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sp4cetiger
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- #1
- Posted: 03/25/2014 22:55
- Post subject: User Pick #9: Olivier Messiaen: Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps
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Olivier Messiaen Quatuor Pour La Fin Du... Barenboim
Chart: Top 100 Greatest Music Albums by dividesbyzero
Rank on User's Chart: 1
Year: 1978
Rank on BEA Overall: 3,252
Average Rating: 76/100
Summary Info: This is a recording of a piece chamber music composed by Olivier Messiaen in 1941, scored for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. Messiaen, who died in 1992, was a French composer who specialized in the use of "exotic" musical modes, independent of the twelve-tone system.
| dividesbyzero wrote: | The classical world of the 20th century was such a different universe from any earlier period of classical composition. All over the place you had passionately forward thinking composers who were more than happy to say “fuck all” to the rules, and either rewrite or just completely abandon the idea of “rules”. Olivier Messiaen was not one of these rule abandoning composers, not because he wasn’t a forward thinking composer, but because the idea of “rules” for how music is to be composed was foreign to him from the start. Messiaen had no rules to abandon because he never had any concept of “rules” to begin with. All he had was his own intuition. All he had was a natural affinity for sounds and makeshift structures. All he had was his own ideas to work upon, and that was all he ever needed, and it easily placed him above even the most progressive of the era’s composers. As for Messiaen’s aforementioned musical intuition and “natural affinity for sounds and makeshift structures”, well, these are the traits that were to define Messiaen as, well, as indefinable. Structure-wise, one Messiaen piece could be the counter-opposite of another. It wasn’t so much the specific structure or dynamics that made a piece recognizable as “a Messiaen piece”, but rather the nature in which the piece was composed. No matter how specific the scoring may be for a piece, there has always been a sort of raw humanity, a sense of freedom and varying degrees of unpredictability to many (if not most) of his pieces. Olivier Messiaen was a composer who always saw the beauty of the inherently imperfect. The “ugliest” or most chaotic moments in a Messiaen piece are also quite frequently the most moving. Of all of his many masterpieces, I don’t believe selecting any single one does any sort of justice to his vast career, but were I left to choose, I suppose the stunningly beautiful and wildly ambitious "Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps" ("Quartet For The End of Time") gets the nod. Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps, in addition to exhibiting the bits of deliberate chaos and consequent beauty that we have come to expect from this composer, also succeeds in creating its own unique atmosphere, pulling the listener into a world of bent ideas, of a vast sense of timelessness, of infinite space. It is a piece that feels alive, responding to its own actions the way any living creature would. When it tears into space with raw tension, a moment of bliss is found at its climax, just it collapses in on itself, slowly regaining breath and pulsating new life into its being, creating something entirely new (with entirely new behaviors) from the entity that proceeded it, but no less awe-inspiring than its predecessor.
And it is, in my opinion, the finest music ever composed.
(Practically any professional performance of this piece is bound to be worthwhile. The specific recording which I have on my chart has changed before and is likely (well... not that likely at this point) to change again. Right now it's between this one and this one: http://www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?a=42846. Both are remarkable takes on the piece, and I highly recommend each) |
Details on the implementation and chart selection process of "User Pick of the Day" can be found here and here, respectively. A chart documenting the previous picks can be found here.
Last edited by sp4cetiger on 03/27/2014 03:37; edited 1 time in total
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Mercury
Turn your back on the pay-you-back last call
Gender: Male
Location: St. Louis
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satiemaniac
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- #3
- Posted: 03/26/2014 00:07
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Love the write-up and love the work, though I was always partial to Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jesus. This makes me wanna hear all my Messiaen again and see how high it can get on my chart.
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undefined
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- #4
- Posted: 03/27/2014 02:36
- Post subject:
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Oh cool didn't even notice this got selected. Until for some reason I started browsing the wasteland that is anywhere past page 1 on a forum. Obviously I love the work... not much else I can say in regards to that (yes the writeup comes from me. thanks for the praise  ) But seriously, words ultimately fail at articulating just how much I love this (or just how much I love Messiaen in general)
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EyeKanFly
Head Bear Master/Galactic Emperor
Age: 33
Location: Gotham
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- #5
- Posted: 03/27/2014 03:30
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I haven't heard this performance, but the piece is fantastic.
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51 Washington, D.C. albums!
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Happymeal
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- #6
- Posted: 03/27/2014 04:25
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I remember listening to this a while ago and not liking it because it sounded far too harsh for me.
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undefined
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- #7
- Posted: 03/27/2014 05:07
- Post subject:
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| Happymeal wrote: | | I remember listening to this a while ago and not liking it because it sounded far too harsh for me. |
I remember that... I found it odd because I remember you liking some stuff way more abrasive than this. Also it's been like a year. Consider giving it another go? I can link you a HQ dl of this specific performance. (And that goes for anyone who is familiar with the piece but who has not heard this particularly lovely interpretation of it)
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SingingPeasant96
Coming-of-Age
Gender: Male
Age: 27
Location: In the aeroplane (maybe it's over the sea)
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- #8
- Posted: 03/27/2014 11:55
- Post subject:
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When I first listened to this (thanks to DBZ), I loved it. And now I love it even more.
_________________
If you're feeling sinister, Go off and Listen to Indie Pop
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