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LA125255

انگلیسی

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[Article]

Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time"

David Greene

Leiden

Brill

Several of Messiaen's compositional techniques are designed, he says, to "eliminate temporality." They succeed. Still, in a variety of highly original and interesting ways, the piece also sustains temporality. Joining the elimination of temporality with its opposite in each movement puts listeners onto the infinitesimal interface of the temporal and the eternal. The undoing and the redoing of temporality happen so differently in the various movements, however, that no procession from one movement to the next takes place. This absence of temporal coherence in the Quartet as a whole is an additional mode of eliminating temporality, but one that is, in Messiaen's hands, joined to a strange and new kind of completeness. The salient characteristic of the latter is that while the completeness is authentic, and brings the satisfaction that is a quality of completions, it is radically open to further, though not necessarily surpassing, completions. Several of Messiaen's compositional techniques are designed, he says, to "eliminate temporality." They succeed. Still, in a variety of highly original and interesting ways, the piece also sustains temporality. Joining the elimination of temporality with its opposite in each movement puts listeners onto the infinitesimal interface of the temporal and the eternal. The undoing and the redoing of temporality happen so differently in the various movements, however, that no procession from one movement to the next takes place. This absence of temporal coherence in the Quartet as a whole is an additional mode of eliminating temporality, but one that is, in Messiaen's hands, joined to a strange and new kind of completeness. The salient characteristic of the latter is that while the completeness is authentic, and brings the satisfaction that is a quality of completions, it is radically open to further, though not necessarily surpassing, completions.

2013

523-544

Religion and the Arts

17/5

1568-5292

apocalypse in music

composition techniques

interface of time and eternity

Messiaen

musical atemporality

temporality

David Greene

10.1163/15685292-12341299

p

[Article]

275578

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