Roman River Festival 2008

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For our ninth Roman River Festival we indulged in a feast of French music, food, film and culture to celebrate the 10oth anniversary of the birth of the great birdsong-inspired composer Olivier Messiaen.

'What a fabulous festival it was. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.' (2008 Festivalgoer)

Our ambitious programme ranged from the revolutionary 17th century composer Marin Marais (made into a worldwide hit by the film Tous les Matins du Monde) to the great hits of Debussy, Chopin and Messiaen.

The Messiaen Anniversary Concert was magnificent. The musicianship was of exceptional quality and the programme was intriguing and stimulating.

Our congratulations and thanks for providing such delightful events. (2008 Festivalgoer)

Along with French food and wine, we presented our first ever full song recital by the stunning young soprano Katerina Mina in the candle-lit church, featuring Schumann's wonderful cycle Frauenliebe und -leben, set to peoms by the great French poet Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot.

'the whole festival was brilliant from the marvellous film to the jazz. Katerina Mina was spellbinding - I am sure she will go far. We are so lucky to be able to hear and watch first class musicians in our rural setting ... a wonderful feast'

We added two extra events; a showing of Louis Malle’s enchanting film Milou in Mai, and a concert of the rich, rare and expressive music by the early French composer Marin Marais in East Mersea church.

'Congratulations on a wonderful feast of music. I enjoyed all the events; The film was really great, and we are so lucky to hear such accomplished musicians.'

New performers included our first ever viol player Liam Byrne, the distinguished chamber musicians Simon Blendis and Duncan Prescott, and one of the brightest stars in contemporary jazz Zoe Rahman.

Juliet Jopling returned to the festival to play solo Bach at Abberton Church, and Simon Crawford-Phillips and Kate Gould joined Simon and Duncan to play some of the great works of Debussy, Chopin, Franck and Messiaen.

'All the musicians were a delight, especially the pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips and Juliet Jopling in Abberton Church.'

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FILM
Thursday 9 October, 7.30pm
Fingringhoe village hall

Louis Malle Milou in May

Family and friends gather at their rural retreat in May 1968 - the moment when radicals are trying to shut down French society. For a moment, it seems that revolutionary fervour will reach the village... Milou in May has something for everyone: comedy, beautiful cinematography and perceptive commentary.

In French with English subtitles.

£5/£3 including a glass of wine.

LAKESIDE CONCERT
Friday 10 October, 7.30pm
Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex

Simon Blendis violin
Duncan Prescott clarinet
Kate Gould cello
Simon Crawford-Phillips piano

Debussy First Rhapsody for clarinet and piano
Chopin Polonaise for cello and piano
Franck Sonata for violin and piano
Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time

Music from the great French masters, culminating in Messiaen’s dramatic and haunting masterpiece, written and premiered in a prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War.

£12/£9/£3

BACH AT ABBERTON
Saturday 11 October, 11am
St Andrew’s Church, Abberton

Juliet Jopling viola

Bach 3rd Suite for cello in C major, arr. viola

A welcome return of the Festival's previous Artistic Director.

Voluntary donation in aid of the church.

CANDLELIT CONCERT
Saturday 11 October, 7.30pm
St Andrew's Church, Fingringhoe

Katerina Mina soprano
Simon Crawford-Phillips piano

Saint-Saëns, Chausson, Bizet & Schumann

For our first full song recital, Katerina chose ravishing music and poetry from the great French song tradition. She ended with Schumann’s well-loved Frauenliebe und Leben, a setting of poems by Louis de Chamisso, born in the champagne region of France.

Home-made food will be served in the interval.

£15/£11/£3 including a glass of wine.

MARIN MARAIS AT EAST MERSEA
Sunday 12 October, 11am
St Edmund's Church, East Mersea

Liam Byrne and Caroline Ritchie, viols

Music by Marin Marais

The peaceful and ancient space of this beautiful church resonated with music from the French master Marin Marais, 17th century hero of the film Tous les matins du monde.

Voluntary donation in aid of the church.

