and three fellow inmates while in detention; it became one of the great chamber works of the twentieth century. Messiaen was one of the first composers to apply serial techniques to parameters other than pitch (such as duration, register, and dynamics) in Mode de valeurs et d'intensites (1949) for solo piano. His interest in plain chant and rhythm led him to the ancient Greeks and Hindus, where he discovered processes such as nonretrogradable, additive, and subtractive rhythms. The Turangalila-symphonie of 1948 is the most synthetic of his early works. It features rich orchestration, imaginative use of tonal colors, Hindu rhythms, and a formal scheme that unfolds in large, block-like structures. Also of note here is one of the earliest uses of the Ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument capable of producing eerie glissandi, as well as monophonic melodies. Messiaen had a deep love of birdsong, and spent much time in the wild making extensive transcriptions, many of which would surface in his works, most notably in an arresting orchestral passage in Chronochromie (1960) and the monumental Catalogue d'oiseaux (Catalog of the Birds) (1958) for solo piano. His large body of organ music, composed primarily during his tenure as organist at the Sainte Trinite Cathedral, is highly idiomatic, colorful in harmony and registration, and rhythmically ingenious. From 1950, his Messe de la Pentecote (Mass of the Pentecost) is a collection of improvisations that he shaped into a composition. His only opera, St. Francis d'Assise, was completed in 1983.



Quatuor pour la fin du temps, for violin, cello, clarinet, & piano, I/22

Composition Date - 1940-1941

Composition Description by Joseph Stevenson
This work is one of the most significant and famous chamber music compositions of the twentieth century. In his early thirties, Messiaen was already known as one of the most brilliant and individual young French composers and organists. It was at Verdun that his army unit was captured during the German Army's lightning advance in 1940. Two members of Messiaen's company were also musicians: cellist Etienne Pasquier and clarinetist Henri Akoka. As the latter had his clarinet, Messiaen wrote a piece for him, which became the third movement of this quartet. The soldiers were transferred to Stalag VIII-A outside Gorlitz, Silesia. Pasquier was assigned as a cook, enabling him to keep well fed and smuggle extra food to Messiaen. Messiaen met another musician, Jean Le Boulaire, a violinist who also had his instrument. Pasquier hoarded money he got by selling extra potatoes and was permitted to buy a cello from a local instrument maker. Messiaen wrote a trio for them, which became the fourth movement. Messiaen discovered a piano in a corner of a hut used as a church. He quickly wrote the quartet and the four musicians premiered it on January 15, 1941, before an audience of several thousand prisoners and the camp Kommandant and his staff. "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension," Messiaen wrote. The keys to the piano were sticky, and the musicians had to overcome the cold, but Pasquier says it is not true - as the composer remembered - that he had only three strings on his cello, adding that it simply can't be played on fewer than the standard four. The quartet meant freedom for the players. The Germans thereafter listed them as musician-soldiers. The Wehrmacht's bureaucracy took this to mean they were noncombatant bandsmen, and released them back to France.

Messiaen, a devout Catholic, drew his title and musical imagery from Revelations 10:1-7, concerning the Angel that announces the end of time. It is thought that hunger resulted in kinesthesia, Messiaen's ability to see musical sounds as visual colors, and intensified his interest in bird calls. The eight movements are: "Liturgy of Crystal" (a blackbird's call surrounded by trills, translated to a "religious plane" as the harmonious silence of Heaven); "Vocalise for the Angel Who Announces the End of Time"; "Abyss of Birds" (where the eternity of birdcalls overcomes and Abyss of Time); "Interlude"; "Eulogy to the Eternity of Jesus" (featuring an "infinitely slow" and majestic cello solo); "Dance of Frenzy for the Seven Trumpets" (a remarkable movement written entirely in unison); "Tumult of Rainbows for the Angel Who Announces the End of Time"; and "Eulogy to the Immortality of Jesus," a timeless violin solo that ascends in register as Christ (and Mankind) ascend to the Father.



Theme and Variations, for violin & piano, I/10

Composition Date - 1932

Composition Description by Alexander Carpenter
The Theme et variations represents Messiaen?s attempt to overcome the difficulty of composing larger works using a harmonic language that was comprised of essentially static chord constructions: classical theme and variations form was the solution. The work consists of the theme and five variations, the theme constructed, as Carla Bell notes, as a "song sentence," made up of a theme, middle period, and final period. The sentence is organically unified, with repeated thematic fragments comprising the two periods. The work has a time signature of 4/4, and a pitch centre of F sharp. The work is modal, though frequently employing tonal chords. Messiaen uses canon, stretto, and double counterpoint to give added structure to the piece, and the theme is developed in a rigorous, almost academic fashion, through diminution and melodic elimination. The Theme et Variations is an important work in terms of Messiaen?s early stylistic development, but as analyst David Drew notes, it is less than perfect and did not ultimately offer Messiaen the "escape...from the impasse into which [his] anti-development aesthetic had led him."