Chamber Players Present Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time' Monday

April 15, 2015

The New Yorker's Alex Ross describes the “Quartet for the End of Time” (Quatuor pour le fin du temps) by Olivier Messiaen as “the most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century.” At 7:30 p.m. on Monday, April 20, the DePauw Faculty Chamber Players will present a performance of this seminal work in Kresge Auditorium, featuring guest clarinetist Randy Salman (pictured at right) and introductory commentary by Professor Scott Perkins.

Le fin du temps, for Messiaen, “meant an escape from history, a leap into an invisible paradise.” It is certainly one of the most important pieces of twentieth-century chamber music literature, and it helped shape the modernist aesthetic to come.

Inspired by an apocalyptic quotation from the Book of Revelations, the “Quartet for the End of Time” is informed by the particular circumstances surrounding the quartet’s composition and premiere. Messiaen wrote his quartet while held captive during World War II, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany, and its instrumentation comes as the result of the few musicians available among Messiaen’s fellow inmates.

Rather than perform the quartet in Thompson Recital Hall, as would be typical when playing a smaller chamber work, the ensemble has chosen to present this acutely intimate and compelling piece in the Green Center’s larger venue, Kresge Auditorium, with the audience seated on the stage. “This will allow us to use special lighting effects and also create a greater sense of intimacy with the audience as we perform this extraordinary work, ” says Eric Edberg, the Chamber Players’ cellist and Cassel Grubb University Professor of Music. Joining Edberg and Salman on stage Monday to complete the quartet will be faculty pianist May Phang and violinist Erica Dicker.

General admission to this Faculty Select series concert is $5. Tickets for seniors, children and all students, are free, thanks to season sponsors Judson and Joyce Green ('74 & '75). To obtain tickets, visit www.depauw.edu/music/tickets or stop by the Green Center box office, 605 S. College Avenue.

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