ZOE RAHMAN - JAZZ CONCERT AND SUPPER
Sunday 12 October, 6pm
Fingringhoe Village Hall

Zoe Rahman piano
Idris Rahman clarinet

Songs from Where Rivers Meet

Mercury Award nominee Zoe Rahman selected songs from her eagerly awaited new album, infused with the sounds and harmonies of Tagore and featuring the eloquent clarinet playing of her brother.

Supper (main course Coq au vin or vegetarian option) by Caroline Bindloss Catering.
£10/£8/£3, supper £10

PROGRAMME

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Milou in May

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FILM

Thursday 9th October 7.30pm
Fingringhoe village hall CO5 7BG (MAP)

Milou in May Louis Malle

Louis Malle’s homage to village life, set during the student uprisings of May 1968. In French with English subtitles.

£5/£3 including a glass of wine.

Lakeside concert

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7.30pm Friday 10 October 2008
Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex (MAP)

Simon Blendis violin
Kate Gould cello
Duncan Prescott clarinet
Simon Crawford-Phillips piano

Debussy Rhapsody
Chopin Polonaise
Franck Sonata for violin and piano
Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time

Music from the great French masters, culminating in Messiaen’s dramatic and haunting masterpiece, written and premiered in a prisoner-of-war camp during WW2.

French wine will be available.

£12/£9/£3

Bach at Abberton church

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Saturday 11 October, 11am
St Andrew’s Church, Abberton

CO5 7NJ (details)

Juliet Jopling, viola

Bach Suite No 3 in C Major for Cello (arranged for viola)

A welcome return of the Festival's previous Artistic Director Juliet Jopling.

Voluntary donation in aid of the church.

Katerina Mina

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CANDLELIT CONCERT

Saturday 11 October, 7.30pm
St Andrew's Church, Fingringhoe CO5 7BG (MAP)

Katerina Mina soprano
Simon Crawford-Phillips piano

Saint-Saëns, Chausson, Bizet & Schumann

In our first-ever full song recital, Katerina Mina will perform a varied mix of French music and music inspired by France. Tickets include a glass of wine, and light food will be served in the interval.

Katerina has won several international singing prizes and will make her debut with the Moscow Opera later this year as Nedda in Pagliacci.

£15/£11/£3 including a glass of wine.

Marin Marais

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MARIN MARAIS AT EAST MERSEA CHURCH

Sunday 12 October, 11am
St Edmund's Church, East Mersea CO5 8TJ (MAP)

Liam Byrne and Caroline Ritchie, viols

The peaceful and ancient space of this beautiful little church will resonate with rich and beautiful music from the seventeenth century French master Marin Marais, hero of the film Tous les matins du monde.

Voluntary donation in aid of the church.

Zoe Rahman

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JAZZ CONCERT AND SUPPER

Sunday 12 October, 6pm
Fingringhoe Village Hall CO5 7BG (MAP)

Zoe Rahman piano
Idris Rahman clarinet

Music from Where rivers meet

Mercury Award nominee Zoe Rahman, ‘one of the brightest young stars in the UK jazz-piano firmament’, presents a unique collaboration with her brother Idris on clarinet. The evening will include duo arrangements of music from their eagerly awaited new album 'Where Rivers Meet', featuring jazz-inspired interpretations of music by Bengali composers such as Rabindranath Tagore and Hemant Kumar

Caroline Bindloss will provide a delicious two-course supper afterwards.

£10/£8/£3, supper £10

PERFORMERS

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Simon Blendis

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Simon Blendis has an international career as a chamber musician, orchestral leader and soloist. Alongside his work in the Schubert Ensemble, he regularly guest leads orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta, as well as the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan. A keen exponent of new music, he has given over 40 first performances and had new pieces written for him by, amongst others, Tansy Davies, Stuart Macrae, John Woolrich and jazz legend Dave Brubeck. As a soloist he has appeared with the RPO, ECO and OEK in Japan, with whom he has recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for the Warner Japan label.

Katerina Mina

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Katerina Mina was a prize winner in two major singing competitions, the Concorso Vocale Internazionale di Musica Sacra in Rome, and the International Singing Competition in Spain. Katerina has sung major roles for Staatstheater Cottbus, Minotaur Musical Theatre, English Touring Opera and Polish National Opera.She has given numerous recitals and concerts in the UK, Germany, Finland, Italy, Cyprus and Greece, and has recorded music for the CyBC Radio and Television. Recently, Katerina performed the Premieres of Chistos Pittas symphonic works Helen and Rime d’Amore with the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra; she gave a recital of songs and arias with pianist Anthony Legge at Leighton House and participated in a masterclass with José Cura.

