Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time
CSO Sessions - Episodes • 22-Apr-2021
Written in a German prison camp during World War II, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time was premiered by the composer to an audience of guards and fellow prisoners. Evoking sounds and imagery from his surroundings, including the famous birdsong clarinet solo, Messiaen’s powerful quartet transcends the dark circumstances of its inspiration and attempts to give new meaning to the word eternity. By the final movement, time seems to slip away, bringing to mind the apocalyptic passage that inspired the work’s title: “There shall be no more time.”
PROGRAM
MESSIAEN Quartet for the End of Time
SPONSORS
Sponsorship support for CSO Sessions is generously provided by the Zell Family Foundation; an anonymous donor; Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund; JCS Arts, Health and Education Fund of the DuPage Foundation; the Julian Family Foundation, in honor of Cristina Rocca; Cynthia M. Sargent; Megan and Steve Shebik; Betty W. Smykal; TAWANI Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; ITW, and PNC.
Up Next in CSO Sessions - Episodes
-
Mozart Gran Partita
Mozart’s Gran Partita is a sublime achievement in wind music, easily capturing the many emotions of the heart — sometimes all within a single movement. It is a playfully subversive variation on the popular serenade, scored for 13 musicians, which flows naturally between simplistic melodi...
-
Harberg, Gabrieli & Bach
Amanda Harberg’s Hall of Ghosts, written in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, evokes haunting loneliness through the use of a single piccolo and dance soloist. Gabrieli’s Sacred Symphonies were first published in 1597, and the selections featured here immediately transport ...
-
Montgomery & Beethoven
Strum, a string quintet by acclaimed New York composer Jessie Montgomery, is an expansive work that draws upon American folk melodies and the spirit of dance and movement. It's paired with the sparkling Septet in E-Flat Major, one of Beethoven's most popular works during his lifetime.
<...
