Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, Part 1

Dynamic Instrumentation

In a previous post we looked at the difference between dynamic and static elements in music.  Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (1941), written in eight movements, is dynamic in terms of instrumentation. The first, sixth, and seventh movements are written for the full quartet consisting of violin, clarinet in B-flat, cello, and piano. In contrast, the second movement begins and ends with sections written for the full quartet while containing a middle section written for violin and cello with piano accompaniment. The third movement of Quatuor is written for unaccompanied clarinet while the fifth movement is a cello solo with piano accompaniment and the eighth movement is a violin solo with piano accompaniment. Thus, instrumentation is a dynamic element in that it experiences some variation over the course of Quatuor.

The First Movement - Panisorhythm

An analysis of each movement illuminates the variety of elements within Quatuor that compose a dynamic yet unified whole. The first movement, “Liturgie de cristal,” begins in simple-triple meter. Musicologists have labeled the presence of isorhythm in multiple instruments of this polyphonic movement as “panisorhythm.”1 One example of isorhythm may be found in the piano, a repeating pattern of seventeen rhythmic values shown here: 2

Series of seventeen repeating rhythmic values in the piano part of Movement I

 

To this series of repeating rhythmic values, Messiaen applies a repeating series of twenty-nine chords.

In a similar manner, the cello of the first movement combines isorhythm with a repeating series of five ordered pitches in a high register, taken from a whole-tone scale.3 This process generates new amalgamations (cool big word) of harmonies and rhythmic values over time and therefore constitutes a dynamic element. However, the unchanging, mechanistic nature of this process may be perceived by the listener as a static element. If permitted to continue indefinitely, this process would eventually return to the initial combination of chords and rhythmic values and thus cease to create new material. Therefore, with the cessation of continuing change given sufficient time, this process could be considered a static element. or Mode 1 of Messiaen’s modes of limited transposition.4

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Endnotes

1 Carla Huston Bell, Olivier Messiaen (Boston: Twayne, 1984): 13.
2 Olivier Messiaen, “Prèface,” Quartuor pour la fin du Temps (Paris: Duran, 1942): IV.

3 Allen Forte, “Messiaen’s Chords,” Olivier Messiaen: Music, Art and Literature, Christopher Dingle and Nigel Simeone, eds. (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007): 99.
4 Clara Huston Bell, Olivier Messiaen, 75.