Kate Gould

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Kate Gould is one of the outstanding chamber musicians of her generation. In addition to her membership of the London Bridge Ensemble, she is a founder member of the Leopold String Trio and spends the rest of her concert life playing in a variety of other ensembles and giving duo recitals. In 1997 she was a winner of the Tillett Trust Young Artists Platform and the BBC Radio 3 Young Artists’ Forum. She joined the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in 2000. Kate is a regular guest of the Nash and Endymion Ensembles and plays as guest principal cellist of the English Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

The Leopold String Trio recently won the Chamber Music category at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards and in 2004 was the winner of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, set up by Mitsuko Uchida to assist established young ensembles and soloists. In 2001, the Trio represented Wigmore Hall at major international concert halls in the ECHO Rising Stars series and in the same year was selected for the inaugural BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists scheme. The Trio records for Hyperion and all of their discs have received immense critical acclaim.

“I doubt we will ever hear better recorded performances of the three piano quartets than we have here...Kate Gould's cello in the moving slow movements of Nos 2 and 3 is breathtakingly beautiful...” Classic FM Magazine, Brahms’ Piano Quartets, Hyperion Records

Simon Crawford-Phillips

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Simon Crawford-Phillips is developing an unusually diverse career as soloist, chamber musician and song accompanist. A Masters Degree and a Fellowship at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama followed his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He continues studying with Ferenc Rados.
Recent concerto performances have included Beethoven, Mozart, Shostakovich, Schumann and Stravinsky with orchestras such as ViVA, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St.Martin in the fields and December 2007 saw his concerto debut in Japan with the NHK Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Alan Gilbert.
The 2007/08 season includes concerto performances with the BBC Scottish Orchestra.
Simon frequently works with singers such as Emma Bell, Measha Brueggergosman, Alice Coote, Sarah Fox, James Gilchrist, Andrew Kennedy and Robert Murray, and instrumentalists Emily Beynon, Colin Currie, Martin Frost, Richard Hosford, Pekka Kuusisto, Lawrence Power, Christian Poltera, and Roger Tapping. He also appears regularly as a guest with the Nash Ensemble, ECO chamber ensemble, Leopold String Trio and Dante String Quartet.
Simon is a founding member of the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, which was selected in 2000 for the BBC New Generation Artists Scheme. In 2003, the trio made its Carnegie Hall debut and appeared at major European Concert Halls, including the Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus and Cologne Philharmonie. Concerts in 2005 included debuts at the Berlin Philharmonie, Schwetzinger Festspiele and Muziekcentrum Vredensburg in Utrecht and a tour of Argentina and Uruguay. 2007 saw its debut tour of Australia and New Zealand. The trio has recorded for the NAXOS and BIS labels. The complete Mozart trios are due for release in November 2008.
In 2001 Simon made his BBC Proms debut with his piano duo partner Philip Moore and in 2004 the Duo received a Borletti-Buitoni Fellowship and were appointed Steinway Artists. Highlights in 2005 included debut concerts at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Edinburgh Festival, along with return visits to the South Bank, Bridgewater Hall and Wigmore Hall. Future plans include a new Concerto for two pianos by the German composer Detlev Glanert, commissioned for the Duo and premiered, to great critical acclaim, in March 2008.
A performer at many of the European festivals (Bath, City of London, Cheltenham, Dubrovnik, Edinburgh, Mecklenburg, Montpelier, Lofoten, Obertsdorf, Oslo, Schwetzinger, Spoleto, Schleswig-Holstein and Verbier), Simon has also been invited to the Open Chamber Music Sessions at Prussia Cove in Cornwall.
In the Summer of 2008 Simon has performed at Vid Djupid Festival (Iceland) and hast toured Australia with the Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto.
Simon is also co-director of the Wye Valley Chamber Music Festival held every January.
In addition to radio and television broadcasts in Europe, Australia and Japan he has also recorded for the BIS, Deux-Elles, Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, Naxos and Signum CD labels. Further recordings are planned for Hyperion and Naxos.

