Malcolm Ball - Messiaen

For the End of Time
The Story of the Messiaen Quartet
Rebecca Rischin
The premiere of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time on 15
January 1941 at -4 degrees Fahrenheit in Stalag VIIIA, a Nazi prison camp
near Görlitz, in Silesia, has been called one of the great stories of
twentieth century music. "We were 30,000 prisoners (French for the most
part, with a few Poles and Belgians)," recalled Messiaen. "The four
musicians played on broken instruments: Etienne Pasquier's cello had only
3 strings; the keys of my upright piano remained lowered when
depressed...It's on this piano...that I played my Quartet for the End of
Time, before an audience of 5000 people...Never before have I been listened
to with such attention and understanding."
This book is the first comprehensive history of the composition and
premiere of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. Based on testimonies
by the musicians and their families, witnesses to the premiere, former
prisoners, and documents from Stalag VIIIA, For the End of Time examines
the events that led to the Quartet's composition, the experiences of the
musicians in the camp, the contradictory accounts, the composer's
interpretive preferences, and the musicians' problems in execution and how
they affected the premiere and subsequent performances. Rebecca Rischin
explores the musicians' life in the prison camp, their relationship with
each other and with the German camp officials, and their intriguing
fortunes before and after the momentous premiere.
For the End of Time is distinguished by Rebecca Rischin's extensive
interviews and intimate correspondence with survivors of the Quartet's
premiere and members of the Messiaen circle, many of whom had never before
been approached and most of whom are no more. Among them are the cellist
Etienne Pasquier and the violinist Jean Le Boulaire, relatives of the
clarinetist Henri Akoka, and Messiaen's widow, Yvonne Loriod. Told through
the reminiscences of the participants and their families, this dramatic
story is directed at the general reader no less than the learned musician.
The book is generously illustrated with photographs of the musicians, press
releases from the 1941 premiere, autographs, letters, and pen-and-ink
drawings of the camp's layout. Included are wartime photos of the camp and
its prisoners along with present-day photos of the camp site, which Rischin
visited in 1995.
Rebecca Rischin is Associate Professor of Music at Ohio University in
Athens. Her research for this book was aided by a Harriet Hale Woolley
Scholarship for study in Paris, awarded in 1993 to only two other American
artists and musicians. Rischin is an award-winning clarinetist who
performs throughout the United States and Europe.