Quartet for the End of Time

I thought the overall piece “Quartet for the end of time” was very similar to other works we have listened to in this course. The clarinet, violin, viola and piano made a very interesting quartet. These instruments are all capable of playing very slow and melodic, while also capable of playing very fast and very short. I think messian did a good job in this piece in utilizing the full potential of these instruments.

The movement that I would like to focus on is the first movement. The tempo is actually very slow, but it is hard to tell by just listening because there are lots of notes being played specifically by the clarinet and strings. From what it sounded like to me, it seemed that the clarinet was the main melodic instrument and the violin and viola were given a counterpoint that was much softer and had fewer notes. When looking at the score, I realized that the clarinet does a lot of short little notes that sound atonal, and while that goes on, the violin and viola are doing glisses or long notes. Then when the clarinet finishes the phrase, the strings play some of the short notes. This creates a sort of hocket feel. As the song progresses, the tempo starts to go a little askew. Whether it be on purpose or not I don’t know, but it kind of makes the piece build without adding more notes or changing the overall feel of the piece. Now that I think about it, it was probably on purpose. It adds a little uncertainty to the piece and gives it contrast which is very odd because the style of the notes and rhythms doesn’t really change. I think this is actually pretty brilliant. Because how do you make a piece even more contrasting when the notes are already super duper contrasting? I guess all you do is play with the tempo a little bit.

Something that I learned from this piece and that I will utilize in my later compositions is the power and influence that tempo has on a piece of music. It can make a piece feel like it’s moving just like adding more notes or a dramatic crescendo can. I think I learned a lot from this piece and I look forward to listening to more of Messians unique pieces in the future.