Duncan Prescott

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Duncan Prescott has established a reputation as a soloist and chamber music player, with recitals at the Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room receiving outstanding critical acclaim. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music with John Davies and whilst a student, he won all the major wind prizes and also several other awards and scholarships. These include the Anna Instone Memorial Award from Capital Radio and an English Speaking Union Scholarship to Tanglewood Music Centre, USA.

As a member of the Composers Ensemble, and formerly of the Nash Ensemble, he has performed at festivals throughout Great Britain and abroad, including Aldeburgh, Bath, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and Darmstadt.
Duncan has recorded extensively for the BBC, and for many other national radio networks including those of Germany, Sweden, Israel and Russia. He has been guest principal of many orchestras including, the London Sinfonietta, The Royal Opera House Orchestra, The BBC Philharmonic and The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Solo engagements have included features on ITV television and concertos with the London Sinfonietta and the English Symphony Orchestra.

Caroline Ritchie

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Caroline Ritchie (baroque cello/viola da gamba) read music at New College, Oxford, holding an instrumental scholarship and graduating in 2002 with a first class degree. She subsequently studied baroque cello and viol with Jenny Ward Clarke and Richard Campbell at the Royal Academy of Music, graduating in 2004 with distinction and writing her MMus dissertation on the performance of Purcell's Trio Sonatas. While at the RAM, Caroline worked with artists such as Jordi Savall, Andrew Manze, Trevor Pinnock and Sir Roger Norrington, and played in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the BBC Proms, and the Spitalfields Festival. Recent freelance work includes continuo cello for Rameau's Achante et Cephise in Oslo, a series of concerts in Stockholm with her group, the Arcangelo Quartet, and a tour of France with the Academie Baroque Europeene d'Ambronay under Christophe Rousset.

Juliet Jopling

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After graduating in Economics from Trinity College, Cambridge University, Juliet Jopling returned to her dream of becoming a chamber musician. A prizewinner of the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, Juliet has appeared as soloist with orchestras including The Philharmonia, London. Juliet has been a member of a quartet nearly all of her life, starting in childhood with her family quartet. Miss Jopling is the Artistic Director of Kerry’s International Chamber Music Festival.

Zoe Rahman

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Described in The Observer newspaper as "one of the finest young pianists in Europe", Zoe Rahman has firmly established herself as one of the brightest stars on contemporary jazz scene. Her most recent album, 'Melting Pot', was short-listed for the 2006 Nationwide Mercury Prize and was voted 'Jazz Album of the Year' at the 2006 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. The album has been hailed as "one of the most distinctive piano trio albums" (Jazzwise magazine), a "fantastic new album" (Courtney Pine, BBC Radio 2), and "in every way, an impressive sequel to her debut" (Jazz Review).

Her critically-acclaimed debut album, The Cynic, with drummer Winston Clifford and bassist Jeremy Brown, was short-listed for the BBC Radio 3 jazz album of the year review in 2001 and was described in Straight no Chaser magazine as "one of the best jazz albums of the year". Following the success of her debut CD, Zoe was nominated in the 'Rising Star' category of the 2001 BBC Jazz Awards. In 1999 she won the 'Perrier Young Jazz Musician of the Year' Award, which led to her recording three tracks on a Jazz FM-produced compilation, with drummer Daniel Crosby and bassist Orlando Le Fleming.

Born in Chichester, UK, Zoe studied music at Oxford University and jazz performance at Berklee College of Music, Boston, where she had lessons with the inspirational pianist JoAnne Brackeen. While in America she formed her own trio which featured bassist Joshua Davis and the renowned drummer Bob Moses.

She has been the featured artist on Radio and Television programmes such as BBC4's 'Women In Jazz' documentary, Jools Holland's BBC Radio 2 show, Charles Hazlewood's BBC Radio 2 show, Courtney Pine's 'Jazz Crusade' on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4's 'Women's Hour', BBC London's 'Now's the Time', Andrea Oliver's 'The Selector', Northern Broadcasting Internet Radio, Resonance FM and Julian Joseph's Jazz series for Meridian Television. She has performed live on the BBC World Service and on Radio 3's 'In Tune' and music from her Melting Pot album has also been featured on BBC Radio 3's 'Jazz Record Requests'.

