MESSIAEN: CINQUAIN FOR THE END OF TIME

 

          —Tashi, for RCA Victor “Gold Seal”; recorded December

                  1975; CD reissue August 1989.

 

             “Conceived and written in the course of my captivity, the

             Quartet for the End of Time was performed for the first time

             in Stalag 8-A on January 15, 1941…”

                                                                                 —Olivier Messiaen

 

1.  Cluster:  The Movements

 

to praise

the angel who

announces liturgy

of crystal rainbow vocalise

abyss

 

of birds

an interlude

the immortality

of Jesus   time   eternity

the dance

 

of who

announces   end

the seven trumpets   end

the angel    Jesus     fury      time

to praise

 

2.  The Music

 

Begins

with intricate

piano voicings, like

a jazz quartet three quarters put             

to death;

 

a score

for “Twilight Zone,”

the episode in which

the sheltering conceit will thin,

snuff out;

 

a march

of ghosts and matched

inexorably, as

I listen, by a siren blocks

away.

 

He writes

that “the abyss

is Time”; opposing it

he posits birds: seraphic Grand

Guignol;

 

the spry

ebullient squawks

of Aristophanes’

besieged by shrieks of Hitchcocks.’  He

enquires

 

through bursts

of withering

melodic schism, none

the less contemplative, beyond

the Word

 

itself;

instead, upon

a human chaos scrawled,

between its lines, in failure; then

allows

 

this Word’s

harsh verities,

and none the less abstract,

its pallid “Everlastingness,”

to mount.

 

He says

he hears, in dreams—

submits—to “vectors,” the

“unreal.”  Of “superhuman” war

what would

 

have Freud

construed?  From dreams

to unreality…

time signatures unhinging at

time’s end.

 

Of Him?

A tangency

remote and warm, sans text;

a dimly atmospheric sense

of thanks;

 

throughout

is brought to bear

the queasy quietude

of sturdy faith put sensibly

to use.

 

What was

it to have heard

this piece played there and then?

What had been lately done to earn

such praise?

 

 

3.  Cover Art: the Angel

 

To preach,

interpret, forge

translations of transla-

tions—scores and scores; the centuries

will change

 

this much,

transpose it, as

your nihilists’ conceits

aflame and smokeless at my heels.

What will

 

what will

surcease in an

apparent nothingness

contrive to mean?  What will you know?

O cool

 

this soft

blue ocean, from

the figure of my step

irradiating!  Scrawled are these

that you

 

will know,

these figures of

this motion, mysteries—

how many consummate within

an end

 

of that

which figures their

own measurement?  And my

own essence is such mystery:

consumed

 

when solved;

consummate in

salvation; in the weak,

imprisoned by configurements

engaged

 

with time’s

extremity—

O then enumerate

those trumpets true!  You will know what

and why!                                                                                     printable 

Note:  in March and April of this year Charles Leggett will be playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at the Seattle Shakespeare Company, http://www.seattleshakespeare.org