Olivier Messiaen Throughout The Holocaust

Tobias Wack

Schiavone 1B

5/26/15

English 10 GT Olivier Messiaen Throughout the Holocaust(Research Paper)

Olivier Messiaen is a famous composer and songwriter who lived through the despair and emptiness that was the holocaust. Although he wrote many pieces in various styles, he is most famous for a Quartet he wrote during his time as a German POW. His vast expertise in music, strong Catholic beliefs, and experiences as a POW in WWII allow him to convey his hardships and his appreciation for the beauty of life through Quartet for the End of Time, a world-renowned piece he composed for a concert at his POW camp in Germany.

Olivier Messiaen, son of Pierre Messiaen and Cecile Sauvage, was born into a life full of art. As a child Olivier showed

In the Quartet for the End of Time, the eighth movement is the musical expression of a particular vision of Olivier’s. It is titled “Liturgy of Crystal” and is dedicated to the angel and the immortality of Jesus. In the vision he witnesses the angel from the book of Revelation who announces the end of time to those on earth. To further symbolize the vision of the end of time, Messiaen does away with regular meter and time keeping of music. He instead creates rhythms based on Indian patterns of repeating cycles. The Quartet is a piece containing many movements and different parts, many of which were affected by his Catholic

With the outbreak of war in 1939, many countries gave their talented elite low-risk military positions to protect them from casualties. Olivier was assigned to be a nurse rather than a soldier. As a French soldier he was taken prisoner and lived at a POW camp called Gorlitz, where he wrote the Quartet on paper provided by a kind guard who kept watch on Messiaen while he wrote it. Although conditions were not as harsh as in other Nazi camps, it was still an emotionally and physically taxing experience for Olivier. “At the POW camp, a crowd of prisoners and Nazi guards gathered in a freezing hall to listen to the live performance of the Quartet.” With all of the prisoners and guards packed into the small space the temperature rose to just above freezing. Olivier sometimes claims that the keys on the piano did not pop back up after being pressed and that the cello used in the concert only had three strings. This goes to show how many people have had to twist and contort their memories in able to cope with the symptoms of their struggles during the Holocaust. Although his recollection of the concert is often said to be exaggerated, the piece that he composed for the “four instruments available at the camp” - a cello, piano, clarinet, and violin is still known as one of the most famous pieces to arise from WWII because of it’s unique and meaningful intertwined