Aside from working with her own groups, she continues to perform, record and tour (both in the UK and internationally) with a diverse range of other artists, most recently: Clark Tracey's New Quintet; Reem Kelani; Soothsayers; Tony Bianco; Steve Williamson; JazzXchange Dance Company; Nyika Goremsandu; Netsayi Chigwendere; Gary Boyle; Keziah Jones (2003/4 European tours); David Walcott (2008 Jazz Festival, Barbados); Mekaal Hasan (2001 tour, Pakistan). She has co-written a jazz-based theatre show 'I'm a Fool to Want You', about the French writer/musician Boris Vian, with 'Told by an Idiot' Theatre Company (UK / South American tours 2003-2005).

Other recent albums/DVDs include: Reem Kelani Sprinting Gazelle; Clark Tracey Quintet The Calling and The Mighty Sas; Tony Bianco In A Western Sense; Gary Boyle Games; Soothsayers Tangled Roots; Brigitte Escobar Brigitte; Terry Hall/Mushtaq's The Hour of Two Lights; Keziah Jones Live at the Elysee Montmartre DVD.

Liam Byrne

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Liam Byrne is an active performer on all shapes and sizes of viol-family instruments. Recent engagements have taken him everywhere from Honolulu to Moscow to Chipping Campden, including concerts with the viol consorts Fretwork, Phantasm and Concordia, the Dunedin Consort and the BBC Singers. Liam’s interests are particularly strong in the viol consort, French baroque and lyra viol repertories. He took his BMus in viola da gamba with Wendy Gillespie at Indiana University, and is currently a Clarendon Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, reading for the MPhil in Musicology and Performance. His research focuses on fifteenth-century instrumental music and the relationship between notation and performance. Last summer, Liam was awarded a Frank Huntington Beebe grant to continue his musical studies with Laurence Dreyfus.

MUSIC

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Debussy First Rhapsody

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Debussy wrote his Première Rapsodie especially for the annual clarinet graduation recitals or Concours at the Paris Conservatoire in 1910, a year after he had been invited by the director of the Conservatoire, Gabriel Fauré, to join the advisory board of the institution. Most solos de concours were straightforward bi-partite, slow-fast pieces designed to test and display the lyrical and virtuoso sides of a candidate's abilities. But Debussy uses a group of four themes to alternate lyrical passages with ones demanding digital dexterity, adding mastery of mood and tempo changes to the technical challenges of the Rapsodie. The Rapsodie inhabits the same sound-world as the first book of piano preludes, which Debussy finished at around the same time. Though it's called Première Rapsodie, Debussy never wrote a Deuxieme; perhaps he was making a pun on the fact that successful Conservatoire candidates were awarded a Premier Prix. And having negotiated the Rapsodie, those same 1910 students were then presented with a piece of accompanied sight reading also by Debussy, published as Petit Pièce. Both Rapsodie and Petit Pièce are classics of the clarinet repertoire, and Debussy later orchestrated them both. The Rapsodie is dedicated to the clarinet professor at the Conservatiore, Prospère Mimart "en témoigne de sympathie" (with an expression of sympathy), and Mimart duly gave the first public performance in January 1911.

Chopin Polonaise

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Fryderyk Chopin's Polonaise Brillante, Op. 3, is one of the few pieces this composer ever wrote for an instrument besides piano. The young Chopin wrote this piece for cello and piano in 1829, when he was only 19 years old. The circumstances of the piece's conception are charming and youthfully innocent. In the fall of 1829, Chopin had fallen head over heels for the first time in his life for a young woman in Warsaw. Unfortunately for Chopin, the love was unrequited. Chopin's father, in hopes of easing Chopin's heartbreak (and also undoubtedly looking for patronage) took his son on a week-long trip to visit the estate of Prince Radziwill, who had two beautiful young daughters. At least one of the daughters, Wanda, was a pianist. He composed the Polonaise Brillante for her to practice with her cello-playing father. Chopin wrote later to a friend that the piece was merely a salon piece to be enjoyed casually and that he had written it in a manner so as to show off the young Wanda's pretty fingers. Indeed, the piece is full of piano flourishes that can't help but to show off the pianist's fingers.

