[Enthusiast]

^ I came across this article which I found quite informative about the circumstances that led to the work and Messiaen's intentions for the music.

http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics6/quatuor.html

 

[jegreenwood]

^ I came across this article which I found quite informative about the circumstances that led to the work and Messiaen's intentions for the music.

http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics6/quatuor.html

For the history of the work, I recommend this:

 

[science]

Just heard this live tonight, and all the musicians were fantastic, but the clarinet just blew me away. What a great part.

 

[NoCoPilot]

The music is masterful but I find it incredibly sad and harrowing. I can't "enjoy" it.

 

[science]

The music is masterful but I find it incredibly sad and harrowing. I can't "enjoy" it.

It's a curious thing about humanity. Most of us enjoy representations of things that we don't enjoy.

 

[Eva Yojimbo]

It's a masterpiece, one of my favorite works of 20th century classical music... and yet it probably isn't even my favorite Messiaen work! Just a testament to how many great pieces he produced. In the right mood with the right recording it can be a profoundly moving experience. Knowing the context helps, but even without that the music speaks well enough for itself. As @violadude mentioned I appreciate how it subverts typical tropes of apocalyptic works to focus on the spiritual aspects. It very much seems to a be a piece searching for God, or even humanity, in an inhumane world.

 

[Enthusiast]

The music is masterful but I find it incredibly sad and harrowing. I can't "enjoy" it.

Sad music should still be in some way uplifting. But I wonder why this music makes you so sad. It is not a word I would use to describe it.

 

[jegreenwood]

Alex Ross begins his article on the work as follows:

The most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century was first heard on a brutally cold January night in 1941, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp, in Görlitz, Germany.

Revelations: Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time

by Alex Ross The New Yorker, March 22, 2004. "Louange à l'éternité de Jésus," live performance from the Banff Centre, May 24, 2007, with Matt Haimovitz, cello, and Frederic Chiu, piano. By kind permission of Banff. Recommended recording: Tashi. The...

www.therestisnoise.com

 

[Brahmsianhorn]

From my absolute favorite classical music site on the Internet, an amazing article that is probably the most detailed and informative guide out there on this work:

Classical Notes - Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin de Temps (Quartet for the End of Time), By Peter Gutmann

Interesting quote from that article:

“Overall, Tashi seems to look not backward to the wrenching time of the Quatuor's creation but ahead to music of the future that, for better or worse, lauds precision over personality.”

 

[Kreisler jr]

It's a curious thing about humanity. Most of us enjoy representations of things that we don't enjoy.

But the quartet is not about sad things. Maybe about mindblowing or terrifying things but clearly not about a sad cold prison camp.

 

[science]

But the quartet is not about sad things. Maybe about mindblowing or terrifying things but clearly not about a sad cold prison camp.

I think you intended to reply to someone else.

 

[CnC Bartok]

I had a "I'm going to like this piece of bloody music" blitz a couple of years back, having never really understood the fuss. There's a real cold clarity to that Gil Shaham/Chung set on DGG, and perhaps surprisingly, that was the recording that allowed me to make a connection with the Quartet.

 

[Kiki]

I had a "I'm going to like this piece of bloody music" blitz a couple of years back, having never really understood the fuss. There's a real cold clarity to that Gil Shaham/Chung set on DGG, and perhaps surprisingly, that was the recording that allowed me to make a connection with the Quartet.

Shaham/Chung's very slow take of the 5th movement is especially fantastic!

 

[Kreisler jr]

I think you intended to reply to someone else.

It's a problem with nested quotations. I probably should have responded to the message you responded to "The music is masterful but I find it incredibly sad and harrowing. I can't "enjoy" it."
but you seemed to agree and I agreed with the statement that we enjoy representations of sad things, like lovesick opera characters.
In any case, if the titles by Messiaen are an indication, the quartet is not supposed to be "sad music".