He must have held it in at least a somewhat high regard, for he included it on a concert tour in 1830, dedicating it to Joseph Merk, an excellent and renowned cellist. Chopin also later added an introduction to the Polonaise, making the piece Introduction and Polonaise Brillante. His friend, the great cellist August Joseph Franchomme, helped Chopin make necessary revisions before its publication in 1833.

The piece as we know it today is highly entertaining, pleasing to performers and audiences alike. The introduction is only a few minutes in length and is full of piano flourishes and a beautiful, if somewhat naïve sounding cello melody. The Polonaise dances along with energy and bravado. The piano part serves as both a showcase solo part and as an accompanimental partner to the cello. The cello part does not play the prominent solo role, rather, it is more obligato in nature, soaring above the virtuosic piano passages. The main melody is festive and youthful in nature. The cello enthusiastically introduces most of the melodic lines, at times becoming quite virtuoisic itself. There are moments of lyrical grace and elegance to equal the bravura, and the music builds in excitement to the very end. ~ All Music Guide

Franck Violin Sonata

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Franck was looked down upon by Brahms, who neglected even to glance at a score that Franck sent to him from Paris. Born in Belgium, Franck moved to France; there he became the dominant force in music, accruing a large group of ardent devotees. Unlike Brahms or Beethoven (or Wagner, for that matter), Franck was a saintly man, always kind in manner and speech. To increase the gulf separating him from Brahms and Beethoven, Franck, disinterested in fame and fortune, managed to get married (but it wasn’t a happy marriage). An unsuccesful—though virtuoso—pianist, it wasn’t until Franck began to play the organ at age 30, improvising for hours on the organ of Ste. Clothilde, that he found his vocation. Even then, he was a late bloomer; all of his best known music was written after he was 53 years old.

Franck’s compositional style favors frequent modulations, and, like Liszt’s B minor Sonata, he develops the initial melodic material throughout the piece. His pieces are sensuous, yet spiritual and serene. He promised Wagner’s wife, Cosima, a violin sonata in 1859, but put it off. Finally, the famed Ysaÿe, a fellow Belgian (born in Franck’s hometown), persuaded Franck to write a violin sonata in honor of Ysaÿe’s wedding. The 1886 premiere took place in an art gallery in Brussels. The room was so dark that Ysaÿe was forced to play the sonata largely from memory!

The opening movement is in sonata form, but leaves out the development section, to avoid conflict. It is harmonious and reflective. The piece develops less by thematic opposition than by a gradual rising and falling of tension. It uses what Franck referred to as “cyclic” development: all the movements share common thematic threads. The second movement is turbulent, but subsides to a foreboding calm. The third movement is somewhat amorphous; Franck called it a “recitative-fantasia.” The Finale opens with a sunny theme, in perfect canon! There is a recapitulation of sorts, and the ending is fervent; a proclamation of love for the married couple.

Listen to Christian Ferras and Pierre Barbiset play the first movement of the Sonata on youtube here.

Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time

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Quatuor pour la fin du temps
(Quartet for the End of Time)
OLIVIER MESSIAEN
Born December 10, 1908, Avignon
Died April 28, 1992, Paris

Called up during World War II, Olivier Messiaen was serving as a medical auxiliary when the Germans overran France in the spring of 1940. He was taken prisoner and sent to a POW camp east of Dresden, where he discovered among his fellow prisoners a violinist, a clarinetist, and a cellist. A sympathetic German camp commander supplied Messiaen with manuscript paper and arranged to have an upright piano-old and out of tune-brought in for his use. That fall, Messiaen wrote an extended work called Quartet for the End of Time for the four musicians, who gave the première performance at that prison camp-Stalag VIII A-on January 15, 1941. Their audience consisted of 5000 fellow POWs, who sat outside in sub-freezing temperatures to hear the performance. "Never have I been listened to with such attention and understanding," said Messiaen of that occasion.

It would be incorrect, however, to assume that the Quartet for the End of Time was written in response to the seemingly-endless existence of prisoners of war. Rather, Messiaen-a devout Christian-took his inspiration from the Revelation of St. John the Divine in the Apocrypha, specifically from the tenth chapter: "I saw a mighty angel, descending from heaven, clothed in a cloud, having a rainbow on his head. His face was as the sun, his feet as columns of fire. He placed his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the earth, and, supporting himself on the sea and on the earth, he raised his hand towards Heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, saying: There will be no more Time; but on the day of the trumpet of the seventh angel, the mystery of God will be completed."

The Quartet is an expression of faith in the resurrection from temporal existence, a faith expressed in many ways. For example, the work is in eight movements because while seven is "the perfect number" (the number of days of the creation), the music here "extends into eternity and becomes the eighth, of unfailing light, of immutable peace." The notion of the dissolution of time is further reflected in the metrical notation of the music itself. Messiaen sometimes uses traditional meters and bar lines, but the actual metric flow of the music often has nothing to do with the prescribed measures; at other points he dispenses with an established meter altogether. The instrumentation varies (only in certain movements do all four instruments play simultaneously), and the Quartet also marks the first appearance of birdsong in Messiaen's music--he was fascinated by the songs of individual birds, carefully notated these songs, and used them as an important thematic feature of his music from this point on.

Messiaen himself prepared a detailed and colorful description of the eight movements, worth quoting at length:
Liturgy of Crystal: Between the hours of three and four in the morning, the awakening of the birds: a thrush or a nightingale soloist improvises, amid notes of shining sound and a halo of trills that lose themselves high in the trees. Transpose this to the religious plane: you will have the harmonious silence of heaven.

Vocalise, for the angel who announces the end of time: The first and third parts (very short) evoke the power of that mighty angel, his hair a rainbow and his clothing mist, who places one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth. Between these sections are the ineffable harmonies of heaven. From the piano, soft cascades of blue-orange chords, encircling with their distant carillon the plainchant-like recitativo of the violin and cello.

Abyss of the birds-Clarinet solo: The abyss is Time, with its sadnesses and tedium. The birds are the opposite of Time; they are the desire for light, for stars, for rainbows and for jubilant outpourings of song!

Intermezzo-Scherzo: Of a more outgoing character than the other movements but related to them, nonetheless, by various melodic references.

Praise to the Eternity of Jesus: Jesus is here considered as one with the Word. A long phrase, infinitely slow, by the cello expatiates with love and reverence on the everlastingness of the Word, mighty and dulcet, "which the years can in no way exhaust." Majestically the melody unfolds itself at a distance both intimate and awesome. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Dance of fury for the seven trumpets: Rhythmically the most idiosyncratic movement of the set. The four instruments in unison give the effect of gongs and trumpets (the first six trumpets of the Apocalypse attend various catastrophes, the trumpet of the seventh angel announces the consummation of the mystery of God). Use of extended note values, augmented or diminished rhythmic patterns, non-retrogradable rhythms-a systematic use of values which, read from left to right or from right to left, remain the same. Music of stone, formidable sonority; movement as irresistible as steel, as huge blocks of livid fury, of ice-like frenzy. Listen particularly to the terrifying fortissimo of the theme in augmentation and with change of register of its different notes, toward the end of the piece.

Clusters of rainbows, for the angel who announces the end of time: Here certain passages from the second movement return. The mighty angel appears, and in particular the rainbow that envelops him (the rainbow, symbol of peace, of wisdom, of every quiver of luminosity and sound). In my dreamings I hear and see ordered melodies and chords, familiar hues and forms; then, following the transitory stage, I pass into the unreal and submit ecstatically to a vortex, a dizzying interpenetration of superhuman sounds and colors. These fiery swords, these rivers of blue-orange lava, these sudden stars: Behold the cluster, behold the rainbows!

Praise to the Immortality of Jesus: Expansive violin solo balancing the cello solo of the fifth movement. Why this second glorification? It addresses itself more specifically to the second aspect of Jesus-to Jesus the man, to the Word made flesh, raised up immortal from the dead so as to communicate His life to us. It is total love. Its slow rising to a supreme point is the ascension of man toward his God, of the Son of God toward his Father, of the mortal newly made divine toward paradise -And I repeat anew what I said above: All this is mere striving and childish stammering if one compares it to the overwhelming grandeur of the subject!